This bit of cleverness (I forget who first said it) has been bantered around for quite a while now, but I’ve never really taken the opportunity to express what annoys me about it.
First of all, personally I have no problem if you prefer Hawks to Ford; I’d have a hard time definitively choosing one over the other myself. They’re certainly the two greatest American directors. So fine, if you like Hawks better, you’ll probably like Red River (arguably Hawks’s greatest western, although I’d go with Rio Bravo on that score) more than Ford’s films. So say so. Don’t just repeat this silly meme about Red River being a Ford film. First off, if it were a Ford film the focus would almost certainly be more on the makeshift family that Wayne and Clift come to be. It would be story of their building the ranch and, more than likely, the drive would be reframed to be a story of sacrifice, rather than of cojones. Ford was all heart; Hawks, head. A Ford story is almost always about an inner struggle, and more often than not about some great sacrifice–some defeat that must be endured by the protagonist–as a price to keep the community he’s a part of intact. Hawks’s stories tend to be about the protagonist finding his inner strength, defining himself, through the accomplishment of something great and ostensibly impossible. *Red River *is one the purest Hawksian films, and a great masterpiece. If you like it more than Ford, please just say so. Some of my closest friends, and some very credible critics, would agree with you.
(Note: this screed is not directed at TV Time specifically; just at the many people I’ve heard repeat that little meme over time.