John Wayne’s patriotic fervor goes through the roof with this film. You absolutely see an inherent messaging being sent to the American people in the wake of World war 2 of “Rebuild with might and victory. To the winner goes the spoils, our place in the world is to conquer and lead etc…” This was coupled with the sexual politics of the day towards the end of males being dominant over and leading women in society. This messaging is further enhanced by the story arc of the female co-star showing how disposable she is in society as a woman and how much she needs a man to help her get through life.
That being said, this movie has a lot of great dramatic tension between John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. The pairing of these two very different actors absolutely accentuates their personality differences with Wayne coming off more as a villain in this film more so than his previous roles, and Clift coming off as the kinder, gentler more “modern” young man of the 1950s.
Howard Hawks does a great job of manipulating the onscreen tension between the two such that when gunshots are finally fired they cut through an air of tension created purely by the dialogue exchanges, blocking and body language and performance of the actors such that the action scenes themselves don’t need much excitement to create tension, they are already tense.
This film delivers very powerful performances and a storyline of misplaced vengeance and a portrayal of toxic masculinity in a time period when such behavior was actually being encouraged. While this film absolutely promotes the White male first ideology of the day it does offer counterpoints in the dueling narrative between Wayne and Clift over how men should treat each other with the two of them putting aside their differences in the end due to a woman’s plea.
This film is far more progressive than one might assume at first glance, yet it is part of a trend of films where John Wayne will play the Alpha Male and shape his America first, White man first agenda.