"In truth, Wayne’s roles, and personal ideologies, were much more ambivalent, complicated, and nuanced in his opinions than popular memory allows."
His characters were always divorced ( and possibly misogynist ) , lousy fathers and frankly, assholes.
I think that's the charm - the character could say what's
on his mind. Embittered, more or less tired of life. Somebody who'd paid the price for all that violence and hubris. This was pretty outrageous at the time.
I also think his movies were a lot for people who had ...daddy issues.
But the guy had a basket of riffs ( and usually hooks
from the writers ) to make that work. Those movies play weekly on infinite repeat.
I think Teh Movies would have made movies where women did what John Wayne did but that would have landed flat at the time. He had ...some movies with the great Woody Strode, where Woody played the better man ( especially "Liberty Vallance" ) so it's harder to say he was strictly racist.
Also - see "Rustler's Rhapsody" which is a deconstruction of the contradictory tropes in Westerns.
They do identify the moment - when "Midnight Cowboy" won the Oscar - when my parents' generation disconnected from movies.
> His characters were always divorced ( and possibly misogynist ) , lousy fathers and frankly, assholes. I think that's the charm - the character could say what's on his mind. Embittered, more or less tired of life. Somebody who'd paid the price for all that violence and hubris. This was pretty outrageous at the time.
That's part of the reason I love old-man Clint Eastwood movies - Gran Torino and Heartbreak Ridge, especially.
Also, I think The Shootist is the best John Wayne exemplar of this. And one of the best John Wayne movies, period.
The Shootist was one, if not the, first John Wayne movies I can remember watching as a kid. At the time I took the movie at face value wanting to be like Gillom learning to shoot. As an adult watching it I can see the truth of the story: the pain of an old man wanting to leave life in a manner of his choosing, and being disappointed that in the end he could not control it.
Sure, most of his characters were macho, misogynistic, and perhaps a touch racist, but was that his portrayal of the character drawn from his knowledge of what got him jobs, the writers, or perhaps both? Maybe he was simply the victim of type-casting. We see type-casting a lot these days: Keira Knightley seems stuck with period-piece roles, Jim Carrey is one of the go-to guys in the comedy realm, Jennifer Aniston is perpetually the ditsy girl, and it just goes on from there. Certain actors and actresses seem destined to play only a single type of role because of their looks. It's as true then as it is now. You could argue that these people accept the roles so they're as much to blame as the casting agents, but if the only roles they're offered are these type-casted ones who's really to blame? Sorry, I digress.
To me the story of Gran Torino is very similiar to that of The Shootist. It's been updated for the times, but at its core it's still about an old man tutoring a young boy and choosing how he'll die. Is the Clint Eastwood story better? I think that depends on who you ask. Is the character of Walt Kowalski better than J.B. Books? That depends on your definition of better. I believe there are things to learn from both characters and both stories. And while these things may not always be good, they are still important to know.
His characters (in particular the early ones) were John Fords characters. He always took complex stories to direct rather than pulp and even directed the Grapes of Wrath which was about as left wing / communist as you could get away with in hollywood at the time.
Even though both wayne and ford are conservatives they both made films that were more complex than just espousing this 'all american' view which people seem to dump on wayne particularly.
"Grapes" is really well done. Jane Darwell is amazing in that.
There's a lot of nuance to those movies. Ford could be infuriating - the ending would be nothing more than the soundtrack plays a nicely resolved dominant chord and the credits roll. Maybe there'd be a terminal sentence before that. Maybe not.
Ford and Eastwood ( and later Wayne )had a rotating cast of actors - Ward Bond, Hank Worden, others in the case of Ford.
The movies Wayne made while he didn't serve in WWII were also almost all overt propaganda movies - very slick propaganda. That doesn't mean you have to hate 'em.
His characters were always divorced ( and possibly misogynist ) , lousy fathers and frankly, assholes. I think that's the charm - the character could say what's on his mind. Embittered, more or less tired of life. Somebody who'd paid the price for all that violence and hubris. This was pretty outrageous at the time.
I also think his movies were a lot for people who had ...daddy issues.
But the guy had a basket of riffs ( and usually hooks from the writers ) to make that work. Those movies play weekly on infinite repeat.
I think Teh Movies would have made movies where women did what John Wayne did but that would have landed flat at the time. He had ...some movies with the great Woody Strode, where Woody played the better man ( especially "Liberty Vallance" ) so it's harder to say he was strictly racist.
Also - see "Rustler's Rhapsody" which is a deconstruction of the contradictory tropes in Westerns.
They do identify the moment - when "Midnight Cowboy" won the Oscar - when my parents' generation disconnected from movies.