The Smackdown may have ended but here's one last 1948 piece from abstew on TFE's favorite classic dramatic actor to close out the year of the month. - Editor
Before there was Brando and James Dean there was Montgomery Clift. And while those actors are often credited for bringing a new type of leading man to the big screen, through a mix of masculine machismo with feminine vulnerability, without Clift paving the way, the future of acting might have looked far different. The country was just emerging from the hardships of WWII. After seeing the travesties of war firsthand, they were ready for something more realistic and Clift was the answer to the change they were seeking. Having worked as a stage actor for over 10 years (where he made his Broadway debut at age 15 in the Pulitzer Prize-winning There Shall Be No Night), Clift was a serious actor that had honed his craft and emerged fully-formed in Hollywood with his first two films, both released in 1948, the western Red River and the post-war drama The Search.
Having caught Clift in a production of the Tennessee Williams play You Touched Me!, director Howard Hawks convinced the young actor to bring his unique set of skills to his western. John Wayne, an actor so synonymous with the genre that he was practically its patron saint, was already headlining and Hawks felt that Clift, who didn't even know how to ride a horse, would bring a different energy and dynamic to the stoic western figure. Wayne needed some convincing and laughed at the thought of the slender Clift being able to hold his own in the film's final throw down confrontation against him. But Clift, ever the professional, worked tirelessly to master the demands of the role and gives a performance that pays homage to cowboys past but is entirely its own creation. [More...]
Playing the adopted son to Wayne's authoritative and unyielding cattleman, Clift's character Matt Garth stands up against his father figure's commands. And the conflict on-screen seemed to mirror the behind-the-scenes drama as Clift and Wayne never really warmed up to each other. Modern audiences have noted the tension between the two. And have even gone so far as to interpret it as Matt's response to his unrequited love for his caregiver. And while the homoerotic subtext within that relationship is a little more subvert, the scene between Clift and John Ireland's Cherry Valance as they, ahem, manhandle each other's pistols has gained quite the reputation over the years. There are even rumors that the scene plays the way it does because Clift and Ireland had had a fling while filming. Hawks thought that Clift would bring something special to his film and thanks in large part to his involvement, the film is often cited as one of the best westerns ever filmed and even counts fans among audiences not usually fond of the genre.
Although Red River was filmed in 1946, it was not released until two years later. The delay was a result of similarities to Howard Hughes' film The Outlaw and the filmmaker threatened to sue. The pushed-back release actually ended up working out in Clift's favor as it came out after the buzz from The Search, technically his film debut as it was released earlier in the year, had built momentum surrounding the newly rising star.
Clift has said that his work in Fred Zinnemann's film, about a young boy that survived the German concentration camps who befriends an American G.I. in post-war Europe, ranks as the most gratifying artistic experience in his entire career. But he initially was skeptical of the role as written. Finding his character to be too saintly and devoid of any real human characteristics, Clift took it upon himself to roughen him up a bit and even rewrote scenes and dialogue. The result is a performance so authentic that Zinnemann said that after the film came out people continually asked him where he found an actual soldier that was able to act so well. And the film, thanks in large part to Clift's reworking, even earned an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Clift himself was honored with a Best Actor nomination, but lost the award to Olivier's performance as Hamlet.
While I can see the Academy wanting to honor the new movie star with a nomination, I prefer the actor's work in Red River that year. But The Search, with its topical subject matter fresh in audiences' minds, and one of the first films to shoot the actual damages inflicted on the European countries (Zinnemann tried to give the film a documentary feel), it's just the sort of important film that garners awards attention. Even if the actual film itself now stands best as a time capsule of the period.
two very different generations of leading men collide in RED RIVER
Clift doesn't appear until almost 45 minutes into the film and while his scenes with the young actor that plays the boy have a natural easiness (astounding considering the boy did not speak English and learned his cues from Clift's coaching), it never feels like Clift's Steve is integral to the film's narrative. But there are already hints of the star he would become later on in much more fully-realized performances in classics like A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity. And thanks to his work in The Search and Red River, it was the beginnings of the legendary actor that was Montgomery Clift. And film acting hasn't been the same since.