1966 - EL DORADO Howard Hawk's self indulgent but highly entertaining western

The screenwriter Leigh Brackett, was so frustrated with Howard Hawks during the production of El Dorado, that she openly referred to the film as "Son of Rio Bravo." But by this point in his career, Howard Hawks was indulging himself to an unparalleled degree. Sticking just about every dumb western cliche and rehash of scenes from his previous films into El Dorado, Howard Hawks was artistically out of control and clearly didn't care.

 

The critics at the time were not impressed with the film and re watching it now it's easy to understand why.  Even the line readings of the actors incorporated some of the famous Howard Hawks overlapping dialog which he had used in his previous films. If Hawks wanted to indulge himself in a trip down memory lane, so be it.

It's interesting to compare the directors Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock at this point in their
careers. Hawks in his early seventies and Hitchcock in his late sixties were winding down their amazing careers with only a few more films left in them.

Their treatment of women in their films at this point in their lives is an interesting contrast between the styles and personalities of these men. Hitchcock pretty much spent the rest of his career sexually obsessing over the actress Tippi Hedren and thinking up inventive ways to stage creepy rape and murder scenes against women in his remaining films

Howard Hawks also had a thing for women and stuck lots of hot looking women in his last couple of films. However Hawks wasn't interested in raping or murdering them, he just had them looking good and talking smart. As he got older, John Wayne no longer wanted to play love scenes with younger women. Hawks made it a point of having Wayne perform with younger actresses to embarrass him.

Hawks cast Robert Mitchum to act opposite John Wayne. Having these two legendary actors and alcoholics play against each other was a great idea. Wayne usually tended to overwhelm most of the actors he played with. But Robert Mitchum had such a strong personality that at times Wayne almost looked like he was underacting. Mitchum recognized the film for what it was, a bunch of foolishness. His mugging and hamming throughout the film was very entertaining.

El Dorado was the the last film photographed by Hal Rosson. Rosson had a long career, he had photographed films like The Wizard of Oz, Singing in the Rain and parts of Gone With The Wind. El Dorado has lots of beautiful old style Hollywood photography particularly with the use of the color yellow to simulate the evening western sky.

Coming in 20 minutes shorter than Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks still had enough tricks left in him to make El Dorado a box office hit with the audience in 1966, but Hawks must have known that times were changing for his kind of film. Still, you could make the argument that El Dorado is a lot more entertaining in many ways than the very pretentious Rio Bravo.