Tonight on TV: A huge western with legends John Wayne and Robert Mitchum

Tonight on TV: A huge western with legends John Wayne and Robert Mitchum

In the mid-1960s, Hollywood was undergoing profound changes. The classic American Western has largely lost public favor in favor of the much more violent and cynical Spaghetti Western.

Sergio Leone’s Dollar Trilogy – A Fist for a Dollar (1964), A Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) – really changed the cards for the genre.

Well aware of this new dynamic, then 70-year-old director Howard Hawks chose precisely to evoke the aging of the mythical characters of the Wild West by abandoning the canvas of one of his previous works, and most importantly: the very famous Rio. Bravo (1959).

For his fourth collaboration with Howard Hawks, Eldorado effectively puts John Wayne, not in the skin of a sheriff invested in the will of the law to triumph, but of an older mercenary (the actor he is – even at dawn. In the sixties).

It’s the great Robert Mitchum who plays the famous Sheriff star here who suffers from alcohol problems. Both embody a bygone era that contrasts with James Caan’s character, a fiery and reckless young adventurer.

Howard Hawks along with his screenwriter Lee Brackett takes the same story based on male friendship and nostalgia while making a few changes to deliver a darker and more complex version. Twilight, in short.

Howard Hawks’ El Dorado with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Caan…

Tonight on C8 at 9.20pm.

Source: Allocine

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