This was part of a series of reviews I did back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the snarky, clueless kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.
Written October, 27, 1975
Rooster Cogburn (Stuart Millar, 1975) Stopped by the Renton* to see Stuart Millar's Rooster Cogburn. It was...pleasant. Not particularly exciting, but...pleasant. When I think of all the possibilities of a script involving John Wayne building on an earlier role and Katherine Hepburn....
I can even think of the possibilities of direction within the limitations imposed by the script....
Well, anyway, with the talent showcased there, let's just say the glass could have been cleaned a little better. The "Rooster Cogburn" character is described as "having gone to seed." I must agree. Cogburn is but a shadow of the characterization Wayne created in 1969, and as if to off-set it, Wayne overplays it, especially in the opening sequences, but his efforts come out looking like amateurish mugging.
Hepburn fares much better in her role but then why shouldn't she? She played the same type of character in The African Queen. The action sequences lack the punch that a more seasoned director like Howard Hawks or Henry Hathaway might've delivered. For example, the shoot-out at the Goodnight mission where a number of Indians and Eula Goodnight's father are murdered by a gang of desperadoes--the scene should have been frightening, a horrible thing to watch, as it must have been to the Hepburn character.. But after a well-used slow zoom into the growing commotion, Millar shows us the massacre from high overhead at least 30 feet away, showing all the action encompassed in the frame, keeping us at a safe and unparticipatory distance.
Another sequence that had great had great potential was the character "Breed's" (Anthony Zerbe) showdown with Hawk (Richard Jordan), as he is exposed for being a traitor to him. After a very lengthy series of shots between the two characters as Breed hesitates in handing over his gun, Hawk kicks him and he slides down the slope. Then, there's a shot of Breed's hat sliding down the slope (nice try, but it just doesn't work, symbolically or otherwise), and ALL OF A SUDDEN ** there is a shot of Breed falling over a cliff (I remember thinking to myself "Was there a cliff there?" Yes, but we didn't know that until the character fell off it!) There was no suspense in this scene, but there certainly would have been if Millar had told us, somehow, that there was a cliff behind him. We would have been able to think ahead even further than we had when "Hawk" asked to see "Breed's" gun. We would have seen what was coming and squirmed a bit for the character. This way, nothing. A momentary shock and it's over.***
Rooster Cogburn is full of missed chances like this, and it really is too bad.
It really was (and is). I remember reading about the trials and tribulations director Millar had with his iconic, and feisty and flinty stars out on location in Oregon, and how they'd do a scene, and not do a re-take if they thought it was good. Wayne wasn't in the best of health, but felt he had to do his own horse-riding in front of Hepburn--the male-pride thing. And though Wayne and Hepburn got along like a house afire—Hepburn told her pal Peter O'Toole that where he was a willow, Wayne was a great oak—it was just an unpleasant shoot. And Millar was more of a producer than a director. He was 44 when he directed Rooster Cogburn but his "legacy" stars treated him like a snot-nosed kid.
It is too bad. This is the only movie that Wayne and Hepburn did together—at this point in her career, she was starting to go the rounds of veteran actors with whom she hadn't sparred before, like Henry Fonda, Laurence Olivier...and Wayne—and it would have been nice to have a good, decent script instead of this hashed-together combination of The African Queen and warmed-over True Grit (written by "Martin Julien", but actually actress Martha Hyer, the wife of producer Hal Wallis, and though she was an arresting and competent actress, as an author-by-nepotism, she was basically "copy and paste"). And whatever talents director Millar had, he didn't know how to gather enough material to make a film that could be cut together smoothly, or build anything approaching dramatic tension. John Ford, Howard Hawks, Don Siegel were directors who could shoot economically having already edited the movie in their head before filming, but Millar—if he had a plan—was undercut by what he could accomplish on location.
Sometimes projects are brought together on a whim and star-power but without the good foundation of a solid script or a director who could find gold in a coal-mine, it'd be like building a cardboard house on the sea-shore. The whole thing collapses before there's any equity. It usually happens when a screen-couple are re-united after a big hit. Anybody remember John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John's second pairing after Grease? Yeah, me, neither.****
Still, when they're together on-screen Hepburn and Wayne take the creases and mugging out of their performances and produce something that feels like grace. But, it is far from either of their best work. Wayne is gentlemanly in her presence and Hepburn rather school-girlish. I don't know if either of those serve the characters very well, and one appreciates such things in small doses when the characters should be more sand than sugar. Impressed with the amount of the stunt work they did on the Rogue and Deschutes Rivers, though.
Wayne regrouped with a brilliant performance in his last film The Shootist, and Hepburn remained iconic even to her last film 19 years after this one.
* The Renton Cinema, demolished in the 80's, is now the AMC Renton Village 8. Same location, though.
** Emphasis, mine.
*** This is the basic "Hitchcock Rule:" A scene is much more exciting if you give the audience more information. If a bomb goes off on a train *BOOM* it's over, a little disorientation and shock and it's done. But tell the audience there's a bomb..show them where it is and what time's it's going to go off...and show all the people who might see it but don't, with the clock ticking down and you have a long period of suspense where people know the situation and are helpless to do anything about it. It's a much more effective scene.
**** Okay, I lied. Two of a Kind.
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