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One Night in El Dorado
Vow!!!! What fun it was to watch The Pirates of the Caribean 2. I was actually very reluctant to watch the movie as sequels are usually a watered down version of the first part, but boy was I wrong. I even had more fun watching the sequel than I did watching part 1. I do not want to get carried away talking about the Pirates, as Mr. BLAINE has already beautifully covered it (except the part about Orlando Bloom).
Today I am in a nostalgic mood. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape into Morpheus� arms � that is taking a good snooze after a long hot and I mean hot hot day � I pressed the button on the remote control and there it was that �El Dorado�, one of Howard Hawks� Western Masterpieces starring John Wayne, Bob Mitchum a very young and cunning James Caan and last not least Arthur Honnicutt as Bull the Indian Fighter, was presented in it�s original widescreen format on AMC.
I haven�t seen this picture since I first became a big fan of the iconic American directors Howard Hawks and John Ford. In fact, I once met Howard Hawks in Munich at the house of Enno Patalas, film critic and director of the filmmuseum in Munich at the time. I was very pregnant with Max and Howard Hawks flattered me by saying if he were to make a movie again he would cast me as I was �a typical Hawksian woman�. My ego got a tremendous boost and my ex-husband, also a young film director showed a tiny bit of jealousy, maybe because he didn�t get a part offered? Who wants to know!
I am through with my ramblings.
After all these years I enjoyed watching El Dorado just as much as I did the first time. What do the Pirates and El Dorado have in common? They are both very entertaining, they keep you glued to your seat as one lives along with the characters. What a story! An elderly, fat but still in demand gunman for hire, Cole, portrayed by John Wayne, the Duke, meets up with his buddy from the past, who is now the sheriff in a small western town, played by Bob Mitchum. Both are slightly incapacitated from their past as gunfighters. They are accompanied by the deputies Bull, played by Arthur Honnicutt, a toothless old Indian fighter and the young James Caan as Mississippi. These misfits are up against the town�s villain Bart Jason, who are conning the town folk, with the exception of the Macdonald family, out of their properties by vital force. Just as Cole turns down the offer to work for the villain as a hired gun, he gets shot in the butt by Josephine MacDonald, played by Michele Carey, a perfect shooter in her own right, as he tragically kills her brother who attacked him first. Josephine goes on to save the day at the final showdown by once again firing a well placed shot.
The script is perfectly tailored, not a single line of dialogue is ever unnecessarily spoken. The action is swift and to the point, there is never a moment, like in many movies, where you want to push the actor out the door to save his life because he is too busy uttering unnecessary words in order to artificially heighten suspense. No nonsense, these guys, almost a bunch of losers, mean business and when everything seems to be lost , they become heroes by being ordinary men and women with guts, fantasy, principles and way too much whisky!!
Hawks� women in his films are beautiful, cool, intelligent, they ride, shoot, etc. They portray emancipated characters.
I was picturing what a remake would look like today. I did not like it. I simply could not imagine the Duke on a cell phone talking to Bob on horseback. For those who haven�t seen the movie its out on DVD and is definitely a collectors item!!! I am sure that more than just baby boomers will have fun watching it!!
--Solitaire
El Dorado, starring John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and James Caan directed by Howard Hawks, first release 1966 and now available on DVD by Paramount.
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 The MMC Movie Club is coming soon! Keep your eye out for it...
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