Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: The movie that won John Wayne the Oscar.
With his square face and imposing build, John Wayne is predestined to embody fearless and blameless heroes. “The Duke”, as he is nicknamed, began his career as a props man, before being spotted by John Ford who cast him in The Executioner’s House in 1928.
During the 1930s, the Republic company, which specialized in the production of westerns, made him its star actor. From then on, John Wayne embodies the archetype of the reckless cowboy invested in the will to make the law triumph.
It crosses all the Hollywood myths of the conquest of the West: The Fantastic Ride, The Red River, The Heroic Charge, The Prisoner of the Desert, Rio Bravo, The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance…
Despite an established notoriety, John Wayne must wait until the age of 62 to get his first – and only – Oscar for Best Actor. Paradoxically, he won this award for his performance in a role at odds with the honest and virtuous characters he was used to playing.
Indeed, in 100 dollars for a sheriff, adapted from the novel True Grit by Charles Portis, he lends his features to Rooster Cogburn, a one-eyed and alcoholic marshal with casual manners, coming to the aid of a tomboy in search of his father’s murderer. A character that he will take up again in 1975 alongside Katharine Hepburn in A Bible and a Gun.
$100 for a Sheriff by Henry Hathaway with John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Kim Darby…
Tonight on C8 at 9:15 p.m.