Rio Grande

"Rio Grande is one of two John Ford films from the Republic Pictures library that have been reissued on DVD in enhanced editions (the other is The Quiet Man) by Artisan Entertainment. Rio Grande was the last part of Ford's celebrated ""cavalry trilogy,"" with Fort Apache and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and is, perhaps, a little less well known since it was made at Republic and not RKO, as the others had been, and, thus, hasn't been as widely exposed over the decades. The new DVD looks somewhat better and sounds significantly better than its previous edition, and the producers of this disc have made a superb job of this release. The highlight, the feature that is worth the price of the disc by itself, is Maureen O'Hara's narration -- she digresses a bit at times but on this movie, which was more of a routine shoot than The Quiet Man (or, as ""routine"" as any Ford shoot could be), she tells what it was like working with Ford on a day-to-day basis. She is charming throughout, and her memory ranges with delightful freedom across the shoot and her relationship with the various actors, and the making of specific shots, such as the horse-jumping sequence. One of the most appealing aspects of this disc, thanks to the nature of O'Hara's narration, is that in listening to her, even this viewer -- who has seen this movie at least 20 times -- gets the sense of discovering the movie anew, and almost discovering it for the first time; she does bring out more than a detail or two that even the most serious viewer might overlook. O'Hara also has a keen sense of irony, over the fact that this movie, regarded now as a near-classic, was made solely to secure the financing for The Quiet Man. The disc opens automatically to a menu that functions on three tiers, of which the most dispensable bonus features are the ""trailers,"" which aren't original trailers but promotional spots for the DVDs. Much more interesting is ""The Making of Rio Grande,"" an 18-minute featurette hosted by Leonard Maltin -- he does get inside of some aspects of the ethos Ford's movies, along with retelling the story of the making of the picture and its relationship to The Quiet Man; he's supported by on-camera interviews with Michael Wayne, Harry Carey Jr., and Ben Johnson, who are very entertaining and often touching in their reminiscences. ""Along The Rio Grande With Maureen O'Hara"" is the second featurette, also 18 minutes long, offering the actress on camera (along with Andrew V. McLaglen, the son of actor Victor McLaglen), intercut with shots from the film, delving further into her memories of the shoot and the people. Some of the recollections repeat material from the commentary track, but that's par for the course in an unrehearsed effort, and she does embellish her remarks here, to the benefit of the viewer. The menu is easy to manipulate at every level and the whole disc offers at least a few days of absorbing viewing, even for the casual fan, who may find this much more serious a movie than they previously thought of it as being. The price is low enough that it's attractive just for the restored sound, which is more than a match for the old laserdisc release, and those viewers with good sound systems will enjoy the enhanced restored audio."