John Wayne @ 100.

John Wayne's 100th isn't until Saturday, actually, but the festivities are already well underway - in the papers, yes, but also in the Cannes Classics program, which includes restored versions of Hondo and Rio Bravo.

As David S Cohen explained in his piece on Hondo for Variety a couple of weeks ago, "with its color and 3-D digitally restored, audiences will finally have the full experience director John Farrow and producer-star John Wayne intended."

And in the Los Angeles Times, Dennis Lim revisits Rio Bravo, "the film that features Wayne's greatest performance - and that is also perhaps the best work of its director, Howard Hawks."

"The whole point of the character Wayne embodied in something like 150 pictures, the overwhelming majority of them westerns and war movies, was that there was no mystery to him at all: What you saw was what you got, and if you didn't like it, tough," wrote Terrence Rafferty in the New York Times on Sunday. "The Duke made pretty sure you'd like it, though."

Emanuel Levy looks back on "Ten Great Performances."

The Shamus has been at it for days and days: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Updates, 5/26: Wagstaff at Edward Copeland on Film: "To commemorate the 100th birthday of Marion Morrison, known to all his friends as Duke, I hereby give you a half-dozen of my favorites. The task was difficult - there were so many to choose from. What are some of your favorite John Wayne moments? Drop a comment and tell me what they are."

James Bone has a level-headed take for the London Times, and quotes Joe Leydon: "The thing about Wayne is that, for better or worse, he was representing America to the rest of the world.... There have been times when that has been a good thing because there have been times in not-so-distant history when the idea of a strong, take-charge American attitude was not only respected but desired. But we live in a world now of shades of grey."

And in the German-language press: Henning Engelage in epd Film, Christian Schröder in Der Tagesspiegel, Rolf Niederer in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Fritz Göttler in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Gerhard Midding in the Frankfurter Rundschau.

Update, 5/29: "Saying John Wayne can't act is like saying Bob Dylan can't sing," writes John Beifuss. "Yeah, the Duke couldn't play Hamlet and Dylan can't sing Carmen, but what they can play and sing they play and sing with utter confidence and with the bravado of the conquerors of a New World."

Posted by dwhudson at May 22, 2007 1:39 AM