TRUE GRIT: a classic revisited and re-evaluated

"Memory is..." a colleague once commented to one of my co-workers, "a fragile thing." Of course he was scoring a cheap point in a discussion about which of them had most accurately remembered a conversation they'd previously had about money, but there's more than a grain of truth in what he said.

His comment sprang to mind as I was watching John Wayne in his 1969 western TRUE GRIT. I'd felt inspired to slip the disc into my DVD player after seeing Glen Campbell in concert the night before in deepest Kentucky. Campbell had performed the title song and made some jokes about how his performance had helped earn Wayne the Best Actor Oscar.
It had been years since I'd watched the film and in my memory it was a bona fide classic with a thoroughly Academy Award deserving turn from the Duke. In my review of the Coen Brothers version of TRUE GRIT, published on this blog back in January, I'd compared Jeff Bridges interpretation of ornery US Marshal Rooster Cogburn unfavorably with Wayne's, describing the former as 'playing' the part while Wayne 'was' the part. Oh, how frail my memory proved to be.
This time around I didn't see anything in Wayne's performance that made it Oscar worthy. His Cogburn is likeable, and just about believable as a real character but there's no particular depth to his interpretation. Wayne plays him much as he played all his characters in the 1960s - as John Wayne, larger than life all American hero, in a cowboy costume.There's no sense that Wayne was reaching for something special in his portrayal of this whisky-sodden lawman who - against his will - discovers his better nature when a teenage girl (Kim Darby) hires him to track down the man who killed her father.
Perhaps I'm under-estimating Wayne. Perhaps he made it look so effortless because he was the consummate professional, drawing on 40 years of acting experience. I can't claim quite that many years of film study but I think I've seen enough movies to recognise an outstanding performance when it's given, and Wayne doesn't here. I think he got the Oscar for outstanding achievement over four decades of dependable service to Hollywood, encapsulated by TRUE GRIT. His portrayal of dying gunfighter JB Books in his final film 'The Shootist' was far more deserving of an Oscar and he didn't even get nominated.

Singer Campbell just about holds his own against Wayne's formidable competition. He's not a natural actor and I sense his performance as Texas Ranger La Boeuf was the result of a lot of acting lessons. I imagine the prospect of acting opposite Wayne would have been daunting and Campbell acquits himself well in the circumstances.
Kim Darby as young Mattie Ross is a little more difficult to figure out. Her interpretation of the determined and strong-willed teenager who gets the better of Cogburn and La Boeuf is interesting but she's not as convincing in the part as Hailee Steinfeld is in the 2010 remake.
So TRUE GRIT has been knocked from its pedestal, but that's not to say it's a bad film. The story and the performances meld to create two hours of reasonably absorbing entertainment, and watching Wayne play the legend he had become is always enjoyable. Just don't expect too much in the way of excitement.