SCREENING: Donovan’s Reef.

Location

Quick note to let you all know that Donovan’s Reef is playing at 2:30pm today at the Anthology Film Archives. Donovan’s Reef was directed by the great John Ford, co-written by frequent Ford collaborator Frank S. Nugent (The Searchers.) It stars John Wayne as Donovan and Lee Marvin as Gilhooley, his old army buddy.

Donovan has settled in the Polynesian Islands where he runs a bar (see title), but he and Gilhooley have an annual fist-fight tradition going back twenty years. Plenty else happens in the movie, some of which concerned with issues of love and marriage and race and friendship, but the primary appeal of this movie is to see John Wayne and Lee Marvin beating the crap out of each other throughout the running time.

You can say what you want about Wayne (I have my opinions but they belong in a longer piece) On the other hand, I won’t hear a single bad word about Lee Marvin, who is probably my favorite movie star of all time. He’s great. There’s never been anyone remotely like him in the history of movie stars. His entrance into this movie alone is amazing – dude jumps off a ship and swims to the island he’s been trying to get to, emerges from the ocean and goes looking for Wayne.

Some of the best bar fights of all time happen in this movie. A small man gets thrown, literally. You combine that with the Hawaii locations and the way that William Clothier’s photography captures them in that warm, friendly old-Hollywood Technicolor way, and you really have something special. It’s no great classic, but it’s a solid and sturdy old-school entertainment that thrills and relaxes. Donovan’s Reef is a movie that just feels comfortable to me – it’s a cold tropical drink at the end of a long and busy day at the beach.

Please enjoy the opening credits and see if that puts you in a mind to go see this sweet little piece of old-Hollywood red velvet cake: