Red River

In poetry, it's called a "tonal fault." That's when a line, image, word, or idea suddenly violates the feeling or atmosphere the rest of the poem has already established. Usually it happens when a poet makes a sudden shift from being very serious to being very casual or light. What a reader expects from the feel and sound of a poem is thwarted and it leaves him shaking his head, saying "What's that all about?" It throws the reader out of the poem as they say, and it generally looked down upon.

Red River by Howard Hawkes and starring John Wayne is an example of a big-time cinematic tonal fault. As you know, the power went out at my house while I was watching it and so for three or four days, I was suspended, not knowing what was going to happen. When the power cut out, the angry, vindictive, murderous Tom Dunston had just vowed to kill his protege, Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift), for taking over his cattle drive.

Garth and the other cowboys leave Dunston behind with no ammunition or help. They figure it will take him a few days to ride to civilization, load up, get men, and come back for them. The sequence in which Dunston is absent is the most effective of the whole film. Everyone acts as though Dunston was an avenging angel who is about to appear, both guns blazing, at any moment. It's when he's not on screen that Dunston most becomes "larger than life."

Anyway, once the power came back on, I watched the final 35 minutes or so and was wildly disappointed. The ending is stupid and disappointing and suffers from a terrible tonal fault. In the end, Dunston turns (on a dime) from a cold-blooded killer to an "aw-shucks" father-figure. The film, which had been lean and largely devoid of sentimentality, suddenly has a wacky "Well Matt, I reckon you oughta marry that girl." "Well shoot, Tom, I reckon I will" ending.

It has the same effect a tonal fault in a poem had on me - I feel like everything that was good before it is kind of spoiled because it was leading up to something lame.