I know it's more convenient for the
film-makers, but for a gun nut-it's wrong.
The year is about 1865- just after the Civil War.
Any American gun owner knows that pistols were "Cap and Ball" muzzleloaders at that time-the Colt Frontier models used by Cherry and Matt et al, were not invented until 1872. This is the second time that John Wayne used a gun that had not yet been invented- See "The Searchers" (1868)-
There, -I feel better now!
Quite right, Mr or Ms 14166637. A similar anachronism occurs in the TV series Rawhide. Clint, Eric Fleming and everyone else invariably use the Colt Peacemaker, first sold in 1873, though the series is set on the Chisholm Trail during the 1860s. In The Searchers Wayne and co use 1873 Winchesters and Peacemakers in the immediate post-civil war period. Tommy Lee Jones, who's lived in Texas most of his life, said the costumes are wrong as well.
shareSo?
shareWait a minute - the start of the film is about 1865, when they see the wagon train burn, and pick up the tall kid with the cow. Then, we snap forward fourteen years to when the kid has grown into Monty Clift, and the guns are now correct for the time, or at least closer. Forgivable, I think.
.
.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.
Incorrect AWaite4,
The opening scene is set in the early 1850's- when Matt returns from the War (played by Montgomery Clift) THEN it's about 1865. The firearms are definitely incorrect for the time period portrayed. Not that I care- it's still a good film, and this one flaw was common to almost all Western films of the era.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living!!!"
Augustus McCrae
The Abilene Trail was getting started in 1867-1868.
shareQuite right, Wakanohona. The town was founded in 1857, and took off like a rocket when Joseph G. McCoy promoted it as a shipping point for cattle. By 1867 several herds of Texas longhorns had arrived, and word was spreading among the Texas ranchers of a new railhead town with the largest stockyards west of Kansas City, MO, and far enough west to avoid the quarantine on the Texas steers (carriers of the so-called "Texas Fever").
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living!!!"
Augustus McCrae
I'm a gun nut, too, but this is an issue no one cares about. To most people one single action revolver looks like another. They didn't have all the economical reproductons available in 1946 when RR was filmed. Besides which cap and ball revolvers are dangerous to handle and fire because of chain fire and flying pieces of ruptured caps.
To be picky, it is incorrect to refer to cap and ball revolvers as "muzzleloaders". The charge is loaded into the front of the cylinder, which is the breech, not the muzzle. No one would refer to the Hall rifle or any other split or seperate chamber rifle as a muzzleloader just because the charge is inserted into the front of the chamber. Cap and ball revolers are the same principle. They are breechloaders by definition.
Most of the recently made westerns use more historically correct firearms, but they all stink, and Red River is the greatest western ever made.
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45