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A Civil War movie combines with a cattle drive one
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This double-billing William Holden/Richard Widmark Civil War Western was directed by Edward Dmytryk. Ukrainian/Canadian/Californian Dmytryk was a mathematics wizard who dropped out to make movies and by the 1940s was considered one of Hollywood’s rising stars but he suffered terribly from the HUAC persecution. As far as Westerns are concerned, he only did five (three of them with Widmark) but they are all quite interesting and a bit ‘different’.
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After the 1930s The Hawk, he directed Fox’s big-budget blockbuster Broken Lance with Spencer Tracy in 1954, then made one of Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn’s best Westerns, Warlock in ’59. After Alvarez Kelly came the British Western Shalako, an unadmired yet I think rather good oater with Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot.
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Alvarez Kelly (Holden) is a Mexican national who is neutral in the Civil War and his only loyalties appear to be “money, whiskey and women”. Holden was making rather a specialty of cynical, hard-bitten types and this role suited him perfectly. “I don’t care who wins,” he says of the Civil War. He drives cattle to the Union Army, bought at $2 a head and sold at $20.
But while Kelly and the Union major are dining at the mansion of a Southern belle (Victoria Shaw, very like Constance Towers in The Horse Soldiers), the herd is hi-jacked by Reb Colonel Rossiter – Widmark, this time with an eyepatch and a slightly dodgy Southern accent (he was Minnesota born and Illinois raised so not terribly Dixie). Now Kelly is obliged (Rossiter shoots a finger off and says he will shoot another each day till Kelly agrees; that‘s obliged) to drive the cattle to Richmond.
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There is a complicated plot involving Widmark’s Southern woman (she rules out the definition of Southern belle) played by Janice Rule, and Kelly helping her to run the blockade and get out, out of compassion for her but mainly to get his own back on Widmark for the finger.
The writing isn’t that good. Once, Holden, who was hung-over and whose horse was playing up, became angry and tried shoving the script up the horse’s rear end, shouting, “That’s where it belongs!” But there’s a lot of action as a Civil War movie combines with a cattle drive one.
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Like The Horse Soldiers, the story was loosely based on a true action, this time the so-called “Beefsteak Raid” of September 14-16, 1864.
The two lead performances are good, especially Holden. Widmark’s OK though he’s supposed to be battle weary and it comes across as sour and even bored. For the rest, I didn’t know most of the actors, although Harry Carey Jr has a small part, luckily. The Union major is Patrick O’Neal, whom I only remember from King Rat. Don ‘Red’ Barry is a lieutenant.
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There’s nice widescreen photography of the Louisiana locations by Joe MacDonald. The music (Johnny Green) is OK. The whole movie is quite large-scale.
But it’s a second-rank piece really, an example of the 60s Western not really knowing where to go. It’s not a (Widmark’s) patch on Broken Lance or Warlock, and from Holden’s point of view it was one of his lesser Westerns. Still he was very good in it (he always was) and it does carry you along quite well.
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5 Responses
I just watched this movie and was happily surprised. The 1st half is really dragging, static with a lot of dialogues and as you say the plot is pretty complicated. But when the (2nd) cattle drive starts mostly in the woods of Louisiana (for Virginia), the action is really entertaining and the chemistry between cynical Holden and grumpy Widmark (not far from his Bowie role) works well. Actor’s Studio O’Neal (so good in John Huston cold war Kremlin Letter and a couple id Sydney Pollack films) has some good moments but he is too caricatural in my opinion. It should have been much better, lacking personnality, considering the probably important budget and the means used, the director and actors backgrounds.
I recommend reading about the real Great Beefsteak raid conducted by Wade Hampton during the Petersburg Campaign. It is truly a bizzare episode in that most incredible of wars. I agree with your opinion on the flawed but still interesting film.
Civil War cavalry raids have a prominent place in the postbellum southern Lost Cause mythology and in northern memory as romantic heroes. As Jeff says, John Ford’s Horse Soldiers based upon the Grierson raid is an other good example. More generally speaking, raids and raiders or commandos have always been a classic movie plot. A small group with a mission behind the enemy lines in hostile country makes a good base for a film and especially any western beyond the Civil War itself.
But of course the Civil War is full of such moments with the likes of J.E.B. Stuart (Chickahominy and Chambersburg), Turner Ashby, George Stoneman, Custer and his Wolverines Nathan Forrest and on the western front the Jayhawkers, Quantrill etc.
Fox’s THE RAID (1954) is another example, about the 1864 raid on St Albans, Vermont.
Those are all excellent examples. Another would be Stoneman’s in 1865 that The Band even mentions in ‘The Night they drove old Dixie down’.