The Sam Peckinpah Centenary 3 – Major Dundee

“We left a lot at the bottom of the river”

Although the logistics of its US release were a mess, Ride the High Country was such a good movie that Sam Peckinpah’s name attracted a bit of buzz in the Hollywood community, leading to him being offered his first big budget picture. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the production process for the feature, Major Dundee, proved disastrous on multiple levels for almost everyone concerned. The studio behaved badly, sabotaging Sam – not for the last time in his career. Sam behaved badly, and tactlessly, sabotaging himself – also not for the last time. Everyone duly fell out – not for the last time. And the film got edited without the director’s involvement and released in a form he hated – this too, not for the last time. The result is probably the most divisive of Peckinpah’s films among his own fans.

Vigorous disagreements about its merits pop up among the replies to Jeff Arnold’s West posts, attesting to the wide range of opinions. No one thinks the film is perfect; for some, the chaos of the production inflicted too much damage for the result to be other than a frustrating watch, while others find themselves deeply drawn to its qualities almost in spite of itself, even perhaps all the more intrigued by its fractured character.

There are multiple accounts documenting the turmoil of the production, including various Peckinpah blogs and books and Charlton Heston’s fascinating diaries, published as The Actor’s Life. The below draws mainly on the several long pieces on the film written by Glenn Erickson of DVD Talk / CineSavant. If you’re not familiar with Glenn, please check into his work as he’s one of the web’s best reviewers of DVD and Blu-ray releases of classic movies. He also confesses that Dundee is a favourite film while being clear-eyed about its faults and the reasons for them. This post, one of Erickson’s several mini-essays on Major Dundee, handily includes a link to his earlier ones. All benefit from his having studied Dundee scripts and production records, and from his own experiences as a film editor.

So what happened? In brief… producer Jerry Bresler was in possession of a treatment which he shared with Charlton Heston. He also showed him Ride the High Country. Impressed, Heston committed, and Bresler hired Peckinpah, who saw great creative potential in the story and began pre-production including Mexican location-scouting. The project grew protracted due to various toings-and-froings with the script, with Peckinpah heavily involved in rewriting, but couldn’t get delayed indefinitely as Heston had another epic upcoming, so the film would eventually have to go into production in time to free him for that commitment.

Two snags. The first, and the one which Heston and Erickson believe to be the root of the film’s problems, was the script. It wasn’t satisfactorily finished by the time shooting started. Second, a last-minute curveball from Columbia reduced the budget and schedule, ordering the director to scale Major Dundee back from the intended roadshow epic to a standard-issue feature film. And the studio’s edict arrived with a few days’ notice so the cuts would have to be done on the fly.

Then Sam, down in Mexico with cast and crew, started filming the full-scale epic anyway: headstrong, not to say arrogant, behaviour given his experience to date was on TV and small low-budget pictures. Soon enough, of course, the studio cottoned on to how long things were taking and how much they were costing. Nor were they liking all they saw of Peckinpah’s rushes. On top of that, they were also hearing reports of Sam’s drinking on the job and erratic behaviour towards crew members. Heston wasn’t wholly impressed by such things either – his and the director’s confrontations reputedly coming close to physical a couple of times – and matters weren’t helped by the testy relationship between him and co-star Richard Harris, another hard drinker, nor the generally difficult physical conditions of the shoot for all concerned. The bosses began to intervene, requiring various cutbacks in the shooting and considering the replacement of the director. To his immense credit, and despite his own issues with Sam, Heston saved him by returning his salary to Columbia!

Producer Bresler on set with Richard Harris

This difficult, compromised, and chaotic shoot was now followed by… a difficult, compromised and chaotic edit. Peckinpah apparently assembled an insanely long rough cut which he then cut down to a ‘mere’ 156 minutes. Around this point, he and Bresler, already far from best buddies, irretrievably fell out, Bresler behaving in an autocratic and philistine fashion and Peckinpah behaving in an impetuous, quarrelsome one. Bresler edited Peckinpah out of the editing process: to Sam’s fury, and this time without any side-doors into influencing the final cut, as he’d had with Ride with the High Country. The producer ruthlessly chopped Major Dundee to 136 minutes, and it was apparently released that way in some non-Anglophone territories, then it went to 123 minutes, which is how it was released in the US, UK and elsewhere, to a less than triumphant box office and critical reaction.

Erickson argues that Peckinpah’s pronounced lack of diplomacy skills sealed his own fate, while Bresler took a particularly sloppy approach to editing, neither respecting Peckinpah’s epic vision for the film (and trying to rescue what he could) nor having the guts or skill to manage a clinically professional studio hack-job. Instead of compiling the rushes into the concise and coherent 90+ minutes that Columbia wanted, Bresler kept making willy-nilly cuts to Peckinpah’s rough cut, while adding bits of voiceover, music, dubbing, or re-cutting to paper over continuity cracks. The result was neither flesh nor fowl, a film with pacing problems and confusing plot points that one JAW reader, J S Bryan, recently described as ‘underbaked and somehow overblown at the same time’, studded with fascinating ideas and brilliant sequences but dragged down by others that are… not very good.

Also the original score, written by Daniele Amfitheatrof, is a curate’s egg – and Sam Peckinpah and Mitch Miller’s Singalong Gang are definitely odd bedfellows. How Sam must have winced on hearing that theme song!

A French EP of the Major Dundee March

Was lyricist Ned Washington not required to watch the movie or read a synopsis of it? The song’s boisterous cheeriness is completely at odds with the movie’s sombre, complex plot, characters, and themes.

Heston’s Dundee is an obsessive and frustrated Union cavalry officer, consigned to running a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Confederates, who seizes the opportunity of a death-or-glory mission after a nearby ranch and cavalry column have been destroyed, and children abducted, by an Apache band. Under his command are a handful of his juniors, some of the prisoners, including their own chief officer, Captain Tyreen, played by Harris, and a ragtag of ‘thieves, renegades and deserters’. The premise allows for lots of provocative psychological, historical, and political themes to get explored: maybe too many. As well as our customary Jeff, RR, and Bud takes, we’ve added below a digest of Erickson’s sum-ups of the movie which capture well its contradictory character.

Among his other services, Erickson created this incredibly useful reference page

Major Dundee Explained

that clearly highlights the differences between versions. The script included the initial Apache raid as a lengthy opening section; contrary to some accounts, Erickson believes this was filmed, at least in part, but then compressed into just a few seconds of coverage crammed into the ‘burning pages’ pre-credits sequence concocted by Bresler in the cutting room.

Two versions are left: Bresler’s first 136 minute pre-release cut and Columbia’s 123-minute theatrical release. A director’s cut does not currently exist and cobbling one together is probably impossible, as Peckinpah’s own edits were themselves only rough assemblies. In all likelihood, these no longer exist nor do most of the missing rushes that account for the differences between his and shorter versions. In 2005, the longer pre-release version was released in a restored form, with the original score replaced by a new one, by Christopher Caliendo. Mitch and the gang were removed. Various DVD and Blu-ray releases exist, including some that allow you to view the longer version with a choice between the two musical accompaniments as well as the shorter version with the original score only.

Jeff’s Take:

In the uncut version the film tends to be slow and is very long… Peckinpah was certainly one of the genre’s greatest creators but Major Dundee was far from being his finest work.

I don’t think (though I know many would disagree) that Harris was ever any good in Westerns… [Heston] comes over as bitter and sour [but] the support acting is outstandingly good… James Coburn… as the grizzled one-armed scout… was the best actor on the set.

But all in all it’s a good film and a must-see… Myself, however, I don’t think it’s a great work of art cut to ribbons.

Glenn Erickson’s Take:

…an unfinished, killed-in-the-womb masterpiece with a marvellous script of great potential…a partially tuned assembly of the movie with about a half-hour to forty minutes’ worth of material missing… like a fantastic Rodin sculpture that was self-sabotaged and then vandalized from without. All the pieces are there to see what was intended… but intentions don’t make great movies or win awards. Many scenes in Dundee are brilliant. Just as many are wholly inadequate… Never was such an expensive film finished for the theaters in such a sloppy manner — and left as an edit-it-yourself challenge for creative condensation.

Bud’s Take:

Films impacted by studio ‘interference’ practically form a sub-genre themselves, inspiring considerable discussion and speculation, both informed and otherwise. Well-known directors such as Orson Welles (The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil), Preston Sturges (The Great Moment), and Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time In America) all felt the heavy hand of studio moguls. As did Sam Peckinpah, and on multiple occasions. He was, however, able to assemble a director’s cut for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; as noted above, no such cut exists for Major Dundee, which is part of its fascination.

Charlton Heston’s work typically holds little interest to me. To be clear, without the enthusiasm of trail partner RR and the additional impetus of this Peckinpah series, I probably do not see, or delay seeing, Major Dundee. And I would be the poorer for missing it, as this film rewards patience and repeated viewing.

I have only watched the 2005 restoration of the pre-release version. (The picture as originally released was part of a limited edition that is now only available on the secondary market at considerable cost.) I did, however, screen the restoration first with the 2005 score (good enough but forgettable) and then the original (RR’s take covers its strengths and foibles). In spite of its considerable faults, I do prefer the original score.

Stock Company: Armstrong and Taylor

Peckinpah’s ‘stock company’ started rolling with this film. RG Armstrong returns from Ride the High Country, again quoting Scripture but with less of a creepy undercurrent; so do three of the four Hammond brothers. LQ Jones has little to do, but John Davis Chandler is just as vile as a racist as he was as a would-be rapist. Warren Oates, however, takes the ex-Hammond acting honors as a possible/probable deserter, pleading for his life while caught in the power struggle between Dundee and Tyreen (although referring to Oates, then in his mid-30s, as ‘boy’ was puzzling). In addition, the stock company brought in new members, as the incomparable Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, and Dub Taylor, a B-Western stalwart starting in 1939, all make their first appearances in the Peckinpah oeuvre.

Among the film’s many might-have-beens is work by Jody McCrea, who was trying to slip through the sandbars of his beach party prison. McCrea was supposed to play the oft-mentioned Lt. Brannin for the film’s opening sequence. Alas for Joel McCrea’s eldest, his scene was either not filmed or cut from the film. I am not certain if the opening’s dangling trooper is or is not McCrea; the sources I’ve consulted are silent on the topic.

Cavalier

Unlike Jeff, I enjoyed the performance of Richard Harris. I find a note of sadness to the Cavalier (in the English Civil War sense) character of Tyreen. Although, to this viewer, the make-up around his eyes was – initially – a slight distraction.

While Jim Hutton shouts most of his lines for the film’s first 20 or so minutes, his gangly presence and the visibly increasing confidence of his character provides a refreshing contrast to the two leads.

In spite of my afore-mentioned apathy to Heston, I was and am enthralled by the character of Amos Dundee and Heston’s portrayal of him: all beetling brow and jutting jaw, his cigar pointing like a weapon from between his clenched teeth, bringing swagger and bluster while making a series of poor decisions.

Heston taking the measure of Hutton

As for the film itself, I have no startling insights. Like many, I find the first act to be strong and purposeful; as the title character flounders, however, so does the picture. The finale, while stirring, loses the threads of story arcs from earlier in the movie. The thieves and renegades, as well as the soldiers led by a marvelous Brock Peters, are somehow lost in the denouement of the US-Apache, US-French, and Tyreen-Dundee hostilities.

Still, Major Dundee is a journey film, and the two protagonists complete their journey.

RR’s Take:

It’s hard for me to write about Major Dundee because I have so much to say I don’t know where to start. It’s possible that, between its two available versions, I’ve watched this movie more times than any other film, period. So I must like it a lot – and I do. But not because I think it’s excellent; on the contrary it’s desperately flawed. What keeps drawing me back? It’s the fact that there’s so, so many fascinating things going on in it. That they don’t all cohere into a perfect movie just makes it all the more engrossing. My impression is that nobody involved in any stage of the production of Major Dundee, including the director, knew entirely what they were doing but what each thought they were doing was something different than what each of the others did.

Those eyes!

Among other things, this is a bracing retake on (not of course a remake of) John Ford’s Fort Apache, with there being more than a few similarities between Henry Fonda’s Thursday and Heston’s Dundee. But, more than that, it’s a portrait of a self-conflicted America symbolised by the film’s band of military misfits. The film even touches on the racial dynamics of the Civil War, a fairly new thing in Westerns, which had tended to a sanitised view of the South’s cause. At times the unit headed by Dundee comes together, especially when facing an external threat, at other times it turns in on itself and falls apart, just like the film itself frequently falls apart. Finally, the unit unites for the final battles, but its victories come at a cost…

At the heart of it all is the fascinating character of Major Dundee himself, and Charlton Heston’s fascinating portrayal of him. I agree with a critic I read long ago (I forget who it was) who said that the character is too complex for Heston to be capable of playing. That’s true and it’s interesting to watch! I like Heston as an actor much more than Jeff did but his style is statuesque. Here – contrasted with the romantic Tyreen character played by Harris  –  he’s a statue that’s crumbling inside. Like the film itself is! For example, the DP Sam Leavitt is no Lucien Ballard, and the look of the film, like everything else about it, jumps from greatness (some superb wide shots, and some terrific background sky, of varying shades of blue) to TV-style ‘coverage’ and some sheer shabbiness (the day-for-night scenes are particularly ropey).

So from Dundee’s most authoritative martinet moments – shades of Colonel Thursday – to his dark night of the soul, as he falls into drunken self-pity and whoring, Heston/Dundee is a bit like the film: a ruined cathedral that it’s always interesting and moving to revisit. (The more you watch the film, the more you realise that Dundee is in fact, a grade-A jerk: self-serving, vainglorious, opportunistic, prejudiced, and hypocritical – and frequently incompetent, especially when contrasted with Tyreen, a far abler soldier and leader.)

What else? Unlike Jeff, I think Harris is just right for this role. James Coburn is superb, so is RG Armstrong and numerous other actors. And it’s a sign of a movie you’ve watched many times that as you start yet another viewing, you’re already looking forward to later favourite moments: mine include the unit riding out from Fort Benlin, to clashing songs sung by its different sections; Dundee’s farewell to love-interest Senta Berger, in front of a ruined desert arch – it looks almost like a Dali landscape; moments of warm humour between Brock Peters’ Aesop and other characters; and some great lines: “The Major ain’t no lawyer” and “’The war won’t last forever’, ‘It will for you, Major’”.

A word on the film’s two available versions. I have both these on the superb Arrow Blu-ray release but ridiculously I only recently realised that the Set-Up function allows one to shift between both the original and the 2005 scores on the ‘extended’ version. On the whole, I definitely go for the original. The score added by the modern restorationists is a fine piece of music in its own right but completely anachronistic for a 1960s movie, and therefore a mistake. As to the original score itself, I find that parts of it are really good but other parts pretty bad (the ‘lovey dovey’ music used in romantic sequences between Heston and Berger is almost self-parody), and overall is used too repetitively and without real feeling for what’s happening in the scenes. So in my head the best version would be with the original score applied to the longer version, but with more of the restraint of the new one. As for the notorious theme tune (“Fall in / Behind the Major”), it’s super-corny but gosh is it infectious! I can’t stop myself from humming it right now as I write…

And last but not least… there’s that weird electronic tinkling sound that plays every time the Apache and their leader Sierra Charriba are mentioned. It’s bonkers! But that’s fine because the film itself is kind of bonkers. Major Dundee will always be one of my favourites despite – no, partly because – of its very severe faults.