Not a good movie but I enjoy it, with its 70s hair, John Wayne beaming at the inadequate supporting cast, Jorge Riviero not up to it, neither Chris Mitchum or Jennifer O'Neill, but Jack Elam fun, and plenty of random helpers eg Shelley Lansing.
But no one has much of a character to play - Victor French (baddy) has a clear goal (money) as does O'Neil (revenge) but everyone else feels sketchy.
Harry Cohn supposedly assigned Charles Vidor to this to torment him - maybe, as Vidor always wanted to leave Columbia, but it was a class "A" Western in colour with two big-ish stars, Glenn Ford and William Holden, and a lot of psychology.
The story is of interest with Ford suffering badly from PTSD post Civil War and getting over keen as a judge, and his fellow officer Holden as a marshall. The film can't quite get its story right - the elements are there (they both love Ellen Drew, there's a solid subplot about mistreatment of veterans) but the action doesn't build. Holden and Ford needed to be in more confict sooner. It doesn't happen to the last bit. And even then the film feels reluctant to have Holden and Ford do a showdown - they keep using third parties.
Quite a big role for Jerome Courland as a southerner. It's a film that tries but pulls its punches. Right wing screenwriter Borden Chase did the story - presumably left wing Ben Maddow wrote the anti miner stuff.
Odd sort of late 60s Western from oldies - Henry Levin, Irving Allen, Jack Palance - with the spaghetti influence, also more violence. Levin shoves in lots of scenes of people blasting guns and horse galloping.
Story - Palance is a Southern raider with sons George Maharis and Vince Edwards, going overboard with the killing and raping so Edwards drops out. Years later Palance and Maharis are still running riot and they cross with Edwards.
This was shot in Spain so there are English actors in it - Sylvia Syms doing a topless swim (she went nude a bit, was she ask or offered) as Edwards' wife.
Edwards seems bored - it's not hard to see why he didn't become a star, at least not based on this. Palance hams it up. Maharis is a blank presence. Neville Brandis is a sympathetic marshall.
Down beat - Syms is killed, Palance and Edwards kill each other, a lot of rape.
Feels kind of... stockly nihilistic. Written by Walter Brough who worked with Levin on The Treasure Seekers.
A film that kind of sank without a trace despite the star power of Oprah, writer Toni Morrison and her book, and director Jonathan Demme. This was in part due to an uninspiring release - I remember seeing this bland poster of Danny Glover and Oprah and the title and thinking "what is that about". I think it needed to lean into its ghost story background more.
It's a decent story though there's a lot of backstory. It's long - three hours long. Very well acted although Thandie Newton stumbles into Simple Jack territory.
It didn't work for me. There were good moments. It felt unfocused. Kept changing protagnists.
A famous they-took-my-film-away-and-butchered-it movie, with Sam Peckinpah bleating loudly about the suits and critics dutifully taking his side. I think there's a lot of great things about this movie but it has an essential flaw. Oddly, fixing that flaw I think would've been easy and saved money but the studio wanted a Roadshow, and Peckinpah prepped for one, then the studio cut budget, and filming went haywire. I get why the studio wanted to cut the budget but if they did they should have junked the Roadshow idea and gotten Peckinpah to properly refigure it. It would've saved money.
The basic idea is very strong - North and South troops team up to chase Apaches into Mexico and clash with the French. There's a knock out cast. You could tell that story with ten people. It's a prison. There only needs to be a few guards.
But there's too many characters. Charlton Heston (very good) leads a a big band and there's all these people whose stories need to be serviced. Richard Harris is the Southern officer, an Irishman (which makes historical sense), James Coburn is a scout, Warren Oates is a Confederate, Brock Peters is a black soldier, Michael Anderson is a bugler seeking revenge against the Apache, Santa Berger is an Austrian doctor's widow, Ben Johnson is a sergeant, there's a sort of peaceful reverend guy RG Armstrong, and there's a Mexican Mario Adorf, Jim Hutton is an officer (I think he's meant to be a scrounger character), there's also some other women, oh and there's Slim Pickens too. And LQ Jones as some Southern soldier who gets these close ups. Like Heston hooks up with Berger, and then has a relationship with another woman. Who cares?
It's impossible to serve all these characters especially when time is devoted to Heston's character having a mid life crsis - which is fine actually. He should be the focal point. And you need Harris' character. Peters' character had great potential and is junked. Oates has a terrific subplot being killed. They should've cut Anderson and Hutton entirely, merged Coburn's characer with Johnson and Adrof... made it about a small bunch. Trim it right down to, let's say, Heston, Harris, Peters, that merged Coburn character and a few others.
There's so much terrific stuff. I loved the novelty of them fighting the French at the end. Harris and Heston duking it out is fun. Heston gives one of his best performances and Harris has flair. The Peckinpah regulars are spot on. Actually all the acting is good and the Mexican locations are splendid as is the photography.
What a missed opportunity.
Excellent history of the US war with the Apaches, which starte relatively late but went on forever. I was familiar with many Westerns based on this - Geronimo, Cochise, Magnas Colorado. I'm surprised no one has really gotten behind the Mickey Free story. The Ameicans don't come out of it that well but the Apaches did make them pay. Depressing, exciting, full of colourful characters A lot of "two people were killed... three surveyors were killed... they killed a family". Maybe these bits could've been dramatised a little more.
Not bad Western from McMurtry - at the end of the Civil War a family head north to Wyoming to find the missing father of the family ("missing" as in he shot through, not he's a mystery). They arrive in time to witness the Fetterman Massacre.
There is easy going prose, bursts of violence, a cameo from Wild Bill Hickcok and a bigger role for Fetterman. Like I said, not bad. Narrated from teen Shay. There's a tough female lead, some cranky old timers.
The journey doesn't start until one-third of the way through. It's not a long book. The book doesn't feel cohesive. One review I read thought the problem was the focus was it was told from a teen's POV and he wasn't across the emotional issues the way that grumpy Uncle Seth would've, or the female lead. Maybe.
McMurtry said Tom Hanks was interested in a film version - I'm not sure a film version would've been that awesome.
McMurttry wrote at the back of his mind throughouy his career was the thought "I could always do a book on Custer there's always a market for it" and here it is. I liked the insights of Custer's marriage and his analysis of the writings of the time, areas of his strength. An enjoyable book, albeit one in a minor key.
I only watched this because Roger Corman was fired as director shortly into filming. I wonder why he wanted to make it - to do a bigger budgeted Western I suppose. It's unremarkable, really - Phil Karlson took over - although it has some good actors. George Hamilton is good as a Confederate officer who leads an escape from a POW camp right at the end of the war and tries to escape with his troops into Mexico. Hamilton is a bit of a fantatic. He's pursued by Glenn Ford, looking constipated as he was want to do. Inger Stevens is a girl of Ford's who is taken by Hamilton, who then rapes her to keep Ford angry at him and his men to keep the war going.
The cast is interesting. People pop up like Timothy Crey, Kenneth Tobey, a young Harrison Ford, Dick Miller, Max Baer, Harry Deean Stanton (billed as "Dean Stanton").
Ford can be good but phones this in. Stevens is competent. Hamilton presses. Nicely shot although the occasional obivous studio-for-location work jars. It's a downer of a movie. Everyone dies so pointlessly.
Apparently Robert Towne worked on the script. And that work impressed Warren Beatty who read the script (he was offered the lead, turned it down)
Much better than Dad Man's Walk because it devotes more time to character as opposed to being a collection of action sequences - though there's still plenty of action, massacres and torture (was McMurtry having a deal downer of a time in the 90s?) It devotes more time to women too - Clara, Maggie, a captured white woman - and the Indians - Buffale Hump is still terrifying but more nuanced and now is up against an even more sadistic Mexican.
McMurtry features a couple of his supermen in this - the mighty Mexican warrior who loves torture, plus Inez Scull, the tough, academically brilliant adventurer.
Part three, after the rescue of Scull, is very much like Lonesome Dove, more elegaic, less hard core violent.
Walker is a fascinating character. One of those Americans who went out and tried to set up their own empire. It was a big thing in the nineteenth century. This is a very thorough look at his career - childhood, being a writer in San Francisco, attempt to set up a Republic in Sonora, then in Nicaragua, then Honduras. John Milius would've been the perfect person to write a film about him - at least in the 70s before Milius started treating himself too seriously.
A dream team in a way - Moss Hart wrote the script, based on a best selling novel, with CinemaScope, Richard Burton fresh off The Robe playing a great actor, Maggie McNamara coming off Three Coins in the Fountain and The Moon is Blue, Philip Dunne as producer and director (well, it was his first film as a director but he was associated with "A" product as a producer and writer).
There's great material here - Edwin Booth had a controlling brother, a wife who died, a brother who shot Lincoln. But the material is treated like a musical biopic with renditions of Shakespeare instead of musical numbers. It's interesting to see Burton recite the verse but that's what he does - recite rather than act. McNamara isn't much as the wife. Derek livens up every scene he's in but it's the part more than the actor - still Derek doesn't disgrace himself. Really the film should've just been about the brothers.
Bright version of the oft film tale. Benefits from strong production values and cast. Soraise Ronan is ideal as Jo, though the show is stolen by Florence Pugh as Amy, an under-rated role. Emma Watson is fine as Meg, though Meg is a terrible part (she's pretty and gets married). An Aussie played Beth. There's Laura Dern, Saul Goodman and Meryl Streep, and two floppy black haired guys who look like Noah Baumbach.
I think most Flashman fans, hearing Flashman was on his way back to America, were excited - would this be his Civil War tale so often alluded to, where he changed sides, worked for Lincoln, helped resolve the war... or his experiences with Wild Bill Hickock... but no, this one is an account of a small scale incident, though an admittedly interesting one: John Brown's Raid. Brown is a fascinating story (and character) but not really big enough for a whole Flashman - or at least so says I, used to Flashman adventures that entailed wars and massive campaigns. Also this book has far too much of Flashman's attitude on race and too much time spent on the black agent,Joe. It just goes on and on.
I mean it's not badly written, the observations are lively and the action (when it comes) is fine. But there's too little of it. Not enough twists, spectacle, cleverness. Some of it felt lazy like Flashman sneaking off during the Brown siege and rooting this black woman then coming back. The story is bodgy. The weakest Flashman to date, even more so than Flashman and the Dragon. Ok, Fraser didn't want to do Civil War but if only he'd done one on the Mexican American War, Khartoum, Zulu War...
A flawed film. A bigger hit in its day than is remembered but it cost so much it lost money. It didn't have to cost a lot - it all could've been shot on the backlot (there was location filming in the US but the scenery isn't exploited). It didn't have to be as poor as it is.
Some good things. Gorgeous photography. Strong cast. And a decent story.
The story is actually simple - Montgomery Clift is an idealistic Northern teacher who falls in love with a Southern girl who goes mad during the Civil War. That's solid. You've got love, insanity, a war.
But the film stuffs it. It's got too much bloat - the version I saw ran at 2 hours 40 minutes and there's a three hour one. The story could've been dealt with in 90 minutes. It actually didn't need battle spectacle sequences. Clift ducks out from his war service to find Taylor and finds his son - that's all cheap.
Too many scenes are talked about rather than dramatised - all the exciting stuff about Taylor's father's relationship with the slave and dying in a fire. (This film might've been better if it had been from Taylor's point of view.)
Clift's character is vague and passive. He gets trapped into marriage by Taylor who fakes a pregnancy. Why doesn't he just love her? Want her? Dump Eva Marie Saint for her? Clift and Taylor's relationship have none of the passion that they showed in A Place in the Sun. Maybe it was Clift's accident. Maybe the actors weren't into it. Maybe it was the director. (It's not very well directed - Edward D lost something when he got out of B pictures.)
Clift's performance is... fine. Not bad. Not great. The accident is distracting - some scenes he seems truthful, others bashed up and tormented. His character doesn't have a drive. He just sort of drifts along. What's his passion? Teaching? Taylor? He doesn't seem to be in to anything. Clift in A Place in the Sun was into Taylor - why didn't they just make it that? A grand passion?
Taylor is beautiful and has her moments but for me she struggled with her voice and the accent and the role. She could deliver the goods but she needed more help.
Rod Taylor's opportunistic townsfriend of Clift has his moments. Nigel Patrick has a flashy character, the sleazy articulate "professor" but Patrick isn't that great. Lee Marvin shines as Clift's friend. He has easily the best scene - defending Clift and Clift's son who are escaping, being taunted by a Confederate soldier who calls out in the dark. I wonder if this came from the novel (which I haven't read) or screenwriter Millard Kaufman, a former marine.
Eva Marie Saint has a terrible role - she just sits and stares at Clift. Compare it to say Melanie/Olivia de Havilland in Gone with the Wind - she did stuff, had a baby, stuck up for Scarlett. Saint here just hangs around; I guess she scolds Clift towards the end for not wanting to run for office.
The film's also racist. Clift's an abolitionist and Taylor is terrified of being black but there's hardly any black people in it. A few hang around. Only one gets some dialogue.
Simply not very good. A good movie inside, trying to get out.
Gripping account of the debates between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, heavily quoting from the actual speeches. Powerful stuff. Doesn't shy away from Lincoln's derogatory comments about black people. Uncomfortable to listen to at times - so many of the attitudes still remain. But they knew how to talk.
