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"A long way from Gettysburg" for the Civil War, and one century later there's Vietnam. Red River for the journal structure, the perspective is that of the young bugler who takes in the great divide and gets his shot. Major Dundee, too stubborn for a Union jailer and the wrong temperament for a Juarista liberator, a distinctive Charlton Heston strain of clumsiness within heroism (cf. Ray's 55 Days at Peking). His "fanciful" opposite number is the Irish expat in Confederate cap and chains (Richard Harris), who cultivates his own mix of gallantry and vengeance. Renegades, prisoners, former slaves and horse thieves crossing the Rio Grande after the slash-and-burn Apache chieftain (Michael Pate), just the regiment for a discordant nation and a would-be crusader. "You are either a $70, red-wool, pure-quill military genius, or the biggest damn fool in Northern Mexico." Arguably Sam Peckinpah's most direct dialogue with Ford's cinema—Mario Adorf's surprising resemblance to Pedro Armendáriz points up the relation to Fort Apache, though the view of disharmony is closer to Two Rode Together. Out of the gate with clashing anthems ("Dixieland" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" vie for the lead, "My Darling Clementine" brings up the rear), a gallery of telling sketches: James Coburn's one-armed scout, R.G. Armstrong's two-fisted preacher, Warren Oates' deserting peckerwood, Jim Hutton's blue-belly egghead. Segregation tensions and tenuous alliances, Napoleon's thunderbolts and Khayyam's bowl of night, blood in the river for Christmas Eve, 1864. Down and out in Durango, where the Viennese widow (Senta Berger) recognizes the imperialist's malady: "The war won't last forever." "It will for you, Major." A fascinatingly broken national epic, martinet and suicidal-romantic antagonists like yoked halves of an auteur warming up for The Wild Bunch. With Brock Peters, Ben Johnson, L.Q. Jones, Michael Anderson Jr., Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, Karl Swenson, and John Davis Chandler.
--- Fernando F. Croce |