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"A great one for glory, Custer," he arrives at West Point with plumes and fringes and Errol Flynn's inflated chest and gets promptly pranked, a darkening jollity is the foundation of the historical fantasy. The lowest marks of any cadet since Ulysses S. Grant, still "a singular aggressiveness" carries him to Washington in the heat of the Civil War. "Gettysburg. Where the deuce is Gettysburg?" The hero is a swaggerer who gets the hang of gallantry, a drunkard who smashes up taverns, simply put "a romantic fool," Raoul Walsh wouldn't want him any other way. His better half is the belle (Olivia de Havilland) who bravely munches on onions to be by the galoot's side, loving peace and dreaded inactivity await the retired warrior at their abode. The Indian Wars get him back in the game, a famous image from Stagecoach is recomposed to launch the film's second half (pan left from mounted Sioux in profile to long shot of wagon trail, the back of another brave's head enters the frame.) "Ride, you wolverines!" Out of saloon pianos and into Cavalry pipes, "Garryowen" like Renoir's La Marseillaise, "goes jolly well on a horse." A gold rush fabricated by the profiteering skunk (Arthur Kennedy) squashes the peace treaty, an overhead angle during the showdown with Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn) surveys the prairie vortex of Little Bighorn. Before that, there's Sydney Greenstreet rollicking in his Union uniform, Hattie McDaniel's owl impression, some choice Walter Brennaning from Charley Grapewin: "Move over, you dirty Ethiopian son of a blue-bellied Mohawk!" Above all, there's the farewell between Flynn and de Havilland as a characteristically Walshian infusion of emotion into an action panorama. Penn has the revisionist demolition (Little Big Man) and Milius the unofficial remake (Rough Riders). "To hell... or to glory. It depends on one's point of view." Cinematography by Bert Glennon. With Gene Lockhart, G. P. Huntley Jr., Stanley Ridges, John Litel, Walter Hampden, Regis Toomey, and Minor Watson. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |