This 2K restoration is kinda odd? I mean, it’s very dark. Very contrastey.
Oh, so this movie is gonna focus on the soldiers, I guess?
I think I bought this because it was on the Hazel Flagg list, but the account is gone, so I’m not sure any more…
Well, this isn’t what I thought it was gonna be at all!
This is fun! But I guess it’s a kind of early deconstruction of these kinds of movies? It’s sort of poking fun at the pompous set-up these films usually had?
It does feel like… Not that Ford’s sympathies are on the slave-owners’ side, but he portrays them like noble savages, while the army of the United States (represented by John Wayne) is an industrial force that just steamrolls over these yokels.
It adds humour, but it’s also a bit skeezy.
I think this is the United States army committing war crimes by destroying civil infrastructure? (Making the rails all bendy.)
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Never knew Ford was such a commie pinko!
He’s like Hegseth! I didn’t know that this was so current!
The film opened at number one in the United States but was ultimately a commercial failure, due largely to Wayne’s and Holden’s high salaries and the complex participation of multiple production companies. The response of audiences and critics was “lackluster”
Oh no! Well, that’s actually shocking — some yokels randomly just up and shot Lukey!
(The opposing force.)
Lukey’s dialog was originally written in “Negro” dialect that Althea Gibson, the former Wimbledon and U.S. National tennis champion who was cast in the role, found offensive. She informed Ford that she would not deliver her lines as written. Though Ford was notorious for his intolerance of actors’ demands, he agreed to modify the script.
It’s an odd movie for sure. It’s obvious that Ford’s main point here is to deflate the myths surrounding the American civil war, and poke some fun at some war film conventions. But you end up with a movie that’s hard to love — things are tongue in cheek, but not actually all that funny?
And the ending is just weird, but there’s a reason for that:
During filming of the climactic battle scene, veteran stuntman Fred Kennedy suffered a broken neck while performing a horse fall and died. “Ford was completely devastated,” wrote biographer Joseph Malham. “[He] felt a deep responsibility for the lives of the men who served under him.” The film was scripted to end with the triumphant arrival of Marlowe’s forces in Baton Rouge, but Ford “simply lost interest” after Kennedy’s death. He ended the film with Marlowe’s farewell to Hannah Hunter before crossing and blowing up the bridge.
Okidoke.
But I quite liked the movie — it’s entertaining. It’s interesting. It’s well shot.
The Horse Soldiers. John Ford. 1959. ⚃
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