The theme of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing is rape. Catherine (Sarah Miles) is running away from Willard Crocker (George Hamilton), her husband. She stumbles into a train robbery and is taken hostage by the bandits. One of the bandits, Billy (Bo Hopkins), tries to rape her first. Then Dawes (Jack Warden) wants in on it. Jay (Burt Reynolds) stops them. Then some Native Americans come along and try to rape her. This may well be the last Western ever made in which Native Americans try to rape a white woman (the last movie in which Native Americans actually succeeded in raping a white woman was Ulzana’s Raid (1972). Most of the Native Americans in this movie are good, however, as are pretty much most of the Native Americans portrayed in movies afterwards, so this movie is transitional.

Anyway, Dawes finally gets his chance, and he succeeds in raping Catherine. Jay comes along and has a brutal fight with Dawes and finally kills him. Then we find out that Jay killed his wife, a Native American squaw, Cat Dancing, because a man had raped her.  Of course he killed the man who raped her first, but then he decided his wife needed killing too because she was defiled. Fortunately, he seems to have learned his lesson, because he does not kill Catherine. Now, you might think that having married one man who mistreated her, Catherine would be a little reticent about marrying a man that killed his wife for being raped, but that does not seem to bother her, however, because she and Jay end up living happily ever after.

The Left Handed Gun is an uneven movie. It begins with Paul Newman playing Billy the Kid as a borderline simpleton who somehow acquires a normal intelligence by the end of the movie. The first half of the movie is manic, with Billy and his two sidekicks talking loud, acting silly, and laughing at things that are not funny, probably because they are drunk, but ends as some kind of overwrought, psychological melodrama. I think it’s called Method Acting.

This movie would have us believe that we are seeing a demythologized version of this character from the Old West, but it depicts all his killings as being justified, and when he is shot by Pat Garrett (John Dehner), he has no gun in his holster, so he really is not beaten to the draw, all in keeping with the traditional mythology.

I have an idea. Why not make a movie in which Billy the Kid is an evil scumbag, played by an actor as dorky-looking as the real William Bonney? That would be some serious demythologizing.

Throughout American history, there has been prejudice of various sorts, which has been reflected in the movies.  In an effort to make amends for discrimination against one group, however, a movie may end up being oblivious to the prejudice it shows toward another.

In particular, in a movie in which a black man is put on trial for raping a white woman, he always turns out to be innocent at the expense of the woman.  Given all the black men that have been lynched in America for supposedly raping white women, perhaps these movies were thought necessary as a way of condemning this practice.

On the other hand, we have recently been made aware of just how much prejudice there is against women who have been raped, making it difficult for them to get justice. Our belated enlightenment on this issue makes us reevaluate the movies in which white women were to blame in some way whenever black men ended up being tried for raping them.

There are basically three ways in which women are to blame in these movies:  the woman lied; the woman imagined it; the woman was provocative.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) is the most well-known movie in which a white woman lies about being raped by a black man.  Another is Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys (1976).  In this movie, two white women lie about being raped by nine black boys. Now, it might be pointed out that since the movie was based on a true story, we can hardly criticize those who made this movie for making the women to blame for the false accusation.  On the other hand, had the two white women been telling the truth, and were indeed raped by nine black boys, we would never have seen a movie about that story because it would never have been made.  This true story was selected as the basis for a movie precisely because the white women could be blamed for the black boys being tried for rape.

In A Passage to India (1984), it is not an African American who is accused of raping a white woman. But the man is a native of India and has dark skin.  Moreover, the movie takes place when India is still a colony of Great Britain, and the British are prejudiced against the natives.  So, it’s close enough.  In this movie, the woman becomes hysterical, owing to repressed sexual urges on her part, and imagines that she was raped so vividly that she believes it actually happened.

Sergeant Rutledge (1960) falls into the third category, in which, unlike in the first two categories, where no rape actually occurs, in this movie, a woman really is raped. Because she is also murdered, she is not the one that accuses a black man. Nevertheless, she is still at fault for being raped because she was asking for it.

The movie is set in Arizona in 1881.  Much of the story is told by witnesses testifying during a court martial. One of those witnesses is Mary Beecher (Constance Towers), who comes across as a strong, independent woman, who also serves as the love interest for Lieutenant Tom Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter).  As depicted in a flashback during her testimony, we see that Mary has been left alone at a train station in the middle of the night.  She discovers that the man running the station is dead, an arrow sticking out of his chest.  As she runs out of the station, Sergeant Braxton Rutledge (Woody Strode) grabs her and puts his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. Although Mary is not the woman in this movie that is raped, the idea of a white woman being raped by a black man is suggested by this scene, and that is certainly what Mary thinks is about to happen to her.  He explains to her that she mustn’t scream because there are Apaches nearby.  He hands her a revolver, saying she is a Western woman, implying competence with a gun, and that she will need it because the Apaches will show her no mercy. This too suggests the possibility of rape by men that are not white. Minutes later, when a couple of Apaches attack, she shoots one of them before he can kill Rutledge.

As we later find out, Lucy Dabney, a young white girl, has been beaten, raped, and strangled. Rutledge, a first sergeant in a colored regiment of the United States Cavalry, accidentally came upon her dead, naked body.  As he covered her with a blanket, her father, Major Dabney, Rutledge’s commanding officer, entered the room, and, believing Rutledge to be attacking Lucy, pulled out his pistol and shot him, causing a minor wound.  In self-defense, Rutledge shot Major Dabney in return, killing him. Realizing he would be blamed for Lucy’s rape and murder, as well as for killing her father, he decided to desert.  That is why he happens to be at the station in the middle of the night.

Most of the women we see in this movie are the officers’ wives, led by Mrs. Fosgate (Billie Burke), wife of Colonel Fosgate (Willis Bouchey), who presides over the trial.  The women are a bunch of simpleminded biddies, whose purpose in life is to be scandalized by the shameless behavior of others, and who are obviously overprotected by their husbands. No, I take that back.  These women are so addled and confused that they need protecting.  They seem to be of a totally different species than Mary.  We cannot imagine Rutledge handing Mrs. Fosgate a revolver, saying she is a Western woman, and expecting her to kill an Apache, if need be.

During another flashback, representing Mrs. Fosgate’s testimony, we find that one of the things that met with the disapproval of these women was the behavior of Lucy. The women chastised her for riding a horse astride. But Lucy said, in front of Chandler Hubble, who we eventually find out is the one that actually raped and strangled her, that as long as she says her prayers and behaves herself, her father doesn’t care if she rides around like Lady Godiva. It is also worked into the conversation that her mother is dead, which explains why she does not behave with the proper sense of decorum. And those women also express misgivings about how friendly Lucy is with Rutledge, which is just one of the ways the movie lets us know that white folks regard black men as being a threat to white women.

The soldiers of the colored regiment are intelligent, brave, and of good moral character.  In praising this movie for how it portrayed African Americans, critics fail to notice, or prefer to overlook, just how demeaning this movie is in its portrayal of women.  And while on the subject, we never see the wives of any of the black soldiers. We have to wonder, if there had been black women in this movie, would they too have been simpleminded biddies?  Alternatively, since this movie is at pains to present a positive portrayal of African Americans, would the black women have been depicted as fair-minded and intelligent, and thus superior to the white women?  This movie escapes the horns of that dilemma by not having any black women in the movie at all.

Toward the end of the trial, Cantrell, whose job it is to defend Rutledge, beats a confession out of Hubble while he is on the witness stand, forcing him to admit that he was the one that raped Lucy. But while the blame has shifted from Rutledge to Hubble, the movie qualifies that blame by portraying Hubble as having acted under a sexual compulsion, triggered by Lucy’s behavior.  He pleas for understanding:

Don’t you understand?  She…, the way she walked!  The way her body moved. She drove me crazy! I had to have her!  I had to! I had to!  You know I had to!  God help me! God, help me!

You see, what with Lucy having her legs spread-eagled when she rode a horse and putting the image into his head of her being naked on that horse, well, it was just too much for him, especially since his wife is deceased, thereby depriving him of a normal sexual outlet.  The point seems to be that it is up to women to comport themselves in such a way as to not unleash the demon in men such as Hubble.  Of course, we accept this only because Hubble is white.  It would be unthinkable to have it turn out that Rutledge, a black man, had such a strong desire for Lucy that he just couldn’t help himself.

And so, just as Rutledge, a black man, had to be found innocent of raping and killing Lucy, so too was it felt necessary to make excuses for Hubble, a white man, who actually did what Rutledge had been accused of. Toward that end, those that wrote and directed this movie showed no hesitation in blaming Lucy for what happened to her.

Being a relic of its time, there will never be a remake of this movie.  It was praised back then, and to some extent still is, not for its entertainment value, which is minimal, but for having the correct moral posture regarding African Americans.  This was not entirely new in 1960, but is now something that has been routine in movies for decades, so a remake would serve no useful function.

But let us imagine a remake anyway.  There would have to be a complete reworking of the way women are portrayed.  In this imaginary remake, the officers’ wives are intelligent, and in many ways wiser than their husbands, to whom they give sound advice.  They are shown to have doubts as to Rutledge’s guilt, whereas most of the white men are prejudiced against him.  Because the white women are portrayed in a positive manner, it is safe to have black women in the movie too, the wives of the black soldiers, and they too are shown to be just as intelligent as the white women.

Lucy’s mother is still be alive and has raised her properly.  Lucy is just an innocent young girl who never dresses, talks, or acts in a provocative way.

As for Hubble, his wife is still alive, and she is an attractive woman, thus providing him with a normal sexual outlet.  Nevertheless, he rapes and murders Lucy simply because he feels like it, not acting under a compulsion, but of his own free will.  Such men exist in the world and always will.  The fact that Hubble is a white male means it is perfectly safe to make him an unregenerate villain. It would have been safe to make Hubble such a villain in 1960 too, but those making the original movie had such disregard for women that they preferred to apologize for him at the expense of the rape victim.

By making the updated version this way, the black man accused of raping a white woman could be shown to be innocent of the charge without making it be the woman’s fault, which would be more in keeping with twenty-first century sensitivities.

In the late sixties and early seventies, the anti-establishment feelings engendered by opposition to the Vietnam War resulted in a lot of movies that equated crime with freedom. Somehow, those who broke the law and flouted convention were better than those who obeyed the law, held down regular jobs, and led respectable lives. Rancho Deluxe is clearly in that mold.

In particular, Jack (Jeff Bridges) and Cecil (Sam Waterston) are small-time cattle rustlers, who kill a cow every now and then and sell the meat. John Brown (Clifton James) owns the cattle and wants to catch whoever is stealing them. When Jack and Cecil steal Brown’s prize bull and ransom him for a great deal of money, they begin to think about making a bigger haul.

Meanwhile, Curt (Harry Dean Stanton) and Burt (Richard Bright), ranch hands who work for Brown, figure out that Jack and Cecil are the rustlers. Instead of telling their boss, they end up agreeing to work with Jack and Cecil to make a big score. And while this is going on, Brown hires Henry (Slim Pickens), a senile old detective who can hardly walk, to solve the crime. He is so feeble he has to be helped by his niece Laura (Charlene Dallas), who is an innocent do-gooder. At least, so it appears. In reality, Henry is neither senile nor crippled, and Laura is not his niece, but his partner. Henry knows that a big-time heist is always an inside job, and he arranges to have Laura seduce Curt and get the information from him about the caper. They foil the thieves, who are sent off to prison.

But as I said, this movie was made back when criminals were romanticized as free spirits. Consequently, it would not do to send them to a real prison. Instead, they are sent to a ranch penitentiary, where they ride the range herding cattle for the state of Montana, so it really does not seem like punishment at all, but just another way of being free.

We expect the title character of a movie to be the protagonist, and to be played by a well-known actor. So it is a little strange that in My Darling Clementine, which is a movie about Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral,  the Clementine to which the title refers is just a big nothing, played by an actress you have never heard of (Cathy Downs). She is not even the most interesting woman in the movie, for that is Chihuahua (Linda Darnell).

Apparently the point is that Clementine represents the future, which is to say, civilization. And civilization is bland and boring, as opposed to the Wild West, where we have such figures as Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda), Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), and the Clanton gang (Walter Brennan et al.). So only after the excitement of the gunfight at the OK Corral, when just about everyone of interest is killed off except Wyatt Earp and his brother Morgan (Ward Bond), who then ride out of town, can Clementine finally become important.

I guess director John Ford did not want civilization to be associated with disease, so he has Holliday die during the gunfight, instead of dying years later, as was in fact the case. Or maybe we just like it better that way. Who wouldn’t rather die spitting blood from being shot in a gunfight than die spitting blood in a tuberculosis hospital?

Prior to the release of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, whenever a bunch of people in a movie embarked on a project to obtain a great deal of money, something always went wrong. In some cases, the project was illegal, and given the Production Code in force at the time, the criminals had to die or be arrested, as in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). In It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), the treasure hunters are not criminals, but the buried treasure was stolen loot, so they all had to be arrested in the end. But even when the enterprise was entirely legal, there was an unwritten rule that it must fail, that pursuing money per se was wrong in some way and must not be rewarded. For example, in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), there was nothing illegal about the three men prospecting for gold, but it had to fail nevertheless. When the two surviving members of the team realize that all their gold has been lost, they laugh about it. Presumably, even when the search for money was legal, it had to fail, the movie’s way of telling us we should be content with our lot. One slight exception is King Solomon’s Mines (1950 et al.). The people in the movie do manage to keep a handful of gems, but the vast treasure is lost for good.

And then came The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Three men set out to find buried treasure, and something incredible happens: the treasure does not turn out to be worthless Confederate bonds; it does not blow away in the wind; the men pursuing the treasure are not arrested; and only one of them dies, leaving the other two alive to split the loot. Nothing like that had ever been seen in a movie before, and the violation of the taboo against that sort of thing was exhilarating.

This amoral ending was perfectly in line, however, with all that had come before in that movie. Were it not for the advance notice provided by the tagline, “For three men the Civil War wasn’t Hell. It was practice,” we would not even realize that the movie was set in the Civil War when it begins. And it is only gradually that we become aware of the war, because it really does not seem to concern the three principle characters. The Ugly, Tuco (Eli Wallach), is a bandit, the Good, Blondie (Clint Eastwood), is a bounty hunter, and the Bad, Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), is a hired killer, each pursuing his own business with no interest in the war. Only when they find out about the buried Confederate gold does the war take on significance for them. And as they pursue that gold, they walk through the war as if they were walking through a room. In one case, when the war gets in their way, they blow up a bridge so that the soldiers will leave the area, which has as an incidental byproduct the result that the pointless daily slaughter is brought to an end.

Actually, the amoral nature of this movie was no surprise, for it was also characteristic of the two previous Westerns by Sergio Leone featuring the Man with No Name, A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). This was a new kind of Western protagonist. He was not a law enforcement officer; he was not seeking to avenge someone’s death; and he was not trying to reform and hang up his guns. Instead, he was either a hired gun or bounty hunter who profited by his expertise with a pistol, and had no intention of changing his ways.

The Noble Lie in Plato’s Republic

The idea of a noble lie was first enunciated in Plato’s Republic.  It is a lie that is told for the good of society, for the benefit of those that believe it.  Through the mouth of Socrates, Plato argued that people should be raised to believe in a myth that would justify the stratification of society as something innate.  Those in the lowest class, the Workers, consisting of artisans and farmers, would know their place and stay in it, doing as they were told by the highest class, the Guardians, resulting in social harmony, for the benefit of all.

Such lies may be found in the writings of historians, in the speeches of politicians, and in the sermons of priests.  As for the movies, there is no doubt that the Motion Picture Production Code promoted such lies in requiring, among other things, that the movies show that crime does not pay. That way, those that watched these movies would hopefully be deterred from committing crimes themselves, having been indoctrinated with idea that they would be punished if they did break the law.

One of the problems with a noble lie is that it is condescending.  Those that tell such lies regard themselves as superior to the rest of mankind.  Not needing such lies themselves, they tell them to others for their own good.  Once people realize they have been lied to, however, they are not grateful for the supposed good the lies did them. Instead, they resent it.

A Few Good Men (1992)

In A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson may have been responsible for the death of a marine, but he seals his fate when he yells at Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth!” That’s when we really detest him.  And that is why this is the most memorable part of the movie.  We in the audience identify with Cruise and others in the movie that have been lied to.  Because we do not identify with Nicholson, we do not approve of his noble lie, which is based on his puffed-up idea of how important he is on that “wall.”

But what about a movie that allows us to identify with those that tell such lies?  In that case, the movie flatters us that we are among the superior few that can handle the truth, while allowing us to look down on those being lied to.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

One such movie is Angels with Dirty Faces.  In that movie, James Cagney plays Rocky, a gangster. When he realizes the jig is up, he wants to go out in a blaze of glory, dying in a hail of bullets by the police as he takes a few coppers with him.  But he runs out of bullets and is captured. Having been sentenced to die in the electric chair, he opts for the next best thing, remaining fearless right to the end, saying he is going to spit in the eye of his executioners.

Pat O’Brien plays Jerry, Rocky’s childhood friend.  They committed crimes together when they were just kids, but during one attempted theft, the police showed up.  Jerry got away, but Rocky was sent to reform school.  Jerry ended up becoming a priest, while Rocky continued to pursue a life of crime.

But now Jerry is worried.  He knows that Rocky is admired by teenagers in the neighborhood, the Dead End kids.  If Rocky fearlessly goes to his death, these kids will want to emulate him and enter a life of crime themselves.  Nowadays, Jerry wouldn’t have had to worry.  By the time all the appeals had been exhausted, another fifteen years would have passed before Rocky finally sat in the hot seat, and by that time, the kids in the neighborhood would all be married and holding down jobs. But things moved quicker back then.

Jerry asks Rocky for a favor.  He wants him to turn yellow, screaming for mercy, while the guards drag him to the chair:

This is a different kind of courage, Rocky. The kind that’s, well, that’s born in Heaven. Well, not the courage of heroics or bravado. The kind that you and I and God know about.  I want you to let them down. You see, you’ve been a hero to these kids, and hundreds of others, all through your life, and now you’re gonna be a glorified hero in death, and I want to prevent that, Rocky. They’ve got to despise your memory. They’ve got to be ashamed of you.

Rocky hates the idea:

You asking me to pull an act, turn yellow, so those kids will think I’m no good.  You ask me to throw away the only thing I’ve got left.  You ask me to crawl on my belly, the last thing I do in life.  Nothing doing. You’re asking too much.  You want to help those kids, you got to think about some other way.

But then, at the last minute, just as he enters the room where he is to be electrocuted, Rocky starts screaming and begging for mercy.  The newspapers report this final act of cowardice on Rocky’s part, and Jerry assures the kids that every word of it is true.  Then they all go into the church to pray for Rocky’s soul.

Admittedly, Rocky’s act of cowardice is ambiguous.  There are four possible interpretations:

1. Rocky really turned yellow.
2. Rocky pretended to turn yellow as a favor to Jerry.
3. God filled Rocky’s heart with fear.
4. God inspired Rocky to do the right thing.

Assume there has been no divine intervention, leaving us with only the first two possibilities.  But then, we can clearly eliminate the first.  This is James Cagney we’re talking about.  We know his screen persona. He never turned yellow in a movie in his life.  Furthermore, the last time we see Rocky’s face, he looks tough and fearless.  In the scene immediately following, where Rocky supposedly turns yellow, we see only Rocky’s shadow, not Rocky himself.  (We do see his hands, trying to hold on to a radiator, but not his face.) This use of shadows indicates that what we are seeing is not real, but an illusion, much like the shadows on the wall in Plato’s allegory of the cave. Therefore, while the kids in the movie may have bought the noble lie that Jerry told them, we in the audience know that Rocky not only had the courage to face death, but also that he feigned cowardice to help out a pal.

And therein lies the paradox.  As numerous critics have pointed out, there were teenagers sitting in the audience when this movie was shown in theaters.  They saw how the kids in the movie were being fooled. So, while the Dead End kids may be inspired to lead good lives, the teenagers watching this movie were being taught not to fall for such malarkey.  In fact, they were likely to admire Rocky even more for his noble gesture in death.  In this way, the audience is allowed to identify with those like Jerry, who tell noble lies, while feeling superior to those like the Dead End kids, who buy into such deception.

However, the movie clearly wants us to believe there has been divine intervention, leaving us with the last two possibilities:  either God filled Rocky’s heart with fear, or God inspired Rocky to do the right thing.  But here too, Cagney’s screen persona allows us to eliminate the first of these possibilities.  If there really were an all-powerful God, he could presumably turn any man into a coward.  But no one watching this movie ever thought that’s what God did to Rocky.  They might, however, believe that through the grace of God, Rocky overcame his pride, feigning cowardice so that others would not follow in his footsteps, but instead would walk the path of righteousness.

In that case, it might be thought that at least the teenagers watching this movie were nevertheless being taught something about the ways of God; for the implication that there was divine intervention is unavoidable.  Just before we see the shadow of Rocky, when he pleads for his life, we see Jerry open up a prayer book and start reading it. When we see the shadow of Rocky as he starts screaming and crying, Jerry’s eyes begin tearing up as he looks at Rocky in his last pitiful moments, and then those same eyes look upward to Heaven, for he knows a miracle has occurred. And so, it might be thought that what was lost in the moral lesson, in that the teenagers watching this movie would know that Rocky was really a brave man after all, was gained back as a religious lesson, in that those same teenagers would know that it was all due to glory of God.

Nah!  They knew that was a lie too.

In this movie, the purpose of the noble lie was to keep others in the movie from admiring a criminal who was as brave as he was tough, to keep them from thinking of him as a hero.  There are a couple of other movies, however, in which the purpose of the lie is just the opposite, to encourage others to admire someone as a hero, even though it means concealing the fact that he was unworthy of such esteem.

Plato would have approved.  He argued that stories about gods and heroes should be censored, eliminating their immoral and shameful acts, even if the stories are true. In that case, a select few may know these stories, the Guardians of the Republic, but the rest must be educated, not according to what is true, but what is best for them to believe.

Fort Apache (1948)

One of those movies that encourage belief in heroes is Fort Apache.  As the movie opens, we see that Colonel Thursday (Henry Fonda) is an insufferable snob. He is contemptuous of the fact that he is being sent to the title fort to be its commanding officer by a war department that not only is ungrateful for all that he had done during the Civil War, but also fails to appreciate that he was clearly meant for better things. He even prefers Europe to this new assignment.

He is irked to discover that Second Lieutenant Michael O’Rourke (John Agar) is the son of Sergeant Major O’Rourke (Ward Bond) at Fort Apache, and rudely interrogates the sergeant, trying to understand how such a thing could happen.  He believes in a sharp class distinction between officers and enlisted men, and the idea that the son of a sergeant could be admitted to West Point just seems wrong.  The sergeant informs him that it happened by presidential appointment, which Thursday notes is usually reserved for sons of officers.  The sergeant further informs him that he was given a battlefield commission of major during the war.  Thursday persists, saying, “Still, it’s been my impression that presidential appointments were restricted to sons of holders of the Medal of Honor,” to which the sergeant snidely replies, “That is my impression too, sir.”

Thursday seethes with frustration knowing that Sergeant O’Rourke has received the glory that Thursday so desperately wants and thinks he deserves.  And when he discovers that his daughter Philadelphia (Shirley Temple) has been socializing with Lieutenant O’Rourke and his family, he is aghast.  When she accepts the lieutenant’s proposal of marriage, Thursday refuses to give his consent, saying that she will be sent back East.

Thursday is utterly mirthless, barely concealing his displeasure at having to perform certain social functions at the noncommissioned officers’ dance, especially when he is informed that it is the custom at Fort Apache that in the opening dance, the Grand March, the commanding officer lead out the wife of the sergeant major, Mrs. O’Rourke. Adding to that indignity, Sergeant O’Rourke will lead out the colonel’s lady, in this case, Philadelphia.  When that ordeal is finally over, Thursday looks about for his escape, but finds that Mrs. O’Rourke expects him to dance with her in the polka that follows.

Earlier in the movie, we see that he refuses to shake hands with Captain Collingwood (George O’Brien), with whom he is already acquainted, because Thursday believes that Collingwood disgraced his uniform in some way during the war; though we gather that whatever happened was really not Collingwood’s fault, but just the result of some unfortunate circumstance over which he had no control.

Thursday likes to flaunt his knowledge of military history, dropping names like Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte, while refusing to appreciate the tactical cunning of Cochise, because he is just an illiterate savage. He repeatedly rejects the advice of Captain York (John Wayne), a seasoned veteran with extensive knowledge of the Apaches, because Thursday is a colonel and York is just a captain.

It is at this point that his snobbery makes him not just an extremely unpleasant human being, but an incompetent commanding officer as well. After Captain York gives his word to Cochise that a meeting will take place to discuss peace, Thursday announces that he will not honor York’s promise, but will attack the Apaches while they are not expecting it, now that they have been lured back from Mexico onto American soil.  He justifies this treachery on the grounds that Cochise is just a “breechclouted savage,” so there is no question of honor between him and an American officer.  As further proof that Thursday is not a man of honor, when York says that an order just given by Thursday would be suicide, Thursday relieves York of his command and calls him a coward.  York throws down his gauntlet, demanding satisfaction, but Thursday hedges, saying he is not a duelist.  The result is that the order York objected to is carried out, and Thursday ends up getting half the regiment slaughtered during a battle with the Apaches, including himself.

In the final scene, which takes place years later, the now Colonel York talks to reporters, who gush about what a great man Thursday was, a hero to every schoolboy, memorialized in the magnificent painting, “Thursday’s Charge,” and York encourages them in their delusion. The movie seems to imply that this is for the best, that schoolboys need their heroes, that people need to believe that Thursday was a great man.

The reason people need to believe in heroes that were brave in battle, even to the point of losing their lives, is so that those that believe in such heroes will be willing to fight fearlessly to the death themselves. In the words of Bernard de Mandeville, “We honor the dead to dupe the living.”

Also to that end, Plato argued that the tales told by Homer and other poets that depicted a dreadful afterlife in Hades must be expunged, lest the Auxiliaries, the police and the soldiers, would fear death and run from battle.  Instead, they must be led to believe that a pleasant afterlife awaits them.  So, when one of the reporters laments the fact that only Colonel Thursday will be remembered, while the rest are dead and forgotten, York corrects him:

You’re wrong there.  They aren’t forgotten because they haven’t died.  They’re living.  Right out there.  Collingwood and the rest. And they’ll keep on living as long as the regiment lives.

Since Thursday is loosely reminiscent of General George Armstrong Custer, it is interesting to note that a movie explicitly about Custer, They Died with Their Boots On (1941), also suggested a similar kind of immortality for him and the 7th Cavalry Regiment.

And yet, this movie is subversive, undermining the whole notion of heroes and great men, by showing us how unworthy Thursday was of all the adulation he now receives posthumously, and essentially besmirching the legend surrounding Custer as well.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) return to the small western town of Shinbone for the funeral of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne).  A young reporter and the editor of the local newspaper want to know why an important politician like Senator Stoddard would come to the funeral of someone they had never even heard of.  Stoddard decides to tell them who Doniphon was.

Some of the story the reporters already know.  Stoddard came out West with nothing but his law books, and he was immediately made aware that the law counts for nothing in the territory when his stage is held up, and he is beaten with a silver-handled whip by a bandit named Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin).  He would have beaten Stoddard to death had Reese (Lee Van Cleef) not stopped him.  Later in the movie, Valance does the same thing to a newspaper man, Dutton Peabody (Edmond O’Brian), and again Reese has to stop him before he kills him.  Now, when a bandit played by Lee Van Cleef is the one who has to restrain the leader of a gang from being excessively brutal, you know that gang leader must really be vicious.

After Stoddard is brought to town in a wagon, he is nursed back to health by Hallie and her parents, who run a restaurant.  As he recovers, he helps out by washing dishes. One night he even starts to serve Doniphon his steak when Valance and his gang are there.  Valance laughs at Stoddard, who is wearing an apron, making him look weak and effeminate.  He trips Stoddard as he walks by, which angers Doniphon, but only because that was his steak.  There is a confrontation, but Valance backs down and leaves.

The town marshal, Link Appleyard (Andy Devine), is afraid Valance, so he is worthless. Doniphon is a match for Valance, but he basically just minds his own business.  All he cares about is Hallie, whom he hopes to marry.  The tension between Valance and Stoddard finally reaches the breaking point. Valance comes to Shinbone to kill Stoddard.  Doniphon arranges for his servant Pompey (Woody Strode) to have the buckboard waiting behind the restaurant so that Stoddard can get out of town safely. Hallie and her parents plead with him to leave.

Instead, Stoddard picks up a gun he barely knows how to use and decides to meet Valance out on the street.  But he doesn’t even bother to take off that apron!  As long as you are going to die like a man, you should at least look like one.  Things appear pretty one-sided, but amazingly enough, Stoddard shoots Valance and kills him.

Stoddard was shot in his arm in the gunfight, and Hallie starts dressing his wound.  As she does so, she begins to look at him with admiration.  She always liked Stoddard, but now that he has killed Valance, she has fallen in love with him.  She confesses that she did not want him to run away from Valance, even though she was afraid he would be killed.  But now that she knows he’s a real man, she gives him her heart.  They end up getting married.

Stoddard becomes known as the man who shot Liberty Valance, propelling him into his political career. Doniphon, who came into the kitchen just as Hallie was holding Stoddard’s head to her breast and kissing him on his forehead, angrily goes home and burns up the house he was building for him and Hallie.

But then Stoddard tells the reporters something they did not know.  It turns out that it was Doniphon who killed Valance with a rifle from the other side of the street.  In fact, we see that when Stoddard fired his pistol, he shot way too high.  The thing that made Stoddard famous, then, is basically a fraud.  The editor of the newspaper wads up his notes and throws them in the furnace. “When the legend becomes fact,” he says, “print the legend.”

We even have to wonder if Stoddard’s marriage to Hallie was based on this fraud as well.  She is not in the room when he tells his story about what really happened.  And later, on the train, when the conductor refers to him as the man who shot Liberty Valance, Stoddard’s face falls at being reminded of the lie his prominence is based on, unable even to finish lighting his pipe; while Hallie’s face remains expressionless, looking straight ahead, as if the remark is unproblematic for her.

This ending is similar to that of Fort Apache, although less explicit.  In this earlier film, we definitely get the sense that people, especially children, need heroes, and so that is why the legend is made to prevail over the truth.  In this movie, however, it might be argued that the legend simply makes better copy, and that is why the editor decides to sit on this story.  But if that were true, we would not care for the movie as much. That is, if Stoddard had been the one who killed Liberty Valance, the movie would have been just one more Western in which the hero kills the bad guy and gets the girl. But just as this movie is far more interesting for having a twist ending, so too would the readers of the newspaper have found the truth to be more fascinating than the story they had previously been led to believe. The local paper would have become nationally known as the one that broke the story about what really happened.

But by the same token, Plato never denied that the stories told by the poets about gods and heroes, with all their flaws and misdeeds, were more interesting than the bowdlerized versions that he would have deemed fit for public consumption.  The editor is like one of the Guardians, who knows that such stories are suitable only for a select few, while the masses must continue to believe in the heroic senator of legend.

Conclusion

Angels with Dirty Faces says that it is important that villains not be thought of as heroes; Fort Apache and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance say that it is important that certain men be thought of as heroes even though they are unworthy.  These movies are stroking our vanity.  Other people, these movies are saying, need their illusions, but we know better. Let the masses have their heroes, because they would just fall apart if they did not have something to believe in, but as members of the select few, we are too sophisticated to fall for such nonsense.

Of course, those same masses, who supposedly need to be told noble lies, are the ones who are sitting in the audience along with us, so this may seem like a contradiction. But it is a contradiction with a purpose. The point is to flatter each of us into thinking we are superior to others, who in turn have been flattered into thinking they are superior to us. So, we all get to feel superior to one another, and that makes us like these movies.

I was in college when Once Upon a Time in the West came out. I had already seen the previous Westerns by Sergio Leone, and was especially awed by The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), so I looked forward to this new Leone Western with great anticipation. I was disappointed. On the one hand, I could see that it had a lot of good stuff in it, but there was something lacking. As I found out later, what was lacking was all the footage that had been cut out of the movie for its release in America. It was not until the movie came to television, and I saw much of the additional material (with some stuff edited out for the usual reasons), that I realized what a great movie it was. Even then it was not until somewhat later that I saw the restoration, which included even more material. Unfortunately, those who restored this movie messed up on the music at the end, which is hard to understand, because it was done right in the edited-for-television version, and I know it was done right in the German version as well. I guess we Americans were just not destined to see this movie in its perfect form, and certainly not in a movie theater (at least not where I live).

On the whole, the critics did not seem to like the movie when it first came out either. Some of them may have also reacted negatively to the chopped-up presentation, but others were offended by other things, such as the slow pace or the amoral characters. Some of the critics objected to the way it copied stuff from other Westerns. What they (and I) did not realize at the time was that these were quotations, not necessarily in the sense of quoting what had been said in other Westerns, but in the extended sense of creating images and plot points similar to those in previous Westerns. Presumably, Leone had intended that people would watch his movie and smile appreciatively at these quotations, and I suppose some people did precisely that. What he probably did not realize was that these quotations were more likely to be appreciated in reverse, as was the case with me. I had seen many of the Westerns that were quoted, but only once, and thus did not catch the references. Once Upon a Time in the West, however, I watched every chance I got, and I quit counting after I had seen it twenty-five times.

Little by little, I watched the classic Westerns again, or for the first time in many cases, and I would experience déjà vu. For example, one night I was watching The Plainsman (1936), somewhat listlessly, when suddenly, toward the end of the movie, I had the feeling that what I was watching I had seen before. At first, I did not know why, but I quickly realized that when Gary Cooper entered the saloon, dressed in a black shirt, a black hat with a flat brim, and long, black, tight-fitting boots, the scene was similar to the one in which Frank (Henry Fonda) enters the saloon to buy the land back from Harmonica (Charles Bronson).  Even the peculiar tables and chairs, with their short legs, are the same.

From then on I never knew when I would catch another quotation and get another feeling of déjà vu.  For example, when I watched High Noon (1952) and saw three men waiting on a train, it brought to mind the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West.  Both The Searchers (1956) and Shane (1953) had elements that suggest the scene at McBain’s ranch.  Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), the owner of the ranch, had named it “Sweetwater.”  In The Comancheros (1961), there is a character named Ed McBain who is said to have killed man in Sweetwater.  The street in 3:10 to Yuma (1957) is just like the street that Frank walks down when his own men are trying to kill him, and Cheyenne (Jason Robards) is put on a train that will take him to that prison in Yuma.  Henry Fonda’s character in Warlock (1959) kicks away a man’s crutches just as Frank does to Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti).  Frank and his men wear dusters when massacring the family at the McBain ranch in order to make it look as though Cheyenne and his men were responsible.  The dusters worn by the outlaws in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) are like those worn by Cheyenne and his men, though dusters are also worn in My Darling Clementine (1946), so this may be a two-for-one quotation.    In The Iron Horse (1924), a movie about building the transcontinental railroad, a white man dresses up like a Cheyenne Indian in order to make it looks as though the murder of George O’Brien’s father was done by the Indians.  O’Brien’s character later gets revenge against that man, much in the way that Harmonica gets revenge against Frank.  The arch supporting a bell from which Harmonica’s brother is hanged derives from a much smaller arch with a bell in Duel in the Sun (1946).  Those are fairly obvious, but others can easily escape notice, as in the case of the little piece of material missing from the brim of the hat worn by Harmonica, just like the hat Bronson wore in The Magnificent Seven (1960).  There is also the deliberately slow way that Frank dismounts, just as Wilson (Jack Palance) does in Shane. And I don’t suppose I need to mention that the scene of Jill riding through Monument Valley is a quotation of almost every Western directed by John Ford.

Johnny Guitar (1954) gives us the framework for Once Upon a Time in the West.  A prostitute played by Joan Crawford owns land where the railroad is coming through, which corresponds to Jill (Claudia Cardinale) and her situation.  The gang of outlaws headed by the Dancing Kid corresponds to Cheyenne’s gang.  After a funeral, a vigilante posse dressed in black is formed to chase the Dancing Kid and his gang, just as a similar posse is formed after the funeral at the McBain’s ranch to chase Cheyenne and his gang.  Sterling Hayden plays the title character.  Because he is mentally ill, gun crazy, he no longer carries a gun, but only a guitar.  Harmonica, as his name suggests, also has a musical instrument, and when we first see him, as the train pulls away and he is facing three of Frank’s gunmen, it appears as though he has no gun either.  He too is mentally disturbed, carrying “something around inside of him, something to do with death.”  He is obsessed with the murder of his brother to the point of wearing the same type of clothes he wore that day and still playing the harmonica that was shoved into his mouth.  He wore no gun that day either, which is why it is typically concealed throughout the movie.  When he escorts Jill out to the well, after tearing off enough of her clothes so that she will be sex bait, he makes it appear that he has no gun in that case too, in order to lure two of Frank’s killers to ride in close, thinking they can kill him and rape her.  Only at the end, for the final showdown, does he put the gun in a holster and strap it on.

Many of these quotations I noticed myself, but others were brought to my attention by Christopher Frayling in his two books, Spaghetti Westerns:  Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone and Sergio Leone:  Something To Do With Death.  In the latter, he not only discusses allusions to other Westerns, too numerous to list here, but he also notes that Bernardo Bertolucci, who helped write the script, pointed out that there are references to the history of cinema beyond the Western genre.  For example, Frank’s contemptuous remark about a man who would wear both a belt and suspenders is a quotation from Ace in the Hole (1951).

Of course, one’s ability to appreciate these quotations in reverse presupposes having seen Once Upon a Time in the West many, many times. No problem.

The basic story of this movie is structured around the building of the transcontinental railroad.  Morton is a railroad tycoon who began his railroad in the East and hopes to extend it all the way to the Pacific Ocean before he dies.  Historically, the transcontinental railroad was built from two starting points, one in the East and one in the West, eventually meeting in the middle; but in this movie, we get the idea that the laying of track is all in one direction, from east to west.

Morton hired Frank when he started, “to remove small obstacles from the path,” as he put it.  In other words, if some farmer owned the land that was in the way, and he didn’t want to sell, Frank and his gang of killers would eliminate him.  In fact, Harmonica is seeking revenge against Frank because Frank killed Harmonica’s brother a long time ago, presumably for just that reason.

And that would make perfectly good sense were it not for a little thing called “eminent domain.”  The railroad companies never had to worry about recalcitrant farmers because the government simply bought the land from the farmers whether they liked it or not and then awarded it to the railroad companies.  The United States marshals would have taken care of any farmers who refused to sell, so Frank’s services would never have been needed.  So, for the sake of this movie, we have to pretend that the government did not use eminent domain to provide the railroad companies with huge grants of land.

But even if we go along with this notion that the railroad companies sometimes had to use force to secure the land they needed, the plot still does not make sense.  Early in the movie, Brett McBain and his family are killed by Frank because McBain owned the land that Morton wanted.  But it turns out that Jill is McBain’s widow, who now owns the land and with whom Morton must contend.  In addition, there is a further complication.  It seems that McBain signed a contract giving him or his heirs the right to own a station and enough land for a town, provided that the station is built by the time the railroad tracks reach McBain’s property.

Fine.  But whose signature would also be on that contract besides McBain’s?  Why, Morton’s, of course.  He owns the railroad, and he would have been the one who signed the contract with McBain for a very simple reason.  He would have wanted the station built by the time the tracks reached McBain’s property so that he would not be delayed in his goal to reach the Pacific Ocean before he died of tuberculosis of the bones.  McBain was not impeding the railroad by refusing to sell.  He was facilitating the railroad by preparing to build a station.  Had Morton not wanted McBain to build that station, he would never have signed a contract with him in the first place.  So, none of this business about Morton wanting Frank to scare McBain in order to get him out of the way makes any sense.

Fortunately, these historical and logical flaws are not likely to occur to one while watching the movie, nor are they likely to interfere with one’s enjoyment of the movie even if they do.

The theme of They Died with Their Boots On is that glory is of greater value than money. And George Armstrong Custer (Errol Flynn) is all about glory. Right at the beginning of the movie, when he arrives at West Point, he announces that he wants to be a cavalryman in the army for the sake of glory, to leave behind a name the nation will honor, noting that there are more statues of soldiers than there are of civilians. We shrink from positing glory as a motive for anyone in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries (we prefer to say that soldiers fight for our rights and freedoms), but for any story set prior to the twentieth century, glory seems to be acceptable as a reason for going to war.

Custer makes this statement about glory to Ned Sharp (Arthur Kennedy), who will prove to be his nemesis. But at this stage of the movie, he appears to be just a prankster, playing a trick on Custer on account of the fancy uniform and entourage of dogs and a servant he brought with him, a trick Custer seems at this point to deserve. Eventually, Sharp will come to represent the evils of capitalism, which values money above all else. But this side of him must wait until after the Civil War.

Speaking of which, the Civil War breaks out while Custer is still a cadet. He is given his commission early and sent to Washington. And then he is made a general through a clerical error. Most Hollywood movies take liberties with history, and this one is no exception, there being so many it would be tedious to list them all. But this one deserves special comment. The reality is that he was made a general because there was a shortage of generals needed to command the ever increasing number of brigades, and Custer seemed to be suitable on account of his superior qualities as a cavalry officer. By making his promotion to general be just a lucky break instead, the movie is telling us that chance is the only difference between us and a man like Custer. That way we will like him better.

Lately, people have begun to object to statues of Confederate generals and to army bases named after same, calling such men traitors.  But this was hardly the attitude when this movie was made.  Because the Confederacy lost and was eventually reunited with the North, for a long time Confederate soldiers and the civilian population that supported them were regarded as basically good Americans, a magnanimous gesture on the part of the North, made for the sake of unity.  In The Birth of a Nation (1915), that unity of North and South was their “Aryan birthright,” illustrated when Yankee veterans protect southern white women from being raped by a mob of recently freed black men.  In Gone With the Wind (1939), the southerners are first portrayed as noble, but later as tragic victims of war.  Confederate soldiers are almost always portrayed as honorable, as in The Red Badge of Courage (1951), when a rebel sentry on one side of a river warns a Yankee on the other side to move back into the shadows so he won’t have to shoot him.  And Confederate veterans are likewise favorably depicted, as in The Searchers (1956).  We might have expected the South to portray itself in this flattering light, but it is interesting that there are no movies from this period of comparable status that show the war from the point of view of the North.  Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and Abe Lincoln of Illinois (1940) honor the president who presided over the Civil War and ended slavery, but both movies stop before we get to the war itself.

In the spirit of unity and reconciliation then, They Died with Their Boots On never lets us see a single Confederate soldier being killed, and only one wounded Yankee is seen after a battle. We see Custer leading a charge, and we expect to see what we usually do in such cases: men on horseback slashing and shooting the enemy soldiers as they break through the ranks of the opposing infantry. But the camera stops filming just as they approach the Confederate soldiers. Then another charge is led, and we think that this time we will get to see some bloodshed; but once again we are denied such a scene. And then a third charge is led, and we think, “All right, the first two charges were just a tease, but now we are going to see a complete battle.” Nope.

But this makes sense when we recall that the theme of this movie is glory.  I have never seen a movie in which killing Confederate soldiers is represented as something glorious, comparable, say, to killing the Redcoats during the American Revolution or killing the Nazis during World War II.  And so, while we do see movies in which Confederate soldiers are killed, there is always a sense of the futility of their cause, of the tragedy that such a war had to be fought at all.  It would have been unthinkable in this movie to have Custer and his men gloriously slaughtering Confederate soldiers.  And so it is that just as the Lincoln movies stopped before the beginning of the Civil War, so too does this movie stop before Custer and his men reach the point of killing Confederate soldiers.  His glory during those charges must be inferred.  But that’s all right, because later in the movie, when war breaks out with the Indians, we get to see lots of killing to make up for the bloodless presentation of the Civil War.

Just as Sharp kept turning up wherever Custer was during the war, as a thorn in Custer’s side, so too does Sharp seem to show up everywhere Custer is after the war, except after the war it is always about money. Sharp and his father approach Custer about having him lend his name to a corporation, so that they can all cash in on his renown, but Custer is insulted by the suggestion. Later, when Custer is assigned to the Territory of Dakota, he arrives to find Sharp selling guns to the Indians and liquor to the troops, who spend all day in the bar.

Custer closes down the bar and runs off the Indians. Then he decides to get the regiment in shape, to make them a fighting unit. To this end, he has them learn the song “Gary Owen,” which they all sing, except for that one fellow in the back who was reportedly singing “Mr. Custer.” I guess songs go more with glory than with money, which is why Sharp doesn’t have a song to go with his money-making schemes. In addition to the song, Custer tells his men that their regiment will be immortal, even should they die in battle. And later, he tells Sharp that unlike money, which you cannot take with you when you die, glory stays with you forever.

The Sioux Indians sign a peace treaty, giving them the Black Hills. But when Sharp and his associates want to get their hands on the land for development purposes, they start a rumor that there is gold in them thar hills, hoping to cause a gold rush that will overwhelm the Indians with settlers, who will then be supported by the government. Actually, it was Custer who started the gold rush by announcing that he had found gold in the Black Hills, but that would not be in keeping with the movie’s simplistic opposition, which is that Custer wants glory and Sharp wants money, and so the story about gold is attributed in the movie to Sharp instead.

And it is also in keeping with another simplistic opposition, which is that Custer is good and Sharp is evil.  After Custer’s death, his wife Libby (Olivia de Havilland) presents a letter to General Sheridan, written by Custer in anticipation of his death in the coming battle against Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn).  Libby sums up the most important part of the letter as follows:  “The administration must make good its promise to Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn).  The Indians must be protected in their right to exist in their country.”  How fine and noble must Custer have been to express such sentiments about the Indian chief and his tribe who would soon kill him and his men!

To this, Sheridan assures her that Custer’s final wish will be realized:  “I have authority to answer that from the administration, the president himself.  Come, my dear.  Your soldier won his last fight after all.”  Certain detractors would have us believe that Sheridan said that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, but this movie informs us that he cared as much about Native Americans as Custer did.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Before the battle, Custer kidnaps Sharp and brings him along to the Little Bighorn. Custer figures they will all be killed in the coming fight, and by bringing Sharp along, he will bring about the demise of the one person in the movie in whom all the evil seems to be concentrated. Instead of running away, however, Sharp redeems himself in the battle, and dies telling Custer he was right about glory after all. And apparently he was too, because in the last scene of the movie, we see the images of Custer and his 7th Cavalry Regiment riding to the tune of “Gary Owen,” thereby reassuring us that the regiment and its glory are immortal, whereas we do not get to see any final images of Ned Sharp engaged in his various profiteering schemes, stuffing money into his pockets as he puffs on a big cigar.

But Custer did not go to all this trouble so that we could imagine him and his regiment singing a song.  As he stated at the beginning of the movie, it is the physical manifestation of glory in the form of a statue that he cared about.  And for a while, it seemed that he got what he wanted.  But there is now a petition to remove the equestrian statue of Custer in Monroe, Michigan, on the grounds that he and his 7th Cavalry were responsible for the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

In 1930, Edna Ferber wrote Cimarron.  The title comes from the Spanish word “cimarrón,” which has a variety of meanings, but principally that of “wild” and “untamed.”  More specifically, it refers to the parts of Oklahoma that had belonged to the Indians; but upon reflection it was thought better to think of it as being land that had been given to the Indians, owing to the generosity of the white man; and then it was thought better still to rescind that act of generosity and give the land to white people.

And thus it was that in 1889, the Unassigned Lands, consisting of 2,000,000 acres in central Oklahoma, were to be opened up for settlement.  In a rational world, there would have been a lottery, the winners of which would have been given title to the 160 acres that they had won, after which they could then make their way to that plot of land at a leisurely pace, thereby taking possession of it in a civilized manner.  But such thinking on my part betrays a failure to understand the pioneer spirit that made this country great. Instead, there was a free-for-all, every-man-for-himself, pell-mell rush of 50,000 people, in wagons, on horseback, on bicycles, and on foot, unleashed on this territory precisely at noon on April 22.  In the novel, reference is made to men being trampled on by horses or shot by Sooners.  It is with this land run that the 1931 movie based on this novel begins.  If you want to visually represent the idea of Manifest Destiny, you might show covered wagons or railroad trains moving from right to left on the screen, but nothing can compare with such a spectacle as this.

Among this horde is Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix), who embodies the pioneer spirit in a big way.  In fact, some people call him “Cim,” indicating that he personifies this wild and untamed land.  On horseback, he is the first to arrive at the plot of land he had already picked out, but Dixie Lee, who pretends to be a damsel in distress, manages to cheat him out of it.  Thus thwarted, he returns to his wife Sabra (Irene Dunn) in Wichita, Kansas, to take her and their son, whom he officially named “Cim,” to Osage, Oklahoma, where he plans to start up a newspaper.

Throughout this movie, I kept wondering if Yancey was supposed to be an admirable character portrayed by a bad actor, or an irritating character excellently portrayed by a good actor. By the time the movie was over, I had concluded that it was the worst of both worlds. Richard Dix gives a hammy performance of a someone we are supposed to like, but who is in fact an insufferable jerk.  And this notwithstanding the fact that the movie won the Oscar for Best Picture and Dix was nominated for Best Actor.

In other words, this movie would not be so bad if it wanted us to regard Yancey as obnoxious, and Richard Dix merely overacted the part as if he were performing on the stage, where a loud, resonating voice and sweeping gestures are needed for the benefit of those sitting in the back rows. But the movie goes to great lengths to get us to admire Yancey, and the dissonance between what the movie expects of us and what we are actually feeling as we behold this preposterous character is grating.

Irene Dunne, who was nominated for Best Actress, does a decent job of playing Sabra, for whom we have some sympathy, given all she has to put up with, even though the movie really does not want us to like her very much, because it is continually showing her as lacking the virtues that Yancey possesses. In reading the novel, too, it does not take long to get tired of how Yancey is always right, and Sabra is always wrong, which is especially exasperating on those occasions when it is clear that Sabra is right, and Yancey is wrong.  At one point in the movie, when she tries to advise him on some matter regarding the newspaper, he tells her, “Don’t you be worrying your pretty head about that.”

In the novel, Yancey lies to some United States marshals.  They are looking for some men that robbed a bank and killed the cashier.  Yancey knows where they are, but pretends he hasn’t seen them.  After they leave, Sabra says that the person that shields a criminal is just as bad as the criminal himself.  The text continues as follows:

Yancey looked back at her….  His smile was mischievous, sparkling, irresistible.  “Don’t be righteous, Sabra.  It’s middle class—and a terrible trait in a woman.”

Apparently, this novel is in the thrall of some romantic notions about outlaws, and we are supposed to like the way Yancey can move freely among such men.  The novel apologizes for outlaws such as these, saying it’s the government’s fault.  It has taken the free range away from the cowboys and given it to the homesteaders, leaving them no option but a life of crime.  If you’re thinking they could have gotten a homestead themselves, or a job in a store, you just aren’t in the spirit of this novel.

Yancey is a lawyer, but the novel is at pains to make us aware, again and again, that Yancey has all the cultural refinement of a professor of literature, so many are his allusions to mythology and quotations of verse, all of which are unrecognized by Sabra, who is portrayed as an ignoramus.  In other words, Yancey excels in masculine virtues, swaggering around like a pirate or a cavalier, while at the same time showing off his brilliant intellect and sophisticated ways, in contrast to little, narrowminded Sabra who hasn’t a spark to her soul.  Given this depiction of Sabra, it is hard to believe this movie was based on a novel written by a woman.

Sabra is a racist who dislikes the “dirty, filthy Indians,” while Yancey is respectful of Indians and regrets the way they have been treated by white men.  In the novel, she thinks it absurd that Yancey regards them as human beings.  There is the suggestion that Yancey is part Indian himself.  In the movie, her mother believes that he is a half-breed.  Speaking of her mother, Sabra is from the Venable family, first introduced to us in the novel with the adjective “inbred.”

Sabra does not, however, express quite as much animosity toward the black race, because, as she puts it in the novel, “Niggers are different.  They know their place.”  As for the movie, it embraces the stereotypes common to when it was made. Unbeknownst to Yancey or Sabra, Isaiah, a black servant, stows away on one of the covered wagons they use on their trip to Osage.  He is a young boy, part coon and part Tom, who loves watermelon.  Yancey does not express the same sympathy for Negroes that he does for Indians, or talk about how they were mistreated by white people.  Edna Ferber says Isaiah has a simian appearance.

In the movie, when some outlaws begin shooting up the town, Isaiah runs out into the street to get little Cim, who is in danger.  He saves Cim’s life, but ends up getting shot and killed in doing so.  In the novel, however, Isaiah is not vouchsafed a hero’s death. Quite the contrary.  When he is a few years older, Isaiah gets an Osage Indian maiden pregnant.  When she has the baby, it is clearly a “negro child.”  The Osage Indians don’t allow this form of miscegenation, so the girl, her baby, and Isaiah are put to death by slow torture, which lasts several days.  That’s right, the baby is tortured for several days right along with his mother and Isaiah.  It’s easy to see why that never made it into the movie.

To round out the prejudices considered here, we now turn to antisemitism.  Sol Levy is the “town Jew.”  He walks down the street leading a mule that carries the merchandise he is selling.  The town’s riffraff start bothering him, finally shooting near his feet to frighten him.  He falls back against a cross-shaped structure, with his hands extended so that they rest on each of the arms of that cross. He is the stereotypical Jew, one who is a helpless victim, which allows Yancey to play the savior, protecting him from the bad guys.

And this is ironic, since Ferber was a Jew herself.  In describing the incident where the ruffians are shooting at Sol’s feet and other parts of his body, often missing him by only a fraction of an inch, she says:

He had no weapon.  He would not have known how to use it if he had possessed one.  He was not of a race of fighters.

Come again?  Did she never read the Tanakh, more commonly known as the Old Testament, about the massacres of the Amalekites, the Amorites, and the Midianites, culminating in  Joshua’s genocidal slaughter of the Canaanites, followed by years of warfare where the Hebrews vanquished the Philistines, the Moabites, the Aramaeans, the Edomites, and any other tribe that happened to be in their vicinity?

Anyway, Yancey comes to Sol’s rescue:

At that first instant of seeing him as he rushed out of his office, Yancey thought, subconsciously, “He looks like—like—“  But the resemblance eluded him then.  It was only later, after the sickening incident had ended, that he realized of Whom it was that the Jew had reminded him as he stood there, crucified against the scale.

This image of Sol and the cross, establishing a connection between him and Jesus, puzzled me.  Later in the movie, when Yancey is giving an ecumenical sermon inclusive of all varieties of Christianity, Sol asks, with a pitiful look in his eyes, if it is all right for him to be there.  Yancey assures him that it is. Further on in the movie, Yancey defends Dixie Lee at her trial. At the moment where Yancey is quoting Jesus, the camera focuses on Sol.

My guess is that this all this is a way of apologizing for Jews, saying that deep down they are really Christians.  They just don’t realize it yet. So, we should forgive them.  Perhaps this is what Ferber had in mind when she said Sol was not of a race of fighters:  she was not thinking of a Jew like Joshua or David, but rather a Jew like Jesus.

In the 1930s, Richard C. Kahn directed a lot of B Westerns with an all-black cast, but other than that, African Americans were not featured in Westerns as gun-toting cowboys.  Starting in the 1960s, however, perhaps as an effort on the part of Hollywood to make amends, African Americans began showing up in mainstream Westerns as men that were good with a gun.  But have you ever seen a Western in which a Jew strapped on a gun, killed the bad guy, and then got the girl?  There were a lot of Jews in the Old West, many of whom, I have no doubt, were good with a gun and fully capable of defending themselves.  But you would never know it from watching the movies.

There was one movie, The Frisco Kid (1979), a silly comedy, where Gene Wilder plays a dimwitted Polish rabbi in the Old West.  He does manage at one point to shoot and kill a bad guy, after which he does get married.  But he mostly has to be protected by Harrison Ford, the real Western hero, while the movie makes Wilder’s character the butt of its dumb jokes.

Getting back to the movie Cimarron, in 1893 the Cherokee Strip was to be opened up, which would be even bigger than the land run of 1889.  In the novel, Yancey argues that if they participate in the run for the Cherokee Strip, they can get 160 acres and start a ranch.  Sabra points out that if it’s a ranch he wants, he can just buy a plot of land right near Osage.  Leave it to a woman to take all the fun out of something.  But we know what his real problem is:  Yancey is bored with the newspaper he started, and he is bored with Sabra.  Early in the novel, Ferber mentions that there were not only rumors that Yancey had Indian blood in him, but also that he had a squaw and lots of papooses somewhere that he had abandoned.  That being the case, it should come as no surprise that he is willing to abandon Sabra and their two children as well, just so he can have some fun pioneering again.  The movie, however, wants us to think it is Sabra’s fault for not being willing to go with him.

Five years later, he shows back up, wearing a Rough Rider uniform.  In the novel, he is on his way to fight in the Spanish American War; in the movie, he just got back from the fighting.  The reason for the difference is simplification, often necessary when bringing a book to the big screen.  In this way, Yancey abandons Sabra only twice in the movie, whereas he deserted her three times in the novel.  In any event, his interest in getting some land in the Cherokee Strip so he could start a ranch must have quickly lost its appeal, for we never hear another thing about it.  In the novel, Sabra falls into his arms, unable to resist the charms of the man she so dearly loves.  When Yancey has a look as his son, who essentially has feminine features, he is disappointed.  “’Gods!  How the son degenerates from the sire!’’’ Yancey says to him in exasperation, while no doubt pleased at being able to cite that line from The Iliad, once more showing off his impossible erudition.

But he’s not through doing that.  When Sabra recovers from her thrill at seeing Yancey again, she remembers that he had deserted her.  When she expresses her anger at the thought of this, he responds by referring to her as Penelope.

“Who?” she asks.

He then quotes from The Odyssey:

“Strange lady, surely to thee above all womankind the Olympians have given a heart that cannot be softened.  No other woman in the world would harden her heart to stand thus aloof from her husband, who after travail and sore had come to her … to his own country.”

“You and your miserable Milton,” she replies.

You see, once while they were walking down the street, he started reciting the poem “Delilah,” which sounded to her like a bunch of nonsense, and then heard him refer to Milton, it’s author.  So, she figured this must be another quotation from that same guy.

A few pages later, Ferber refers to Yancey as Odysseus.  The comparison is not only absurdly romantic, but completely inappropriate.  Yancy can’t wait to go fight in the Spanish American War, but Odysseus was the world’s first draft dodger.  When Palamedes came to get him to fight in the Trojan War, Odysseus pretended to be crazy, hoping to get out of it.  The ruse didn’t work, but the point is that unlike Yancey, Odysseus did not want to leave his wife and son to go fight in some pointless war.

Shortly after his reunion with Sabra, Yancey finds out that Dixie Lee is about to go on trial for being a public nuisance (i.e., a prostitute).  Sabra, it seems, is a heartless prude, who wants to run her out of town.  Yancey realizes that Dixie Lee is more to be pitied than censured, and successfully defends her in court against the legal action brought against her by Sabra, thereby humiliating his own wife.

The misogyny in this movie is recapitulated in their children. Their daughter Donna is a shrew.  She is fed up with the way everyone else is oil rich, while her family is just getting by on what comes in from the newspaper.  She declares she is going to find a rich man and marry him.  Apparently, she does, since we later see her with a man old enough to be her grandfather. Their son Cim, on the other hand, is such a nice guy that he even intends to marry an Indian. But why stop there? The whole town is like that. With the exception of a few scoundrels, the men are genuine and likable, while the decent women of the community are snobs and prudes.

When Yancey abandons Sabra again, the movie sees no need to belabor this second desertion of her, but merely mentions it in an intertitle. Many years go by, during which time Sabra becomes a United States Representative, her reward, presumably, for finally realizing how enlightened her husband had been all along. At a political banquet in her honor, she gives credit to the contribution women have made in civilizing Oklahoma. Given all the sexism we have seen up to this point, this belated tribute to women sounds like an apologetic afterthought.

Sabra barely manages to fight back the tears as she tries to tell herself that Yancey is still alive somewhere. But then it turns out that some old roughneck working on an oil rig nearby has been severely injured because he used his body to shield the rest of the crew from some exploding nitroglycerin; and Sabra, hearing that the man’s name is Yancey, rushes to him, where he dies in her arms while blathering about what a loving wife and mother she is. Of course, we cannot help but think that even though he was working right there in the local oil fields, he apparently did not want to have anything to do with her, because he never even let her know he was in town.

And then the cover is removed from an obscenely huge statue of Yancey in honor of the pioneers who made Oklahoma what it is. There is another figure, somewhat smaller in stature, standing behind him, but it is not Sabra. It is a generic Indian.

The run for the Unassigned Lands in 1889 is just the sort of spectacle that begged to be filmed in a big way, in Cinemascope and in color, and with more carnage.  But that is about the only justification for the 1960 remake.  Characters in this movie have different relationships with one another, and events that take place are changed around a bit, but none of it seems to matter one way or the other.  Glenn Ford, who plays Yancey in this version, is a better actor, but the character he plays is just as irritating as ever, if not more so.

Some of the misogyny is expunged by simply eliminating Yancey’s bigoted daughter and by eliminating the persecution and trial of Dixie Lee (Anne Baxter) by the women of Osage, although we are still expected to think Sabra (Maria Schell) is to blame whenever Yancey deserts her.  The African American stereotype is avoided by eliminating Isaiah.  However, Sol Levy is still depicted as the helpless victim, placed in a crucified posture.  In that way, Yancey can once again be seen coming to the rescue of this Jesus avatar.