Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #32: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Never meet your heroes…especially if they’re on the wrong side of the law.

That’s one of the messages of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a cult classic western directed by Andrew Dominik. Of all the western outlaws, Jesse James is the most famous. Whereas most famed western robbers only lasted a few years, Jesse James’ career of armed robbery ran from 1866 to 1882, and he was never properly defeated by the law itself, as the title of this movie indicates. Jesse James originated as a Confederate guerilla during the Civil War, gaining some notoriety alongside his older brother Frank. They disapproved of the post-war changes after the Union victory and practically continued the war by robbing Union-friendly targets. They joined up with other outlaws to form the James-Younger gang, and were known for their daring train, bank, and stagecoach robberies. One factor in their success was that they operated in Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, and other territory with ex-Confederates. The press and many citizens began to lionize them as continued resistance against Northern tyranny. Outside of politics, there were also claims that they shared their money with the poor. This was not true.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (based on a novel by Ron Hansen) is actually something of a historiographical study. The actual main protagonist Robert Ford, grew up worshipping Jesse James and sees him as the romantic Robin-Hood like outlaw of cheap novels and sensationalized newspaper articles. This view of Jesse James led to a whole slew of movies I could have chosen from, most of them horribly inaccurate (as a kid I saw a Roy Rogers one where he helped fight the stock western villain of the railroad tycoon. Though set in Missouri, it looks like they’re way further west thanks to the filming in California hills). Andrew Dominik’s movie is much closer to history, and shows what happens when the legend falls far from the myth.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #31: Tombstone (1993)

 

One of YouTube channel Honest Trailers’ jokes about the movie Tombstone is that it answers the questions “what if you only made a movie out of the good parts.” Only modestly successful at the box office, this new telling of Wyatt Earp and his adventures around Tombstone became a staple of Cable television and is now regarded as one of the most awesome (and manly) movies ever made. This was a real treat on my watchlist, as it somehow is generally accurate while still retaining the feel of an entertaining blockbuster. It’s got an unbelievably full and incredible cast, and it’s a testament to both the actors and the screenplay that nearly all of them leave their mark.

What’s interesting about Tombstone was that it was a sincere update of the classic Western outline. Our protagonist or protagonists show up in a town riddled by chaos. Though reluctant, they ultimately have to use violence to clean up the place. Indeed, this might be the last high-profile Western to not be a deconstructive film. If you ask me, the idea of the deconstructionist Western has been well overplayed by now. Film reporters and critics are always gushing about films for challenging the classic American myth of the West, but these days it’s hardly a brave and bold stance within Hollywood. But that’s not what this review is about, so I’ll get back on topic.

Before going further, I should note that there are two major sources of the inaccuracies in Tombstone. One is that the timeline is simplified and condensed. The time of the Earps’ arrival in Tombstone to the Vendetta Ride was between two and three years. The movie makes it feel much shorter. Also, the characters were up to a lot more, often changing jobs and in the case of love interest Josephine actually leaving the town for a while before coming back. One switcheroo in time is that Doc Holliday seems to die shortly after the Vendetta Ride and then Wyatt links back up with his romantic interest. Actually, Holliday lingered on until 1887, about five years after the movie ends.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #30: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is one of the few movies on my list which I watched for the first time. Directed by Sam Peckinpah in the New Hollywood era of the 70s, I was very interested to see what it would be like. Peckinpah directed the famous Wild Bunch, a big deconstruction of the western. However his follow-up, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, has not fared so well in memory. It did rather poorly on its initial release and was panned critically to boot. The main cause was MGM’s president James Aubrey, who first interfered with time and budget constraints and then, more infamously, forced cuts that undermined the story and themes of the movie.

The theatrical cut removed almost 20 minutes of the movie. Since then Warner Brothers and the Criterion Channel have attempted to release the definitive cut. Apparently I should have watched Criterion’s 50^th anniversary version, but I opted for the Final Preview Cut which is the longest at 124 minutes. Strangely it was a mix of high blu-ray quality and grainy film. I won’t get too much more into the movie’s troubled production, but if you’re into reading about behind-the-scenes chaos this movie is a goldmine.

On to the history, Billy the Kid is one of the more romanticized outlaws of American history. This can be attributed to the very young age when he started his outlaw career and some of the sympathetic circumstances that propelled him to notoriety. As William Bonney he had committed various crimes in his teenage years and had been one of the more dangerous shooters of the Lincoln County War in New Mexico. Even though he was hardly the only one to kill in the war, Bonney was still labeled an outlaw. He gave key testimony in a murder trial in exchange for amnesty from Governor Lew Wallace (Jason Robards plays him for one scene), but did not get what he asked for. From there he became a more hardened outlaw, leading to the events depicted in Peckinpah’s film.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #29: Son of the Morning Star (1991)

 

I’ve actually already written a review of this one, so this is a revised version with a little more to it. Son of the Morning Star is a two-part TV adaptation of Evan S. Connell's non-fiction book of the same name. The title is one of the Cheyenne names for Colonel George Custer, who led a daytime assault on their camp on the Washita River. I was originally drawn to this film after watching the heavily inaccurate Errol Flynn as Custer flick They Died with Their Boots On. Unfortunately the mini-series (which did not perform to expectations) has still not received a cleaned up DVD or streaming release, so I had to watch a VHS rip on Youtube (yes, it's completely free, albeit with some ad breaks). While the picture quality is fuzzy, I have to say that I was very pleased with this "movie" and feel that it deserves more attention for being the most accurate coverage of Custer and Little Bighorn. I’ve even rewatched it twice.

George Armstrong Custer literally joined the American Civil War out of West Point. His audacious bravery propelled his career, and he ended the war as both a brevet general of volunteers and one of General Phil Sheridan’s favorites. With the army shrinking, he was shunted down to the rank of colonel (a common problem for many who earned extra start leading volunteers in the Civil War) and was sent out West to deal several Indian wars. Custer’s vanity and recklessness often got him into hot water with his superiors, but it was his last stand and death at the Little Bighorn that ensured he would be remembered for all of American history.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #28: Broken Arrow (1950)

 

Broken Arrow tells of the real-life friendship between Apache chief Cochise and prospector Tom Jeffords. Famously the two were actually able to end, at least for a few years, much of the warring between Americans and Apaches. To understand the context of the Apache Wars in the 1860s and 1870s, we’d have to start in 1861. A group of Apache raiders kidnapped a 12-year old boy. Lieutenant George Bascom of the US Army invited Cochise to meet him, making the common mistake of assuming that all Indians of one people answered to one leader. Cochise had no part in the kidnapping and even offered to help get the kid back, but Bascom planned to imprison him. Cochise escaped and the Apache Wars returned with a fierce intensity.

The movie generally follows the events of history, but with quite a few changes and additions. One is the look of Tom Jeffords, who like many Americans of his time sported a good amount of facial hair, but here shows up played by a clean-shaven Jimmy Stewart. Older and having been affected by his service in World War II, Stewart could no longer play the folksy and often idealistic hero, and his career looked uncertain. He found new life, however, as a western actor (I highly recommend his Anthony Mann westerns where he’s a more cynical protagonist).

But enough about an actor’s history. Stewart’s Jeffords surprises the Apache by rescuing one of their wounded youths and being reasonable. As his relationship with Cochise starts to develop, he’s able to negotiate an end to Apache attacks on the overland mail. This is based on a claim that the real Jeffords made, but historians have disputed this. Jeffords definitely, however, helped bring Apaches and US officials together for peace talks. In 1872 he accompanied one-armed General Oliver O. Howard to Cochise’s place. Howard was a firm Christian not given to lying or aggression, so Grant thought that, paired with Jeffords, he’s be a great for a peace-seeking mission. Basil Ruysdael plays Howard in this movie. He does a good job, but Howard is way too old here. The movie further leaves out the famous moment when the religious officer shouted his thanks to God and frightened the Apache (they thought he was summoning magic).

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #27: Lincoln (2012)

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln was one of his long-running projects. Earlier on, it was to be a more general biopic with Liam Neeson as the famed Abraham Lincoln. By the time it finally swung into proper production, however, Neeson dropped out and Daniel Day-Lewis took his place. Wisely, Spielberg also abandoned the idea of a film covering years, if not decades, of Lincoln’s life, a common mistake of biopics that results in unfocused, hole-ridden storylines. Instead he zeroed in on the president’s attempt to get the 13^th Amendment passed in the House of Representatives.

The 13^th Amendment was to end slavery once and for all in the United States. It was the culmination of years of policy development during the Civil War. Though he hated slavery, Lincoln knew he could not abolish it and instead had supported the Republican Party’s views of preventing its expansion into new territories. As the war progressed, however, the Union Army and Federal government could not ignore the fact that slave labor fueled the Confederacy, so runaway slaves were accepted as “contraband” enemy property. By 1865 many now believed that slavery had to be abolished, whether out of moral concerns or the pragmatic belief that it would result in more strife down the road.

The 13^th Amendment is opposed by various Democrats and some of the more conservative Republicans. A greater threat is a Confederate peace commission. If slavery’s continued existence in a restored Union ensures that a long, bloody war can finally end right now, many in the House will see the 13^th as a guaranteed war to keep the body count going. Many historians disputed the central conflict of Lincoln, arguing that there was no way slavery could remain intact after the Civil War, even if the amendment initially failed to pass.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #26: Cold Mountain (2003)

Civil War historian Gary Gallagher has noted the stark difference in fictional portrayals of the Northern and Southern home fronts. Stories set in the North like the Gary Cooper film Friendly Persuasion and Louisa May Alcott’s famous novel (with its own numerous cinematic adaptations) Little Women are more slice-of-life affairs with occasional wartime disturbances. By contrast, stories set beyond the battle lines in the South are deeply melodramatic affairs involving great matters of life and death, often with deeply tragic results. This makes sense, as most of the war was fought in the South. Everybody is familiar with the upper-class dramas, such as Gone with the Wind (which almost made my list, but was not included because I already had so many long movies from this era). Cold Mountain, however, takes a look at the lower classes, with almost no plantations in sight.

Cold Mountain was a huge labor of love for director Anthony Minghella. He was quite taken with the themes and prose of Charles Frazier’s source novel of the same name. Frazier grew up in western North Carolina and became interested in the history of the region, particularly the Blue Mountains. Using his research, he wrote the tale of William Inman, a Confederate soldier who deserts after receiving a wound, and his attempt to return to his love, Ada Monroe, at Cold Mountain. In the movie this pair of main protagonists is played by Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. Determined to get the scenery right, Minghella actually filmed most of the movie in mountainous parts of Romania (including Transylvania!) to avoid the hassle of modern additions to the American South.

The setting of western North Carolina is key to the story. Mountainous regions of the South were not conducive to the labor-intensive plantations, where dozens to hundreds of black slaves worked. Since they had not built such a critical reliance on this system of forced labor, areas such as Northwest Arkansas, East Tennessee, and most famously West Virginia were thus more Unionist, seeing the Confederacy as an invention of the larger slaveholders. North Carolina had its fair share of Unionists in the west, though they don’t appear in lieu of disaffected Confederates and pacifists. The slavery issue is actually not all that present. There’s one scene where Inman comes across a crowd of fugitive slaves, and Ada Monroe and her preacher father (Donald Sutherland) own a few who are barely seen and run away offscreen. Otherwise slavery is mostly mentioned as the cause of the elites who make the lower-class whites go off to war in their stead.