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.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #25: Dances with Wolves (1990)

Dances with Wolves is one of the more important films on my 250^th anniversary watchlist. While movies sympathetic to American Indians had been made, it had never been done on such a scale, and certainly had not drawn as much commercial and critical success. This came as a surprise because everyone thought the director and actor, Kevin Costner, was wasting his time on a guaranteed failure. He literally spent five years of his life trying to get the movie made, turning down major movie roles while he sank his own money into the project. It was seen as a vanity project doomed to fail. Instead it was a vanity project that succeeded.

The movie is said to be based on a novel by Michael Blake, but actually the novel originated as a screenplay by the same author. It was turned into a book so that Costner could have better luck attracting support for his film. That being said, there is a stark difference. The novel is set in the American Southwest with the Comanches, but it turned out they couldn’t get enough buffalo in that region to film, so the location was turned to the northern Great Plains with the Lakota Sioux. However, there’s a scene where an old Indian holds up a conquistador helmet to explain previous European incursions. This is an obvious holdover from the earlier script and novel, as 15^th-16^th Century Spaniards never clashed and likely never even met the Sioux.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #24: Gangs of New York (2002)

 

Gangs of New York is based on, or rather inspired by, journalist Herbert Asbury’s 1928 book of the same name. It was one of Martin Scorsese’s many long-running passion projects, and he allegedly spent over 20 years developing his ideas and then finally filming it. Scorsese was drawn to the criminal underworld of the 19^th century, a subject often ignored in favor of the Old West or the wider political movements and conflicts such as the Civil War. He saw a real conflict over the direction of the country. The director was ultimately unsatisfied with the final product, as producer Harvey Weinstein forced cuts (Scorsese is known for his looong running times). Weinstein also oversaw the addition of voiceover narration by Leonardo DiCaprio which is often unnecessary.

Still, this is probably the only major film to touch on a lot of aspects of 19^th Century urban life and was intended as a springboard for a new subgenre of crime and historical films (it was not to be). Scorsese really wanted to show the breadth of 19^th Century New York, so there are anachronisms. The movie is clearly set in 1862-1863, the Civil War being a major background event that eventually intrudes on the characters’ gang war. However, the Nativist movement was much stronger in the 1850s. While immigration was still a major social and political issue, the organized Nativists, expressed by the Native American Party, lost their steam as the sectional conflict took over. On the opposite end, Boss Tweed and his powerful and corrupt Tammany Hall Democrat machine didn’t kick into gear until after the Civil War. Here he’s a major player from the get-go, played by Jim Broadbent.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #23: Gettysburg (1993) part 2 of 2

 

Fremantle (James Lancaster) carries tea, because he's British, you see.

Arthur Fremantle

Before I get into a general rundown of the battle scenes and a few other points, I should provide some background on Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Fremantle (James Lancaster). A British officer, he wanted to see the American War up close, particularly from the Southern side. Believing him an official observer, the Confederates gave him access to various major generals and politicians. Amusingly, however, Fremantle was actually on a leave of absence, and this was his idea of a vacation. He had quite the trip, starting with a pursuit by a Union blockade vessel, getting a look at Texas, and viewing Bragg’s Army of Tennessee.

Then he got to personally travel with the Army of Northern Virginia to Gettysburg. After witnessing the greatest American battle, he  traveled to New York for departure, arriving just in time to witness the infamous Draft Riots. He published his experience in the book Three Months in the Southern States. In the movie Fremantle adds a little color (literally with his inaccurate red uniform) and humor while getting the Confederate characters to open up about their causes and beliefs. In a wider-scoped Gettysburg movie not based on Shaara’s novel, his scenes would definitely be considered unnecessary fluff. Now to look at the action itself.

June

I love the opening credits. Backed by Randy Edelman’s stirring, if heavily synthesized musical themes, photos emerge, first of the historical figure, then the actor in costume portraying him. On earlier rewatches this becomes a fun game of identifying which movie character belongs to each photo. W. Morgan Sheppard, who already plays Trimble, provides the opening narration over a map showing the army’s routes northward.

Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #23: Gettysburg (1993) part 1 of 2

 

This is the movie that led to my becoming a history buff, especially of the Civil War. Gettysburg was a film over a decade in the making. It’s source material was Michael Shaara’s historical novel Killer Angels, which attempted to dive into the heads of several real-life Union and Confederate figures in America’s greatest battle. Maxwell was unable to get the backing to actually make the movie because of some notable failed epic films, but finally Ted Turner, who also saw the idea of a Civil War mini-series as a passion project, finally got things going.

Gettysburg was originally made to be a mini-series for TNT, but Turner was so impressed with the final product that, with a few scenes cut, it was given a limited theatrical release first. Thanks to its four hour length, the longest for any theatrical release in American history, it didn’t make back its budget, but it got lots of praise and positive buzz. Thus it was a smash hit on TV and home video. I remember my family having the two-tape set. It’s size always impressed me and it was watched a lot in the house. After seeing a few other images in my family’s book collection and getting the BMC toy soldier set for my birthday, I one day decided to check out a couple books from the library and I turned into a Civil War nerd for the rest of my life.

For those who don’t know, Gettysburg is considered the greatest battle of the Civil War. It didn’t have the most men involved (that honor goes to the Battle of Fredericksburg), but it saw the heaviest casualties in killed and wounded. General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, wanted to take the war north and score a decisive victory that would end the war in his favor. Nearly by accident, the Confederate and Union Armies collided at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. After three days of fighting, Lee’s army suffered its first massive defeat. Along with the loss of the last strongholds on the Mississippi River and the major Tennessee railroad junction of Chattanooga, this battle was a major turning point and is argued to have signaled the eventual defeat of the Confederacy.

Ted Turner (left) cameos as  Colonel Waller T. Patton, World War II general George Patton's great-uncle. Ron Maxwell stands to the right. (https://davethecaveman.blogspot.com/2018/11/my-favorite-films-gettysburg-1993.html)

By the way, if you’re wondering why the movie didn’t retain the title Killer Angels, marketing warned that people would think of biker gangs instead of the Civil War. Now into the movie’s content and historicity. I also already did a list of some historical inaccuracies, a few which I’ll touch on in this review, but others I won’t, so check it out.