White women only spell trouble for any of us. Arizona Territory, 1881. Respected black cavalry First Sergeant Brax Rutledge (Woody Strode) of the 9th US Cavalry stands court-martial for raping and killing a white teenage girl Lucy Dabney (an uncredited Toby Michaels) and murdering her father, his commanding officer Major Custis Dabney, while Lt. Tom Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter) defends him. First on the stand is Mary Beecher (Constance Towers) who was supposed to be met by her father off the stagecoach but finds the telegram operator and the first man on the scene is Sgt Rutledge and together they shoot and kill two Apache assailants. Mrs Cordelia Fosgate (Billie Burke) the wife of Col. Otis Fosgate (Willis Bouchey) who is presiding over the court martial recalls seeing Rutledge in the General Store where Lucy talked to both Chandler Hubble (Fred Libby, uncredited) and his son Chris (Ed Shaw, uncredited) and left with Rutledge, the man who knew her since she was a small child and who taught her to ride. Circumstantial evidence during testimony suggests that Rutledge raped and murdered the girl and then killed her father but worse still, Rutledge deserts after the killings. Ultimately, he is tracked down and arrested by Lt. Cantrell. At one point, Rutledge escapes from captivity during an Indian raid, but later, he voluntarily returns to warn his fellow cavalrymen that they are about to face an ambush, thus saving the troop… I know there is no better soldier in a fight and I thought there was no better man. Told in a series of vivid flashbacks with suspense measured out against recollections of action, raids and deaths amid high courtroom tensions, this extremely well written western military drama touches on issues of race, miscegenation, masculinity, language, heroism and of course slavery. As Brax says of his decision to stay when he could have permitted his nine cavalry colleagues be massacred: Now was my time to ride away – to ride away north where I’d be free. But the cavalry is where this former slave feels he has family. Strode’s behaviour is recounted on the stand by Towers, Burke and Strode himself as Apache raids, visits to the General Store, Mary’s arrival at the abandoned stop and the backstory at the fort are revealed. Beautifully crafted and shot in Technicolor around Monument Valley and Red Hat, Utah and Red Mesa and Mexican Water, Arizona by Bert Glennon, this has been interpreted as part of an elaborate late-life apologia by director John Ford for earlier films but it’s not remotely heavy-handed – it’s an elegant, well argued and performed narrative in its own right and Strode gives a highly dignified performance as the alleged miscegenatory rapist and murderer. He was the first black actor to carry a mainstream western film. The final revelation of the perpetrator is a marvellous relief. Adapted by James Warner Bellah’s novel by himself (he wrote Ford’s cavalry trilogy) and producer Willis Goldbeck, this was Burke’s final film role, as well as being Hunter’s third and final appearance for Ford. Also in the largely uncredited ensemble as Mrs Nellie Hackett is silent screen star Mae Marsh, a nod to The Birth of a Nation in which she played a rape victim: this film is always aware of history, on- and offscreen. There’s a wonderful score for this complex drama by Howard Jackson. No officer could have protected a woman so gallantly
This one sheet artwork is so beautiful it had to be included!
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