Civil War (2024)

We are now closer than we have ever been to victory. The near future. A civil war has broken out between an authoritarian US Government and various regional factions. The dictatorial President (Nick Offerman) who is serving a third term, claims that victory is close at hand. Renowned war photojournalist, Colorado-born Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) saves aspiring photojournalist Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) from a suicide bombing in Brooklyn. Lee and her colleague, Florida-born Reuters journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) intend travelling to Washington DC to interview and photograph the president before the city falls. Lee’s mentor New York Times veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson)asks to accompany them as far as Charlottesville where the Western Forces (‘WF’) of Texas and California are presently assembling. Despite Lee’s hesitance she and Joel agree. Unbeknownst to Lee, Jessie persuades Joel to take her with them as well. After leaving NYC, the group stops at a rural gas station protected by armed men where Lee negotiates the purchase of fuel in Canadian dollars. Jessie wanders off to a nearby car wash, which she saw from the road. There, she finds two men being tortured by the owners, who claim that the men are looters. One owner follows Jessie but Lee defuses the situation by taking a photo of the man posing with his victims. After leaving, Jessie berates herself for being too scared to take photos. Following an overnight stop close to ongoing fighting, the group documents the combat the next day as militiamen assault a building held by loyalists. Lee sees Jessie’s potential as a war photographer, while Jessie photographs the militia executing captured loyalist soldiers. Continuing on, the group spends the night at a refugee camp  before passing through a small town where, under watchful guard, residents attempt to live in blissful ignorance. Look at the tops of the buildings. Be subtle. Lee and Jessie grow closer, trying on clothes at a local shop. Later, they are pinned down in a sniper battle amid the remains of a Winter Wonderland theme park. No one’s giving us orders, man. Someone’s trying to kill us and we’re trying to kill them. The snipers they are with mock Joel’s attempts to ascertain which party they are fighting for or against, telling Joel that they and the sniper in a nearby house are simply engaged in a struggle for survival. Jessie’s nerve builds and her photography skills improve as she witnesses several deaths and she develops a mentorship under Lee … They shoot journalists on sight in the capital. Writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film plugs into the inflammatory State of the Union as it currently pertains, figuring a fissure that is as much physical as ideological with the Western secessionist states of California and Texas pitched against the federal forces that protect a President hiding out in the White House. Garland’s work from The Beach onwards has focused on trouble in paradise and lately on dystopia. Lee and Joel are both camouflaging psychological disturbance from previous war zones – she has PTSD, he has modern-day shellshock and Lee especially exhibits something world weary cynicism to control symptoms that threaten to erupt into something worse. It’s gonna make a good image. How that dissonance within Lee translates into a kind of mentoring relationship with Jessie reflecting Sammy’s relationship with her provides much of the tension as the action and violence spiral the further into the US they travel. I remember you at her age. The juxtaposing of beautiful landscapes with jarring imagery of shock and awe combat provides much of the troubling visual texture. The sense of reality, the minutiae of a road trip under fire and the urgency of the storytelling has the quality of reportage from the front line. The fact that Lee wants to photograph the President to prove he is still alive speaks volumes. What happens ultimately is straight out of the Romanian playbook. The ones who get taken are always lesser men than you think. With no enemies identified, the viewer is asked to come to their own conclusions, a motley crew of varying protagonist-journalists providing a kind of collegiate and immersive focus group of the population, a prism for coming to terms with radical change and war as Americans fight Americans. Every instinct in me tells me this is death. Whether the presence and role of good old-fashioned photojournalists recording events makes a difference is not really questioned here – it’s presumed necessary for history: proof that things are happening because seeing is believing. Hence the acknowledged reference to Lee Miller in Dunst’s character’s name. What kind of American are you? A powerful state of the nation portrait that feels immediate and true. What happened back there is nothing in comparison with what we’re heading into

Sugarfoot (1951)

In Prescott we do not ask questions about other men. 1866, Jackson Redan (Randolph Scott) is a Confederate States Army veteran of the Civil War. He tries to rebuild his life by moving to Arizona Territory and arrives on a wagon train. His politeness and courtly Southern gentleman demeanour cause the residents of the town of Prescott to name him Sugarfoot. Among his new acquaintances are merchant Don Miguel Wormser (S.Z. Sakall) and saloon singer Reva Cairn (Adele Jergens). An enemy from Sugarfoot’s past, opportunistic Jacob Stint (Raymond Massey) has also moved to Prescott and pays unwanted attention to Reva. Redan rescues her, but afterwards treats her coldly. Wormser entrusts Redan with four thousand dollars which Stint then steals but Wormser forgives Redan. On business for Wormser, Redan makes a favourable deal, which earns him the enmity of Wormser’s rival, Asa Goodhue (Hugh Sanders). Redan reclaims the stolen four thousand dollars from Stint but is shot – just not fatally. Reva nurses him during his recovery, which thaws his attitude towards her. Stint and Goodhue continue to cheat the townspeople, so Redan finally learns to puts aside his courtliness … Every man is entitled to be careless once. This genial film has a lot of good things about it – well-tooled humour (the casting of ‘Cuddles’ Sakall is a sure indication), wit, a jaunty score from classic Hollywood legend and house composer at Warner Brothers Max Steiner and a terrific showcase for Jergens who gets to sing amusing lyrics and evidence feminist instincts. Real-life Virginia gentleman Scott is cursed with his character’s penchant for proper etiquette but is ultimately forced to face reality and his enemies and use his gun. Decent is not a good foundation for marriage. In between there’s a lot of funny writing and relationships particularly with Fly-Up-the-Creek Jones (Arthur Hunnicutt) and Mary (Hope Landin) who pushes Sugarfoot and Reva together despite the strains of their mutually exclusive financially independent intentions. Adapted by Russell S. Hughes from the novel by Clarence Budington Kelland, this is an easygoing, colourful western with a lot of satisfying moments. Directed by Edwin L. Marin. Out here you don’t fight to see what a true gentleman you can be, you fight to kill

Count Three and Pray (1955)

I’ve done enough walking to last me till Gabriel’s horn. Former brawler and womaniser Luke Fargo comes home to the South from the Civil War a reformed character. Following his traumatic experience at the Battle of Vicksburg, he is now a pastor, intent on rebuilding the town’s only church, which burned down, just like his own house. He is greeted with disbelief by his friends including Matty Miller (Nancy Kulp) and with plain hostility by the rest of the townsfolk as he fought on the Union side. Particularly opposed to him is Yancey Huggins (Raymond Burr) who sees a threat to his own iron-fisted control of the town. Huggins gets his aptly named enforcer Big (Richard Webb) to fight Fargo – but Fargo wins. Fargo encounters two contrasting women from his past: Southern belle and judge’s daughter Georgina Descrais (Allison Hayes) impoverished by the war and living with her ailing mother, tries to revive their romantic relationship, but he is not interested; local madam Selma (Jean Willes) is pleased by his return and accepts him on his own terms. Meanwhile, teenage orphan tomboy Lissy (Joanne Woodward) who has been living in the parsonage, initially dislikes him but gradually her feelings undergo a reversal. She insists on remaining there, taking over the kitchen, which causes Fargo a great deal of trouble, as the townspeople, alerted by Huggins, suspect him of falling back into his old ways and living with a girl. He does not help matters when he reluctantly gambles on a Sunday with prosperous businessman Albert Loomis (Philip Carey), winning a horse race to get lumber for the church building and is goaded into fighting Yancey’s men. Finally, the bishop (Robert Burton) is called in to resolve the situation … The war is over boys. Now there’s no sense in us fighting it all over again. Woodward’s film debut is big and splashy, Cinemascope and colourful and her role and performance are as broad and boisterous as this is long. She practically bounces off the walls with her strong will and orphan energy. Adapted from his story Calico Pony by Herb Meadow, this post-Civil War western traffics in the usual tropes – good versus bad, reformed versus irredeemable, decent women versus whores; the new nation-building imperative versus what’s left behind; and the overarching story here is then the guy trying to do right who doesn’t know he’s co-habiting with a girl of age. Living in sin is a phrase that rebounds a lot. Burr makes for a decent heavy, as ever; and the subplot with Hayes (who would be the Fifty Foot Woman, cult fans!) is well managed, particularly when she sets him up for a nasty fall. It’s one of Heflin’s best roles – complex and conflicted, a good ol’ bad ol’ boy. It’s nice to see the great comedienne Kulp (a former journalist and MGM publicist) in a big screen role a few years before she became embedded in everyone’s living room as Miss Jane Hathaway in The Beverly Hillbillies. She would appear again with Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve for which Woodward gained the Academy Award for Best Actress. There are some good comic scenes here particularly when it comes to Heflin’s attempts to persuade everyone he’s a good preacher and nobody’s there because he’s bought their horses. Premiered in Woodward’s home town of Thomasville, Georgia, you can’t help but feel for the woman Paul Newman left behind, as Ethan Hawke reminds us in his new HBO documentary series The Last Movie Stars when Stephanie Newman tells him that her illustrious father abandoned her mother actress Jackie Witte when she was a newborn, leaving them as well as her brother and sister (all under the age of five) for child-free Woodward. That’s the right reaction, she compliments Hawke when he puts his head in his hands in horror. The affair had been going on for five years, something nobody realised until much later. Seeing these two productions in close proximity leaves a sour taste. The things ambitious performers will do for their career. Woodward later admitted her own movie dream ultimately faded because of the three children she herself had with Newman, who was often away shooting films while she kept house. Karma’s a bitch, etc. but for a while her star burned bright. Never mind, this is nicely shot by Burnett Guffey and there’s a supremely witty score by George Duning. Directed by George Sherman. Don’t try to save the world – save me

Silver River (1948)

I’ve got news for you – I think you’ve just gone into the gambling business. Unfairly cashiered from the Union Army Mike McComb (Errol Flynn) heads to Nevada and after running some card games gets into the silver business following an encounter with Georgia Moore (Ann Sheridan) whose husband Stanley (Bruce Bennett) is a mining engineer convinced that the nearby hills are full of silver. McComb lets him go out to the territory despite knowing the Shoshone Indians are on the warpath and his lawyer Plato Beck (Thomas Mitchell) cannot persuade him of the wrong he is doing – McComb is smitten with Georgia. By the time guilt overwhelms him he is too late to save Moore and ends up marrying Georgia and getting rich off the proceeds from the mine. His bank is using vouchers from the miners but when Plato shows up drunk at a housewarming dinner and tells the truth about McComb’s faults, the townspeople end up taking their savings from the bank, rival owners open other mines and he loses everything … His name marks our schools and our banks – and one day, maybe, our finish. Raoul Walsh liked both Flynn and Sheridan and this has a fantastically sparky script by Harriet Frank adapted from a story by Stephen Longstreet. He was a friend of Flynn’s and knew that by 1947 the star’s looks and acting were deteriorating, mainly from drink, possibly drugs and definitely from the financial and marital hurt inflicted by some wives. He says that both Flynn and Sheridan were drinking heavily on set and that director Raoul Walsh told him, ” ‘Kid, write it fast. They’re not drinking.’ It soon became clear that they were even if we didn’t see how. [Later on set] I went over and tasted the ice water. It was pure 90-proof vodka.’ ” What a shame. Because there are some great lines and exchanges here and the performances by the leads are sluggish, muted and dead on arrival for most of the film. The humour and ribaldry are fine, it’s the delivery that’s the issue. The irony that it’s about a man whose ability to lead is ruined by some intrinsic flaw cannot have been lost on Flynn. The references to King David, Bathsheba and the serpent’s egg by Mitchell are very clear Biblical analogies that point this up as a morality tale. What might have been, alas, in a film that is rather stillborn from such a paradoxically lively cast and a gifted director. Don’t let’s have a lynching

Young Guns of Texas (1962)

 

When two men fight it’s a duel. When somebody tries to stop them it becomes a war. After the Civil War cadet Tyler Duane (Gary Conway) is expelled from West Point military academy when his brother, a Union officer, is accused of stealing $30,000 of Army payroll. He sets out on his trail encountering trouble en route. He is befriended by Morgan Coe (James Mitchum) and preacher’s son Jeff Shelby (Jody McCrea). Morgan is in love with local beauty Lily Glendenning (Alana Ladd) but her father Jesse (Robert Lowery) opposes the marriage and wants to get his hands on the stolen money. Jeff’s father Sam (Chill Wills) initially refuses to perform the wedding ceremony but relents when the youngsters plan on going to the Mission to have a priest do it after Morgan has killed the ranch foreman. Glendenning forms a posse believing Lily has been kidnapped. Then the youngsters are attacked by Apaches and find out what happened to Tyler’s brother …  This country needs this money. Then we’ll see changes.  Of interest principally for its cast, the offspring of Hollywood royalty, this is neither good nor bad enough to enter the realm of cult. It’s a fairly standard low budget oater distinguished by the use Cinemascope photography albeit it’s to no evident visual effect. There are some nice moments with Barbara Mansell as Martha Jane Canary (the real name of Calamity Jane) who washes outdoors – Always meant to put a door on this bathroom! Otherwise, no surprises except to marvel at the physical similarities (and not a lot else) between the offspring and their famous and talented fathers. It was Ladd’s final screen appearance. The title song by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter is performed by Kenny Miller.  Written by Henry Cross aka Harry Spalding and directed by Maury Dexter. Either you’re going to be an orphan or a widow?

Advance to the Rear (1964)

My wife wouldn’t believe half the things that go on around here. In 1862, during the American Civil War, a company of Union infantrymen, commanded by Colonel Claude Brackenbury (Melvyn Douglas) who has a comfortable arrangement with his opposite number to exchange a round of gunfire for an agreed amount of time each morning to avoid any real conflict. However the status quo is disrupted when his junior Captain Jared Heath (Glenn Ford) captures some of the enemy. When he receives an order to attack the Confederate positions. his horse stampedes toward the rear of the front by accident. The confused soldiers, deployed in assault formation, follow their colonel in a rush. The consequent Board of Inquiry sees this as plain cowardice in the face of the enemy and Colonel Brackenbury is demoted to the rank of Captain while his executive officer,, is demoted to Lieutenant. As further punishment, together with a few of their NCOs they are deployed west to Fort Hooker where they are to take charge of a company of misfits and rejects. The new company is designated as Company Q (army slang for ‘sick list’). On the way, the demoted officers travel on a river-boat. Among the passengers there are several prostitutes, led by Madam Easy Jenny (Joan Blondell) being run out of town by the decent townsfolk. But it’s saucy Martha Lou Williams who tickles Heath’s fancy, particularly when he figures she’s got a scam going. It turns out she’s a spy for the other side but he decides to do nothing except keep her out of trouble because he wants to marry her. Then things come to a head when they arrive at their destination and the unit is required to escort a gold shipment and are captured by Thin Elk (Michael Pate) an Indian chief West Point graduate who’s in league with Hugo Zattig (James Griffith) of the Confederates …  I ain’t never seen no troops that looked quite so defeated. A period variation on the service comedies so popular in the post-war era, this Civil War gang could serve as a model for The Dirty Dozen, minus the violence or cynicism. Ford had starred in a series of military comedies since The Teahouse of the August Moon but this is the first one to be set in the Civil War. It’s mild material but Douglas scores as the unruffled General who believes in not fighting like a West Point gentleman when tea can be enjoyed instead. Jack Schaefer’s non-comedic 1957 novel Company of Cowards was adapted from a Saturday Evening Post story by William Chamberlain and the screenplay is by Samuel A. Peeples and William Bowers with uncredited work by Robert Carson. It’s a rather thin piece of work, lacking focus on the main event and coasting on Ford’s easy personality and Stevens’ charm with some nice scenes featuring Alan Hale and Whit Bissell while Blondell is fun as the blowsy madam. There are some interesting sound effects and songs by the New Christy Minstrels. Directed by George Marshall. When are we going to stop doing all this?

 

Alvarez Kelly (1966)

I’m a reasonable man. If I weren’t I might go over to the other side. In 1864 Alvarez Kelly (William Holden) is a Mexican-Irish cattle rancher who is doing his best to stay out of the Civil War. He has no interest in which side may win or lose being more concerned about his own survival, and about making money, supplying cattle to the Union side via Major Tom Stedman (Patrick O’Neal). He soon finds himself in the middle of the conflict, however, when a confederate colonel Tom Rossiter (Richard Widmark) captures him and forces Kelly to help his soldiers steal a nearby herd of cattle, which they desperately need for food. Kelly is blackmailed into doing it by alluring and very well-named treacherous widow Charity Warwick (Victoria Shaw) but is really attracted to a madam in peril Liz Pickering (Janice Rule) whose escape he engineers. However on the trail of the rustlers is Stedman and it becomes a battle of wits as Kelly has to decide whose side he really does belong to … God deliver me from dedicated men. A dynamic story that somehow doesn’t get justice which you can probably put down to the stylings of director Edward Dmytryk. The screenplay by Franklin Coen (with uncredited rewrites by Daniel Taradash and Elliott Arnold) certainly has all the elements required for a frequently comic western, albeit the humour is rooted in darkness and male sexuality. The casting is of course key:  Widmark is playing to his Tommy Udo reputation while you can see why Peckinpah wanted hyper-sexed renegade Holden in The Wild Bunch a few years later. The combination of fruity exchanges and violence creates a particularly potent admixture even if you would never credit Dmytryk with an ability to indulge humour. The scenes between Holden and Rule are especially pleasurable:  Pity is the real empty room I despise, she deadpans. They’re a sure thing. Until they’re not. The rivalry with Widmark is extremely well played, with an edge of nastiness that tips into threat and violence on many occasions. Save for a few obvious process shots it looks very well courtesy of Joseph MacDonald and gets rebalanced at the end with a tremendous pairing of stampede and shootout in a slick robbery that even impressed Lincoln. The virtuous Irish lord wasn’t able to stop his son from becoming a pirate

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

In our country, General, they say never blow a bridge until you come to it. During the Spanish Civil War, an American professor of Spanish and explosives expert, Robert Jordan (Gary Cooper) allied with the Republicans finds romance with freedom fighting peasant Maria (Ingrid Bergman) during a desperate mission to blow up a strategically important bridge in the mountains while the Axis powers attempt to establish a base in Europe … Each of us must do this thing alone. Bergman got another Oscar nomination for her performance and Cooper displays his stoic masculinity in Dudley Nichols’ romantic (and lengthy) adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel. The protean quality of both stars is much in evidence here – Bergman is luminous as the Loyalist and Cooper is a perfect hero, strong, reliable and deeply felt. I’ve always loved you but I never saw you before. They make an awesome couple.  They don’t shoot you for being a Republican in America. However the adaptation isn’t as focused on action as it ought to be, the dialogue is occasionally too on the nose (explaining that Germany and Italy are using Spain against Russia) and overall this is not especially well staged, confined as it is to studio settings (imagine if they’d done this somewhere as lush as Northern Spain). Katina Paxou got the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award and she’s tremendous as the tough plain-speaking older woman Pilar in this story of betrayals and compromise – and, inevitably, sacrifice. With Akim Tamiroff, Arturo de Cordova, Vladimir Sokoloff and Joseph Calleia in a characterful ensemble, this doesn’t lack for interesting exchanges or tension which escalates as the moment descends. The original running time was trimmed from 168 minutes to 130 and then restored to 165. It’s too long but as a relic of classic screen performances and despite the issues it’s still one of the better Hemingway adaptations and simply must be seen. Directed by Sam Wood. Each of us must do this thing alone

Little Women (2019)

If the main character’s a girl she has to be married at the end. Or dead. In 1860s New England after the Civil War, Jo March (Saoirse Ronan) lives in New York and makes her living as a writer and teacher, sending money home, while her sister Amy (Florence Pugh) studies painting in Paris under the aegis of her wealthy Aunt March (Meryl Streep). Amy has a chance encounter with Theodore Laurence aka Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), a childhood crush from the upper class family next door who proposed to Jo but was ultimately rejected. Their oldest sibling, Meg (Emma Watson) is married to impoverished tutor John Brooke (James Norton) ,while shy sister Beth (Emma Scanlen) develops a devastating illness that brings the family back together under the leadership of their mother Marmee (Laura Dern) who is sad about her husband (Bob Odenkirk) being away in the War as a volunteer for the Union Army. As Jo recalls their experiences coming of age, she has to learn the hard way from a newspaper editor Mr Dashwood (Tracy Letts) and a fellow schoolteacher Professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel) that her writing needs a lot of work if it’s to authentically represent her talent… I will always be disappointed at being a girl. Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved American classic jumps around pivotal episodes and reorders them from present to past and back again, back and forth, to create a coherent, rising and falling set of emotions. Each sister has a distinct personality and aspirations;  each is valid, according to their wants and needs and desires; and each is bestowed a dignity. Ronan shines as Jo but all four are carefully delineated and Pugh as selfish Amy has the greatest emotional arc but she should sue the costumier for failing to tailor her clothes to her stocky figure. Watson isn’t quite right for Meg and her lack of technique is plain. Somehow though it’s always poor Beth who doesn’t get what she deserves:  charity does not begin at home in her case. Some things never change. Despite the liberties taken structurally the story feels rather padded and at 135 minutes it could do with at least 20 minutes being cut because the screenplay keeps retreading the same territory and spoonfeeds the audience in issues of equality and womanhood with whole dialogue exchanges that sound as though they’ve come from a contemporary novel. Even Marmee confesses to being angry all the time. The issue of copyright introduces an aspect of authorship in the last section which has a few different endings. Being a creative writer is one thing;  being an editor is quite different. Each serves a purpose and that is to serve the story well. A film that ultimately has as little faith in its audience as publisher Mr Dashwood has in his readership, this is undoubtedly of its time and it can stand the tinkering that has introduced Alcott’s own story into the mix with the ultimate fairytale ending for any writer – holding her first book in her hands.  Produced by Amy Pascal, who also worked on the 1994 version directed by Gillian Armstrong. Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for

 

 

Kansas Raiders (1950)

He’s a real man is all I know. In Missouri after their parents are killed by Union soldiers, Jesse James (Audie Murphy) and his brother Frank (Richard Long) with the rest of their gang Cole Younger (James Best), James Younger (Dewey Martin) and Kit Dalton (Tony Curtis) ride into Kansas looking for William Clarke Quantrill (Brian Donlevy). Seeking revenge against the Union, Jesse wants to join Quantrill’s Raiders, who are plotting to claim Kansas for the Confederacy. The more time Jesse spends with Quantrill, however, the more he realises Quantrill isn’t a hero fighting for the South, but a murderous madman and the boys earn their stripes the hard way during a raid on Lawrence … In border country you’re either a Union man or a spy. Perhaps there’s a certain inevitability to America’s greatest WWII hero playing its greatest anti-hero but as well as being a Civil War story this is also a kind of rites of passage tale. The emphasis is on colourful fast-moving ride and revenge action and it’s hardly history even though it’s inspired by the Kansas-Missouri Border War:  the raid on Lawrence wasn’t so much a gun battle as a straight up massacre.  Donlevy is too old but is certainly vicious enough in his role as the notoriously maniacal Quantrill. However the sentiments are true and Audie’s neophyte acting fits the part neatly in his fifth film. This is all about youthfulness and finding your place in the world, albeit with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. An early highlight is a ‘handkerchief fight’ between him and Quantrill’s third in command Tate (David Wolfe); and Marguerite Chapman has an apposite role as a woman in a man’s world. And as for Curtis’ accent! Written by Robert L. Richards and directed by Ray Enright in locations that do not suggest their setting. More recruits for the butcher brigade