My Favorite Movies-Breaker Morant: "We caught them, and we shot them under rule .303!!"

When this Australian movie made its way to the screen in 1980, the United States was still raw from its Vietnam experience.  Along comes Breaker Morant, a story from the Boer War that warns us of the trap of assymetrical warfare.  Men who are asked to fight a guerrilla war against an enemy who can blend into the civilian population will do things, terrible things that will not find appreciation in polite society.

The movie details an incident about the Bushveldt Carbiniers, an irregular Australian mounted unit, raised from veterans to fight the "bitter enders" in the waning days of the Boer War (1899-1902.) Three officers, Harry Morant, Peter Handcock, and George Witten are arrested and charged with the murder of Boer prisoners. Assigned counsel, Major J.F. Thomas, the day before the trial begins, the story is told through a military court-martial, with the facts shown through a series of flashbacks.

Breaker Morant is the story of the Bushveldt Carbiniers and how they coped with the guerrilla campaign they found themselves in.  We learn their Captain, Simon Hunt was killed in an ambush that forever transformed Lt. Morant who succeeded him. We learn that the officers agreed not to take Boer prisoners and shot them when they were brought into camp. Their most egregious offense was shooting a German missionary who likely was carrying messages for the Boer commandos.  Yet for all that, the orders to the Bushveldt Carbiniers were at best described as ambiguous regarding the treatment of prisoners.  According to Morant, shooting Boer prisoners was accepted practice based on orders received from Pretoria. 

"We fought the Boer out on the veldt as he fought us. . . We caught them and we shot them under Rule .303!!!

 Major Fuller, formerly, an officer in an infantry regiment, whose law practice in Australia consisted of wills and land conveyances, challenged the army's case ferociously.  When the Boers raise the trial site, and the three accused ably and bravely drive off the raiders, Fuller bravely argues, based on military law set down by the Duke of Wellington, that such service demands a full pardon.  When it is denied by the president of the court, it becomes clear the cards are stacked against the accused and the trial is based more on politics than the law. It is borne out when Fuller demands that Lord Kitchener, the senior commander in South Africa testify to the fact that the Bushveldt Carbiniers had orders to shoot Boer prisoners.  When the president of the court martial recoils in horror and questions whether Kitchener, at that time the most renowned man in the British army would be capable of issuing such orders, Fuller replies

I don't know, sir. But I do know that orders that one would consider barbarous have already been issued in this war. Before I was asked to defend these soldiers, I spent some months destroying Boer farmhouses, burning their crops, herding their women and children into stinking refugee camps where thousands of them have already died from disease. Now these orders WERE issued, sir! And soldiers like myself and these men here have had to carry them out however damned reluctantly!

Morant, Handcock and Witton drive off Boer commandoes at Fort Edward.

Thompson as J.F. Fuller

When Kitchener sends his chief of staff, Ian Hamilton a denial to complete the cover-up, their case is sealed. Despite Fuller's reminder they were operating under vague orders and the nature of the war itself was unique, they were convicted of murder and sentenced to death.  The movie ends with their death by firing squad.

 Breaker Morant is an amazing movie. Director Bruce Beresford guides us through a story that is clear and absorbing, with performances that are riveting.  British actor, Edward Woodward, chews up most of the stage as Morant, a Briton with poor relations at home.  Well educated, a poet, Woodward plays the part well.  The other standout is Jack Thompson as Fuller.  While he begins the movie as a humble town solicitor, in the end, he shows himself the only man of principle, fighting for his clients up until the moment of their execution.  Bryan Brown makes his first appearance of note, long before the Thorn Birds or F/X and does well as Handcock, offering some much needed humor and ironic perspectives on life. 

 In a time when the United States is trapped in two conflicts, in which the enemy looks like the villagers we are pledged to defend,  when weekly we hear a report from Kabul that Hamid Karzai is irate over the death of civilians, when American soldiers are tried for murdering Afghan civilians for sport--Breaker Morant and its messages about the dangers of fighting a guerrilla war in a foreign place has meaning.  Absolutely one of my favorite movies of all time.

I ain't no swamp running n_____, I'm a man: Sergeant Rutledge

Poster for Sergeant Rutledge.  Note that Woody Strode's billing is eeny teeny.

I promised one final look at a John Ford movie sans John Wayne, and I chose Sergeant Rutledge.   It's a film unlike many of Ford's movies in that it examines a serious issue, racial prejudice. Embedded in the context of a more comfortable genre, the western, and produced smack in the middle of the civil rights era, he hits the right notes.  While Ford's effort is flawed, it is a good effort.  

Sergeant Rutledge quiets Mary Beecher as Apache warriors prowl nearby.

This 1960 courtroom drama is told through flashbacks and implicates highly respected Sergeant Braxton Rutledge (Woody Strode) in the 9th (colored) U.S. Cavalry Regiment in murder and rape.  These being the times they were, little consideration is given for the truth, and Rutledge, convinced he'll be lynched by the public flees Fort Linton.  At the same moment as the murder, young Apache warriors bolt the neighboring reservation and begin a reign of terror on nearby ranches.

A courtroom scene with Hunter as Cantrell, Strode as Rutledge and Young as Shattuck.

The story continues as Rutledge is captured by his commanding officer Lt. Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter).  When he rides out to assist a mortally wounded comrade, Rutledge sees his opportunity to escape, and he rides off only to uncover an Apache ambush set for his fellow troopers.  Rutledge returns to save his men, and ride back to the courtroom. The courtroom interactions between Cantrell as Rutledge's defense counsel and Capt. Shattuck (Carleton Young) as the prosecutor are steeped in the innuendo of racial bigotry.  It must have seemed quite unsettling for audiences at the time of the movie's release.  When Shattuck accuses Rutledge of returning to his unit to warn them of the Apache ambush Rutledge's response froze my blood:

It was because the Ninth Cavalry was my home, my real freedom, and my self-respect, and the way I was desertin' it, I wasn't . . . nuthin' worse than a swamp-runnin' nigger, and I ain't that! Do you hear me? I'm a man!

The story ends very Perry Mason-like when the post's sutler confesses to the crime, and Sergeant Rutledge is seen riding off with his command to the melody of "Captain Buffalo."

Jeffrey Hunter as Lt. Cantrell, Rutledge's defender.  Yawn.

 Of all the performances, Strode's is the most impressive.  He gives Rutledge dignity and respect, as well as a knowledge of how the world worked in 1880's.  There is no fawning, no victimhood. Sergeant Rutledge is indeed a man.  The other performances are less impressive.  Jeffrey Hunter is okay as Cantrell, but doesn't leave a lasting impression.  Constance Tower as Mary Beecher is just eye candy.  The most interesting supporting performance is by 76-year old Billie Burke as Cordelia Fosgate, wife of the president of court martial.  One can't have too much of Glinda the Good Witch.

Filmed in Monument Valley, the movie is beautiful.  Unfortunately it can't disguise some of its problems.  This is a serious movie with a serious theme.  Yet, Ford persisted in playing a good deal of it for laughs.  Lots of drinking jokes, lots of silly patter between the members of the court-martial are unfunny and unnecessary.  The lame attempt at romance between Cantrell and Beecher goes nowhere and is uninteresting.  The ending in which the true criminal is revealed feels tacked on and unsatisfying.  The portrayal of some of the black cavalrymen seems stereotyped and one dimensional. 

 Yet, for all that, Ford took on an important topic for its time.  He portrayed a subject, African Americans in the frontier U.S. Army which few people knew about in 1960.  Ford took Rutledge's character and together with Strode gave him dimension.  This is a difficult DVD to find.  It is only available as part of the John Ford Collection, but it is definitely worth your time.

Swan Song: The Shootist, John Wayne's last picture show

The Shootist was John Wayne's last movie.  Released in 1976 and directed Don Siegel, the film was one version of how art imitates life.  Wayne, who died of cancer in June 1978, plays J.B. Books, an aging, notorious gunfighter who is diagnosed with a tumor.  He travels to Carson City, Nevada, an up and coming town in the 1901, to meet with Doc Hostetler, an old acquaintance, played by James Stewart.  Hostetler confirms the diagnosis, and assures Books his end is inevitable and will be agonizing. 

Wayne as gunfighter J.B. Books. "I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."

With a bottle of  laudenum in hand, Books looks for a place to live out his last days in peace and dignity.  He settles in at Bond Rogers' (Lauren Bacall) boarding house, trying to keep his identity a secret.  However word gets out that J.B. Books is in town, and visits by the local yellow press and the town marshall (Harry Morgan) are followed with exits by Rogers' boarders. Books strikes up a friendship with Rogers and her teenage son Gillom (Ron Howard.)  Gillom is starstruck by Books' past, the men he's killed and his skill with guns.  While Books is slow to warm up to the young man, they form a friendship that only deepens when Books drives off attackers in his room one night. 

Wayne and Stewart

When Hostetler stops by to examine Books again, he assures the shootist of his end, and the assured pain he will suffer:
"You know, Books; I'm not an especially brave man. But, if I were you and had lived my entire life the way you have, I don't think that the death I just described to you is not the one I would choose."

Knowing what lies ahead, Books plans for one more gunfight, and rides off into the sunset, in a metaphorical sense. 

John Wayne is great in this movie as a proud man, having led a life carefully bound by rules of pride.  "I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them." Forced to confront his imminent mortality, Books must make connections with Hostetler, Bond and Gillom Rogers.  He earns their respect, then their friendship, before taking the streetcar to meet his destiny.

The supporting cast is also excellent.  Bacall was nominated for a BAFTA award as best actress, and Howard received a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor.  Stewart's Hostetler is honest and forthright as a man who does not flinch at Books' condition. 

If there is something missing from the movie, its the development of those Books will battle in the climactic gunfight at the Metropole.  Richard Boone, Hugh O'Brien, and Billy McKinney are just cutout characters, lured to the excitement of dispatching a legend of the Old West.  We don't really understand their motivation for wanting to shoot it out with Books, but they do anyway. 

The Shootist is John Wayne's last movie.  It was a fitting and touching memorial to a man that bestrode Hollywood for so many years.  For a man whose career was filled with good, not so good and godawful movies, this is definitely one of the better ones

My Favorite Movies: The Quiet Man

Movie poster from the Quiet Man

My attachment to The Quiet Man goes back a long way.  I remember watching this as a boy on a black and white set on a Saturday afternoon.  I miss those days of free television with lots of movie re-broadcasts.  My mother, with her father a native of County Cork, never let us forget we were Irish, and there is something charming about this John Ford/John Wayne collaboration.  It earned Ford an Oscar for best director, as well as another for best cinematography, and another five nominations.  The Quiet Man was another successful pairing for Wayne with co-star Maureen O'Hara. 

Sean Thornton (Wayne)  spies "White of Morn," the family home for the first time with Michelene Oge Flynn (Barry Fitzgerald)

Made in 1952, Wayne plays Sean Thornton of Pittsburgh who has returned to the old family home in Inishfree. A negotiation with the wealthy Widow Tillane (Mildred Natwick)  lands Thornton his home "White of Morn" but sparks conflict with landowner and neighbor Redwill Danaher (Victor McLaglen) who also covets this land.  The animosity deepens when Thornton is smitten with Danaher's lovely sister Mary Kate (O'Hara.)  Danaher initially rebuffs Thornton's advances, but falls for a scheme orchestrated by the local matchmaker (Barry Fitzgerald) and supported by the village priest (Ward Bond.)  Though Sean and Mary Kate were wed, Squire Danaher's anger at his deception denies them Mary Kate's "fortune," which leads the couple to all kinds of ill will. Thornton's secret is revealed.  He is "Trooper" Thorn, a boxer in America who killed another fighter in the ring.  Though an accident, Thornton was never able to forgive himself, and fears fighting any man, even the deserving Danaher.  The climax of the movie comes on a knock-down drag-out display fistfight between Thornton and Danaher that seems to range across the entire county.

Thornton and Flynn ask Danaher's (Victor McLaglen)  permission to marry his sister, as Mary Kate (Maureen O'Hara) looks on hopefully

On so many levels this is an interesting movie.  The story is complex with subplots.  Thornton's secret.  Danaher's pursuit of the Widow Tillane.  The conflict of customs between America and Ireland.  Mary Kate's need to possess her fortune in her own right.  However the best aspect of the movie are all the interesting and quirky characters.  McLaglen is fabulous as Danaher, and Bond is wonderful as Father Lonergan.  Another standout is Arthur Shields as the Reverend Mr. Playfair and Eileen Crowe as his wife.  The most charming of the cast is Fitzgerald as Michelene Og Flynn, the village matchmaker, who is as elfin and Irish as can be.  O'Hara is smart, tough and beautiful, a perfect match for Wayne's brooding physical presence and conflicted combative character.

The fight of the century ends suddenly here, at Cohan's Pub

The Quiet Men, from left: Francis Ford, John Wayne Barry Fitzgerald (front), Victor McLaglen, John Ford (director.)  McLaglen was nominated for a best supporting Oscar for his portrayal of Redwill Danaher.

There are many memorable scenes. One of my favorites is the horse race for the Inishfree Cup.  The women of Inishfree offer their bonnets as favors for the finishers.  Six racers, seven bonnets.  One is left at the end--you guessed--it Mary Kate, while the winner, Thornton carries off Tillane's bonnet, much to the chagrin of Danaher.  Lots of pouting and the plot to free Mary Kate from her brother's house is hatched.  The best part of the movie is the ending fight between Thornton and Danaher.  Beginning with Thornton retrieving Mary Kate from the Dublin train, dragging her back to her brother's house and the ensuing melee, the show lasts about fifteen minutes.  It ends at Cohan's pub when Thornton says two simple lines-"Barkeep, bar towel.  What time is it?" and with the response blasts Danaher through the pub door as the tour buses line up to see the fight of the century. 

It's a fun movie, a feel good movie, that portrays Ireland of the 50's as a paradise that it almost certainly was not.  It was likely much closer to Angela's Ashes than the Quiet Man.  Nevertheless, it is an interesting story with quirky characters and great performances.  I don't ask for much more.

My Favorite Movies: Coming to Grips with John Wayne and John Ford

It seems just yesterday my old college roommate Steve McLellan and I heard the news that John Wayne was dead. It was the week before my wedding, and we'd heard he was quite ill.  When he died, it somehow didn't have quite the same impact that Keith Moon's suicide had on us earlier in the year That was well over thirty years ago, and as all young folks growing up in the late 70's, we just didn't understand what all the fuss was about.  Star Wars was popular and The Rocky Horror Picture Show was all the rage.  John Wayne, pah!

Wayne played the lead in over 130 movies in a 50 year career (1926-1976.)  Let's be clear, the films of John Wayne will never pass for high art, nor do they conform well to our own time of cultural empowerment and political correctness, but the man made some movies I really enjoy, and like them or not I'd like to share a few with you anyway.

If you're not a John Wayne fan or don't know his movies well, there's good John Wayne, there's bad John Wayne and there's godawful John Wayne.  I tend to avoid a lot of the movies he did in the 60's that he produced and directed himself, and definitely stay away from his B-list cowboy movies prior to Stagecoach.  Some are better than others, but most are pretty boring shoot'em ups with the Duke bringing the heat down on some nasty bad guy.  No, my favorites tend to be movies he teamed up to make with John Ford.

John Wayne as Captain Nathan Brittles in the 1949 movie She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

John Ford directed over 140 movies between 1917-1966, from silent movies to the large westerns he is perhaps best known for.  In many respects Ford was considered the father of American movies, with his emphasis on narrative, location shooting, and the long shot of the individual character against a striking background.  He won six Best Director, and is credited for his influence by directors as diverse as Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Martin Scorcese.  Ford is widely credited for providing John Wayne his breakthrough in the 1939 western Stagecoach in which Wayne starred as the Ringo Kid.

John Ford won four Best Director Oscars and two more for his work as a documentary filmmaker during World War II

They went on to work together in dozens of movies, and two of them are my favorites, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and The Quiet Man.  Though Wayne was highly regarded for his portrayal of Ethan Edwards in another Ford movie, The Searchers, and won an academy award for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in the 1969 version of True Grit, my favorite Wayne characters are Captain Nathan Brittles from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the American boxer with a secret, Sean Thornton from The Quiet Man, and the aging gunslinger, J.B. Books, in The Shootist, looking for a quiet place to die.  In the coming days I'll review each of these movies.  In addition, I'll take a look at one of Ford's movies without Wayne, Sergeant Rutledge.

My Favorite Movies: The Year of Living Dangerously

Back in 1982, Mel Gibson was not the angry, drunken stumblebum he is today.  He had not yet developed that sense of self that allows a rational human being reinterpret history and market it as the truth.  He had not yet thrown an interesting, promising career in the toilet.

Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson share steamy chemistry in the Year of Living Dangerously

In fact Gibson was relatively unknown in the United States and had not yet appeared in an American movie.  Though Americans might have known him for his two post apocalyptic Mad Max movies, I had already seen him in Peter Weir's Gallipoli, a World War I drama based on the tragic disaster in Turkey.  Gibson was fine as a young Australian soldier shipped off to the Dardanelles with his mates, only to share watch them share in the slaughter of the Great War.  Weir's movie is an effective antidote to any suggestion the First World War was properly managed and those who prosecuted it were simply victims of changing technology.


In 1982, Weir undertook another movie with an Australian/East Asian theme, the last days of the Sukarno Regime in Indonesia in 1965.  Gibson was tapped to star in the movie as Guy Hamilton, a neophyte foreign reporter for Australian Broadcasting sent to report from Java without contacts, and without understanding the culture. Pitied but not aided by his European and American competitors, Hamilton is befriended by Billy Kwan, a half Asian,  half Australian, diminutive newsreel and still photographer.  Kwan uses his unique ability to connect Hamilton with important players on the volatile Indonesian political stage, including Jill Bryant, an assistant to the British military attache. As Hamilton's reporting gains respectability, Kwan also  shows him the poverty and inequity of Indonesian society.  In this complex story Hamilton becomes romantically involved with Bryant, who is scheduled to leave Indonesia for London soon.  As it were, fate takes a hand when the Indonesian Communist party stages a coup that is brutally suppressed by the forces of the right.  Revealing more would be spoiling.

Linda Hunt won a well deserved Academy Award for her role as Bill Kwan

Weir tells this story, an obscure, fascinating tale from complexity and watchers have to follow along carefully.  The story is supported by great performances.  Gibson is superb as Hamilton, a tall, dark and handsome go-getter, that is intelligent and charismatic.  Sigourney Weaver plays Bryant.  She is understated, mysterious and beautiful.  However the best perfornance is reserved for Linda Hunt and her portrayal of Bill Kwan.  Kwan's character is secretive, strangely androgynous, and demonstrates an appreciation for Sukarno's regime that is at once admiring and outraged at its inequity.  Hunt won a well deserved Academy Award for her role.   Michael Murphy, Noel Ferrier, and Bemol Roco, among others provide great supporting performances.  Maurice Jarre's electronic score is also particularly effective.  I often find myself oddly humming the exhilarating background to Jill and Guy's breakneck drive through a curfew checkpoint. 

The Year of Living Dangerously is an intelligent, interesting drama based on a real life incident.  It shows the kind of movies Mel Gibson made and could have continued making if his career had taken a different turn

Review: The King's Speech

Lorri and I went to check out The King's Speech at the Grand Cinema in Tacoma today. We decided at 11:00 to catch the the 1:50 show.  Two reasons--the Seahawks were being buried in Chicago snow and Jay Cutler's passes, and Lorri wants to watch the Golden Globes tonight.  We got there just in time as the small theater at the art house was filling fast. 

We were not disappointed.  The King's Speech is a great story about the Duke of York, Bertie, the man who would become King George VI and how he overcame his severe stammer.  The movie tells the story of how he worked with Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist living in London to overcome a deathly fear of public speaking to eventually touch the British people as war broke out in Europe.  Without giving anything away, it's a tremendous story well told.  No explosions, car chases, or 3D effect to embellish the tale, just a tremendous narrative. 

Oh, and it's a movie with tremendous performances.  Colin Firth is convincing as the stammering, reluctant king, no, more than convincing, he was excellent.  Overshadowing him just a little bit, however is Geoffrey Rush's turn as Logue.  The two together have great chemistry as they work together, feud and find sometimes humorous remedies to Bertie's humbling disability.  Helena Bonham Carter is wonderful as The Duchess of York/Queen Elizabeth who continually seeks answers for her husband's humiliating problem.  A great supporting cast including Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Timothy Spall, Jennifer Ehle and Guy Pearce. 

Don't miss this movie.  I can't recommend it highly enough

Not to be missed: My Boy Jack

I am, as everyone who knows me realizes, a geek, passionately interested in the things I'm interested in.  One of my passions is history, and World War One.  My grandfather served in the Great War, enlisting in the British professional army as a young Irishman anxious to escape farm life.  He became a boy soldier at age sixteen, and joined in time to take part in the celebration of King George V's coronation in 1910.  He went ashore with the British Expeditionary Force in August 1914, served in the Royal Artillery, fought at Mons and the long retreat from that battle, was gassed at least once, wounded on the Somme, and finally mustered back to England in 1917 in the training cadre.  I loved my grandfather.  He was always a wonderful source of stories and we would go on great expeditions on the bus or streetcar in San Francisco and Seattle.  The older I get, the more I also believe his war experiences profoundly changed him in ways I don't quite understand, and it's too late now to figure it out.

Rudyard Kipling was also profoundly changed by the war.  As the poet laureate of imperialism and booster of those two great pillars of the British Empire, the British army, and the tommies that served in far off wars to preserve that empire, Kipling decried the preparedness of Great Britain to fight against her enemies during that war summer of 1914.  Last week Masterpiece on PBS showed the 2007 BBC teleplay of "My Boy Jack," the story of Kipling's efforts to get his son a posting to the British military in the early days of the war despite his crippling nearsightedness.

The cast is interesting with David Haig as Rudyard Kipling, Kim Cattrall as his wife Carrie, and Daniel Radcliffe as son John Kipling. Made for British audiences, the movie catches Radcliffe smack in the middle of his Harry Potter career at age 18, about the same as young Jack Kipling.

The story begins in England with war about to break out and young Jack desperately seeking an officership in the Royal Navy and the army.  With the services unwilling to take on a young man so visually impaired, Father Kipling seeks the aid of a long-retired friend, Lord Roberts, or "Bobs,"  former commander in India and South Africa.  Convinced that every patriot must serve the nation during the crisis, Father Kipling is willing to overlook his son's disability in order to help him get to France and a commission arrives from the Irish Guards.  Young Kipling's mother and sister Bertie are not quite so sanguine about Jack's posting and are question the poet's wisdom in pushing him into that could lead to his death.  Jack goes off to training and makes himself a fine soldier and officer.  He and his platoon are sent off to France and two weeks later take place in the first British offensive at Loos in September 1915.  Jack is listed as missing.  As the family seeks to learn his fate, it is eventually revealed he died leading his men in an assault on German machine gun positions. The family is heartbroken and Rudyard and Carrie struggle to keep their relationship together.

The performances, particularly by Haig and Cattrall are good.  Haig gives us the feeling that while he is the patriot cheerleader for the British cause. Jack's cause. He is also the father with doubts.  And while he is always searching for that stiff upper lip, we get a glimpse of his shattered state, wondering if he sent his son off to be murdered.  Cattrall's Carrie, an American also searches for that stiff upper lip, but is always more fragile, fearful of the worst.  Radcliffe is not quite there yet, and I found his performance a little wooden, but with promise. 

It is a fine movie about an experience many Britons, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Austrians, Turks, and Americans shared with the Kiplings (yes and Italians, Indians, Senegalese, etc.) Worth a look if it pops up again on PBS or Netflix.  If you're a Radcliffe fan, definitely worth a look.
 
“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!