Winchester '73

WINCHESTER ’73              A-                   

USA  (92 mi)  1950  d:  Anthony Mann 

From films like T-MEN (1947) and RAW DEAL (1948), Anthony Mann brought his textbook film noir stylization to the American western, bringing along Frank Capra’s American everyman Jimmy Stewart to boot, the first of five westerns they would make together, giving him a piece of the take in lieu of a salary that he could not afford to pay, turning the lovable Stewart into a man with a tortured past, obsessed, angry and bitter at having spent the last few years of his life chasing after his nemesis, the man who shot his father in the back.  Along with a more hard-edged, psychological view, Mann also preferred to shoot on location, which adds an element of realism and authenticity to the look of the film, while still carrying over insulting American stereotypes about Indians, where none other than Rock Hudson makes an early appearance as an Indian chief, uttering that stupifying “Injun” lingo to add insult to injury, not to mention that exact same portrayal of Indians in battle that John Ford initiated in STAGECOACH (1939), sending wave after wave of Indians on horseback senselessly to meet their deaths while few if any whites get shot, actions that by any standards would be considered sheer idiocy.  Nonetheless, this film helped bring about a new wave of westerns that once again took another stab at re-inventing the West, this time at least making an attempt at being more truthful.  

A unique twist in this film is introducing the actual weapon, a Winchester 1873 repeating rifle, that the opening title credits indicate “won the West,” as Indians were never able to match weapons with a repeating rifle that did not need to be reloaded after a single shot, their ultimate undoing, and then turning one such rifle into a character in the film, as the story seems to follow whoever’s carrying the gun.  Set on the 4th of July in Dodge City, Kansas in 1876, Marshal Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) holds a shooting contest where the winner is awarded a rare "One of One Thousand" edition of the rifle, a valued weapon that draws together Stewart as Lin McAdams, along with his loyal sidekick High Spade Frankie Wilson, the always low key Millard Mitchell, and the volatile Dutch Henry Brown (Stephen McNally), the man McAdams has been trailing.  When they spot each other, their reaction says it all.  But they can’t kill each other, as the law disarms everyone entering town in order to keep the peace, so they go through the motions of simply hating one another.  The shooting contest is interesting, as it goes into what’s ironically called sudden death overtime to determine the winner, McAdams—was there ever a doubt?  But within minutes, Brown and his gang have bushwacked McAdams and stolen his gun.  A pursuit follows, where the gun is at the heart of plenty of action, which takes them to a legendary card game between Brown and an Indian trader, John McIntire, full of swagger and especially creepy at outsmarting others, a gun deal gone wrong between the trader and Young Bull (Hudson), an eventful buggy ride between saloon girl Lola Manners, one of Shelley Winters best roles, sensuous and tough at the same time, never seen with a speck of dirt on her, her hair never out of place, seen earlier being unsolicitously thrown out of town by the Marshal in order to give the town an appearance of being clean and orderly for the festivities, and her fiancé (Charles Drake) just as they are attacked by Indians.  This buggy chase is memorable when the guy confoundingly halts the buggy and bolts away on a horse leaving Winters to fend for herself, a stupifyingly cowardly act, only to discover a small group of Cavalry around the bend, so he returns and brings her to temporary shelter, though as they soon discover, they are surrounded by Indians.   

One clever sound device is listening to the singing of the Indians, who make eerie, highly distinctive animal calls in the night, while also getting the sound of the rifles right.  McAdams and his partner join this little party as well, telling war stories about the Civil War, where incredulously, McAdams is not only aware of the Custer defeat while riding out on the range, which happened in late June of the same year, but he’s also well informed on the Indian’s military strategy on how to attack repeating rifles, which one would have to conclude would be impossible since there were no witnesses.  Again, this is typical of American mythmaking in westerns, which continues through John Wayne’s portrayal in John Ford’s legendary THE SEARCHERS (1956), considered by many to be the best western ever made, where the lead whites (Wayne and Stewart) are not only the most skilled marksmen, but they’re also the wisest military tacticians on the planet, offering a mythologically superior view of whites contrasted against Indians who can’t hit the broad side of a barn.  This exact same scenario has played out in dime store novels, comic books, newspapers, books, as well as movies, always the same, where Indians are just plain dumb, where westerns established the seeds of historic racism that may never be rectified.  Since this is one of the iconic westerns, and seen as a turning point towards more realism, this is painfully hard to swallow.  Nonetheless, the whites are attacked at first light (perpetuating another myth that Indians never attack at night) and wave after wave of Indians are slaughtered before our eyes, including Young Bull and his infamous rifle.  Discovered on the battlefield, the rifle is ironically turned over to Drake for his courage under fire, but he soon loses it as well. 

Enter Waco Johnny Dean, Dan Duryea as a preening lunatic playing his part in the physically exaggerated style of Brando, where his theatricality seems amusing even to Lola whom he abducts and abhors everything that he stands for, but she’s caught by his unorthodox, near caricature of a psychotic outlaw.  He joins up with Dutch Henry Brown, as outlaws always seem to do, and the rest is history.  McAdams stands down Waco Johnny in a manic scene of pure madness, where Stewart had never been seen before savagely fuming with such venom, before he and Brown hightail it out of town for the inevitable final showdown.  We soon discover in a Cain and Abel story that Brown is the bad seed brother to McAdams, whose been tracking him down ever since he shot their father in the back.  They end up in a shootout just between the two of them in a rocky canyon with bullets flying off the rocks, a delirious gunfight that is all about family honor and personal vengeance.  In the end, despite a nicely crafted edginess to a movie that delivers the goods with plenty of action, taut editing, crisp dialogue, some interesting characterizations, and exquisite location photography by cinematographer William Daniels, especially the silhouettes on horseback riding at the top of the hills, copied by none other than Ingmar Bergman for the finale to THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957), the resolution comes all too quickly as the moral lines are drawn hard and fast in this movie.

Postscript:
Largely a response to the extensive comments left below by Andrea Ostrov Letania who has her own website here:  ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA

I'm afraid this response may not do justice to your stated concerns, as differing views may be just that, but it's an attempt to clarify possible misconceptions.  Racial depictions are prevalent in Westerns, along with societal inequities and historical injustices, so they need to be evaluated along with the film.

“John Ford initiated in STAGECOACH (1939), sending wave after wave of Indians on horseback senselessly to meet their deaths while few if any whites get shot, actions that by any standards would be considered sheer idiocy.”

To clarify, the idiocy isn't what happened, that Indians (or Chinese Boxers in one of your examples) were shot down in droves, but the way this was portrayed onscreen, where the whites not only shoot the Indians, but also their horses out from under them - - all in a single shot.  This is utter lunacy, yet it is the key to understanding John Ford's mythical creation of a continually escalating visceral thrill onscreen, where the camera is placed low to the ground looking up at the Indian on the horse as they both die, falling simultaneously to the ground, all from a single bullet.  This happens repeatedly, as the fast-paced movement actually creates tension and drives the action.  Why few critics have questioned this outrageously racist depiction is beyond me, as whites are always depicted as not only militarily, but morally and intellectually superior, as if this is a known and undisputed fact, continually portraying Indians as savages and never as the culturally developed people that they were, who did not ravage and destroy the earth, understanding they were dependent upon it to survive.  These images degrade the viewer's understanding and appreciation for Indians and their place in American history, as they were more often the victim of genocide and untold atrocities by the U.S. Cavalry and Defense Department that attempted to wipe them off the face of the earth in order to make way for the white settlers.  It is this fictitious and mythical view of supposed white superiority, as projected in the movies, that continues to plague this nation, reflected by the equally hostile and racist attitudes of many misinformed American soldiers when they are sent to foreign lands.    

I'm not suggesting the Indians (or the Boxers) were stupid, only the invented version of Indians as savages as created by whites in movies, which shows no understanding whatsoever of Indians or Indian culture, something altogether missing in these films.  My point here is to clarify how Mann at least attempted to add a look of realism, including psychological depth and complexity to the Western, but continued to project the same racist "Indian as savages" viewpoint depicted by Ford.  Both added to the common misconceptions, yet both are revered for their supposed authenticity and historic attention to detail in their depiction of the West.  Someone needs to point out how racist and degrading their supposed portrait of authenticity really is.  They allowed white characters to be psychologically complex, but never Indians.

When looking at John Ford, he is a man whose cinematic visualizations are renowned, but his hatchet job of American history is equally legendary, as he insists on perpetrating the same racist myths about Indians that have been in effect for the past 100 years, which makes his historic vision as a filmmaker no better than the dime store novelist that originated these misconceptions.  Ford has always portrayed Indians in the least desirable light, showing them to be less than human, vicious savages, terrible shots, poor military strategists, and little more than pathetic wretches of humanity, so little sympathy is ever shown when a gazillion Indians are killed onscreen, such as in STAGECOACH (1939). 

Compare that to the elevated sympathy offered to two white women escorted by a cavalry troop through hostile Indian territory in SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949), an overreaching drama that opens in 1876 just as news is spreading about the defeat of General Custer at the hands of the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapahoe, sending waves of anxiety and fear throughout the West, where a newsreel style narrator misinforms the audience straightaway, probably exactly as the newspapers speculated in that era, believing various Indian tribes were gathering together in great numbers to purge the West of white settlers.  In reality, Indians were gathering in record numbers to defend themselves against the inevitable advance of the whites into their territory.  After the Custer debacle, however, rather than remain a fighting force of multiple tribes united in opposition, as is suggested here, they split back up into smaller tribes, each going their own separate way, as they had always lived, reflective of their nomadic lifestyle of living off the land.  But that’s not the way the movies tell the story, instead projecting a view of the white settlers as victims of random and indiscriminate Indian violence, overlooking the genocide initiated against Indians by the U.S. cavalry throughout the West, ordered to militarily defeat one tribe after another, rounding up all free Indians in a form of ethnic cleansing, eventually forcing them into submission, legally requiring that they live away from their traditional hunting grounds, forcing them to live in isolation on desolate reservations, subject to rampant disease and the rotted food of government rations where more than half died within the first few years.  Ford conveniently leaves out all references to the true story of “American” history and instead recounts the same mythological racist lore that turns Indians into savages while the whites are noble heroes. 

While you may perceive Indians as clever in THE SEARCHERS (1956), this is a film about a racist and bitterly hateful man, perhaps the most racist film ever made, where Wayne's character is the ultimate Indian hater who rides for years harboring the racist view that whites raised by Indians are better off dead, as his captive niece has been irredeemably "soiled" by the experience, a view he reluctantly revises when he later rescues the daughter of the one woman he loves.  But this view recurs in Barbara Stanwyck's role in yet another Western portrayal, TROOPER HOOK (1957), where she is so scorned by the townsfolk just for having been an Indian's woman, her fall from grace is so severe that she is forced to live outside any society, white or Indian, much like Wayne at the end of THE SEARCHERS.  Wayne would also rather kill buffalo and leave it to rot on the plains than allow Indians to have food to eat, while the director Ford includes a despicable scene, also Aldrich in ULZANA'S RAID (1972), where whites raised by Indians are depicted as having been raped into insanity.  With Wayne typically the hero that audiences always root for, they are NOT apt to question this horrendous depiction of Indians and the generational harm these images cause both in planting the seed of ignorance in the brain and then having to re-learn how to reject such negative stereotypes, not when there is near unanimous praise for the film and the filmmaker. 

There is no question that in any John Ford/John Wayne movie, but in particular STAGECOACH (1939), SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949), and THE SEARCHERS (1956), together they forged a tough guy persona as the good guy, a lone man who harbors private secrets from a life filled with experience, adding a touch of intrigue and mystery, not to mention power to his character, personifying the freedom that is associated with the West.  In each, Wayne is viewed as the hero and will inevitably be the most skilled practitioner with a gun or rifle, but also in devising strategy whenever he and/or his men get caught in a tight situation.  It's also safe to say that James Stewart was known for his likeability which continued throughout his career, becoming one of the most beloved figures in American cinema, and that Mann used this trait against type in several of his Westerns, starting with this one. 

Indian strategy is at least mentioned in WINCHESTER '73, but the Jimmy Stewart character is already, in just a matter of weeks, well informed on the Indian military strategy in defeating Custer, displaying a kind of superhuman intelligence.  Again, what's racist is the demeaning and racially restricted view that only whites have a capacity for intelligence, as Indians are never depicted as having knowledge and skill, or powers of analysis, or exhibit a sense of humor or a concern for others, or any capability for being human. These qualities, in both Ford and Mann films, are only allowed for whites, just like a white-only neighborhood, or a drinking fountain, or a rest room.   

I'm not suggesting all Westerns need to be revisionist, this was the 50's after all, a time when Americans found Communists lurking under every rock, and call me an anti-racist if you will (I've been called worse!), but I will call them out on their misrepresented portrayal of Indians, as enough is enough, and Westerns are among the worst offenders of a culture plagued by race and culture hatred, so it's about time someone sought to eradicate some of the harm done by these damaging and misconceived historical perceptions which only cloud and distort reality, further leading to an ill-informed populace. 

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON                B                   

USA  (103 mi)  1949  d:  John Ford

Never apologize, mister, it’s a sign of weakness.   —Captain Nathan Brittles (John Wayne)

A movie that typifies director John Ford’s Achilles heel, a man whose cinematic visualizations are renowned, but his hatchet job of American history is equally legendary, as he insists on perpetrating the same racist myths about Indians that have been in effect for the past 100 years, which makes his historic vision as a filmmaker no better than the dime store novelist that originated these misconceptions.  Ford has always portrayed Indians in the least desirable light, showing them to be less than human, vicious savages, terrible shots, poor military strategists, and little more than pathetic wretches of humanity, so little sympathy is ever shown when a gazillion Indians are killed onscreen, such as in STAGECOACH (1939).  Compare that to the elevated sympathy offered in this overreaching drama when a cavalry troop escorts two white women through hostile Indian country.  The film opens in 1876 just as news is spreading about the defeat of General Custer at the hands of the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapahoe, sending waves of anxiety and fear throughout the West, where a newsreel style narrator misinforms the audience straightaway, probably exactly as the newspapers speculated in that era, believing various Indian tribes were gathering together in great numbers to purge the West of white settlers. 

In reality, Indians were gathering in record numbers to defend themselves against the inevitable advance of the whites into their territory.  After the Custer debacle, however, rather than remain a fighting force of multiple tribes united in opposition, as is suggested here, they split back up into smaller tribes, each going their own separate way, as they had always lived, reflective of their nomadic lifestyle of living off the land.  But that’s not the way the movies tell the story, instead projecting a view of the white settlers as victims of random and indiscriminate Indian violence, overlooking the genocide initiated against Indians by the U.S. cavalry throughout the West, ordered to militarily defeat one tribe after another, rounding up all free Indians in a form of ethnic cleansing, eventually forcing them into submission, legally requiring that they live away from their traditional hunting grounds, forcing them to live in isolation on desolate reservations, subject to rampant disease and the rotted food of government rations where more than half died within the first few years.  Ford conveniently leaves out all references to the true story of “American” history and instead recounts the same mythological racist lore that turns Indians into savages while the whites are noble heroes. 

In this film, the second of a 3-part cavalry trilogy, between FORT APACHE (1948) and RIO GRANDE (1950), Ford is really paying tribute to the men in uniform, offering a glowing and idealized portrait of romanticized courage under fire.  James Warner Bellah wrote the short stories on which the entire trilogy is based, while screenwriter Frank Nugent adapted the first two into movies, a character driven and nearly plotless story offering an intimate glimpse of military life at a remote cavalry post.  This is largely a nostalgia piece, complete with a rousing Americana musical score that doesn’t shy away from playing Dixie, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and several variations of the title tune, which is still the official anthem of the United States Cavalry, where despite some strong individual performances, the collective portrait of the Second Cavalry Regiment is really the featured star of this film.  Ford and his cinematographer Winton Hoch, who won an Oscar, use vivid Technicolor to continually frame them on the move in single file formation while traveling through the stunning panorama of the natural backdrop of Monument Valley in Southern Utah, which is now part of the Navajo Indian Reservation.  These compositional images so completely resemble authentic Western artworks, particularly those of Frederic Remington, that Ford’s Westerns are forever associated with Old West authenticity.  The same can’t be said for the subject matter, however, where Ford tends to mythologize the West, once more overlooking the real history of the Second Cavalry, which was responsible for the Marias Massacre in 1870, where despite warnings from scouts that they were attacking the wrong camp filled with Blackfeet Indians friendly to whites, some 200 Indians, mostly women and children were slaughtered in an act of wrongful brutality, while the Piegan tribe and their Chief, the military’s actual target, escaped safely to Canada.     

Here, however, the cavalry is depicted as a harmonious place where soldiers from both the North and the South have come together after the Civil War under one flag and one common purpose, to keep the West safe from Indians.  The charismatic leader holding them all together is John Wayne in one of his better performances as Captain Nathan Brittles, a savvy veteran of 40-years in service whose long deserved retirement is expected within a few days, though he has mixed feelings about becoming a civilian.  This is one of the first Westerns to pay tribute to an aging Western hero, along the lines of Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott in Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1962) or Clint Eastwood’s aging gunfighter in UNFORGIVEN (1992).  Still served by his orderly Quincannon (Victor McLaglen) from their days together in the Civil War, their morning ritual has a relaxed, comic flair of longtime friends as Quincannon is expected to join him in retirement just two weeks afterwards.  Also interesting is Brittles’ respectful relationship with Sgt. Tyree (Ben Johnson, a real cowboy, a champion calf roper discovered by Ford), a man with equal rank while serving the Confederacy, whose opinion he values, but Tyree is reticent to offer, claiming “That’s not my department,” sarcastically claiming the orders come from the Yankee War department.  When a fellow Southern soldier dies, Brittles finds it noble and befitting to bury him with a Confederate flag.  

When a paymaster stagecoach carrying the troop’s wages is attacked by Indians with the passengers murdered and robbed, Brittles is ordered on one last patrol to quell the vicious outbreaks by a band of renegade Indians who have broken from the reservation.  Added into the mix are his orders to escort the commanding officer’s wife and niece, Abby (Mildred Dunnock) and Olivia (Joanne Dru) to the nearest East-bound stagecoach, claiming they could not withstand an “Army” winter, where Olivia has inflamed the hearts of a few soldiers by adhering to a cavalry tradition of wearing a yellow ribbon in her hair, which symbolizes her faithful devotion to one of them.  But this doesn’t prevent two young officers, John Agar and Harry Carey Jr., from spending more time fighting one another than they do with her, a sign of their youthful inexperience for leadership, making Brittles even more reticent to give up his command. When a long line of Indians is spotted moving their entire village with them, Brittles thinks it wise to avoid contact, as they’re not in battle mode, preferring to take a longer route, even though the delay has serious consequences, eventually missing the stage which is destroyed in a violent Indian encounter at the stage post, including several lives lost.  Flabbergasted at the turn of events, believing he failed every mission he was assigned, this tribute to an old soldier reveals Brittles has a few more tricks up his sleeve, all of which exhibit a flair for intelligence and cunning, displaying the kind of wisdom and experience that endear him to his troops.  In the end, Ford depicts them as one and the same in this loving tribute to “the regulars, the fifty-cents a day professionals riding the outposts of a nation.”     

Lonesome Dove — TV mini-series

LONESOME DOVE – Made for TV               B+                  

USA  (384 mi, four 90-minute installments, Pt. 1:  Leaving, Pt. II:  On the Trail, Pt. III:  The Plains, Pt. IV:  Return)  1989  d:  Simon Wincer

Gus, why not go up to Montana? It's a cattleman's paradise to hear Jake tell it.    

—Tommy Lee Jones (Woodrow F. Call)

It ain’t dyin’ I'm talkin’ about…it’s livin’.     —Robert Duvall (Augustus “Gus” McCrae)

This project started out as a Larry McMurtry movie screenplay in 1970, where Peter Bogdanovich was lined up to direct John Wayne (Captain Call), James Stewart (Gus McCrae), and Henry Fonda (Jake Spoon).  But once Wayne dropped out, supposedly at the urging of director John Ford, the rest backed out of the project as well, where eventually the screenplay was expanded to a full length novel which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1986.  After director John Huston turned down the project, and Charles Bronson, James Garner, Jon Voight, and even Robert Duvall all turned down the part of Captain Call, it was eventually turned into a television mini-series.  Considered Robert Duvall’s favorite role throughout his entire career, so that’s saying something, but this is a tragic and bittersweet saga, an epic post Civil War adventure that details the colorful interior worlds of the plentiful characters while showcasing spectacular landscapes of the vast American plains, one of the more spectacular TV mini-series to ever play on American television, largely due to the strength of the novelesque writing, adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel, that really documents the life-long friendship between two former Texas Rangers, Duvall as Augustus “Gus” McCrae and Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow Call, known as the Captain.  While Woodrow is a severe taskmaster, a dour and emotionally distant man who continually undertakes back breaking work, Gus is his polar opposite, claiming that for all the hard work Woodrow does, he has to balance the equation by doing as little work as possible.  Both are stubborn, individualistic, tough as nails, and cantankerous men who have survived when others didn’t, proud bastions of the Old West, experts in their field and living legends of their era who are now already forgotten, having paid their dues and are expected to coast easily into the comforts of retirement.  But both are restless souls, driven by the frontier spirit of living free, and like a bank robber who needs to pull off one last heist, these guys feel the need for one more great adventure, deciding on a whim to run a cattle drive from Lonesome Dove, a tiny border town in South Texas, to Montana, a place they’ve never been, but only heard of, a good 2500 miles away where the Captain believes he’ll be the first rancher to raise cattle in Montana.  It’s a crazy idea that makes no sense, but that’s precisely why they feel compelled to do it.  These are the kind of men that don’t want to ever admit that life got the best of them, continually staring death in the face and standing up to outlaws, thieves, and Indians, providing the kind of moral authority needed in a lawless land, where they also continually needle one another about each other’s supposed deficiencies, where their ongoing running commentary throughout the film is a thing of beauty rarely seen over such an extended period of time, initially shown over four consecutive nights in 90-minute installments.

Duvall is simply magnificent, an enthralling, wise-cracking character in nearly every shot throughout the entire ordeal, a guts and glory kind of guy (also a Captain) with endless stories to tell who literally commands the screen, where his enthusiasm and his zest for life endears him to the audience, continually charming his way into people’s hearts.  But much of the strength of this work lies in such well drawn out characters and the superb cast that brings them to life.  Robert Urich is Jake Spoon, another former Texas Ranger who rode with Gus and the Captain, but one who drifts and continually strays from moral virtue, displaying selfishness, greed, and weakness, allowing himself to get sucked into other people’s dirty business instead of standing up to it.  Diane Lane is Lorena (Lorie), a beautiful saloon girl who’s sick and tired of seeing the same do-nothing faces of the men in Lonesome Dove, a sleepy town where literally nothing ever happens, where she’s the only good thing to happen in the lives of the available men, but she is suffocating on the monotony of the dreary emptiness.  Ricky Schroder is Newt, most likely the Captain’s son, though he’s loathe to admit it, as his mother died years ago, but entering adulthood he’s still kept in the dark about who his real father may be.  Nonetheless he’s a handsome and likeable kid, a bit green under the collar, but game, the kind of guy who would always lend a helping hand.  Chris Cooper plays the good-natured Sheriff July Johnson from Fort Smith, Arkansas, the town where Jake Spoon accidentally kills a man, who turns out to be the Sheriff’s brother, returning back to Lonesome Dove after nearly a decade to ride out the storm hiding among friends.  Goaded by his pregnant wife Elmira (Glenne Headly) to take their young son on the trail as he tracks down Jake Spoon in Texas, Sheriff Johnson is sent on more than one wild goose chase, as after the Sheriff’s departure his wife immediately leaves town in search of the man she really loves, an outlaw named Dee Boot in Ogallala, Nebraska.  Danny Glover is Joshua Deets, a former slave, but also another former Texas Ranger and an expert tracker, one of the few men trusted by the Captain, a guy who affectionately looks after Newt, as seemingly none of the other men do.  And finally, though she doesn’t appear until the third episode, Anjelica Huston is Clara, the love of Gus’s life, the only woman he still pines over though he hasn’t seen her in a decade, a woman of regal stature who remains sassy and independent, refusing Gus’s earlier marriage proposals.   

What’s immediately clear is that the film doesn’t sugar coat history, where the Captain, despite his law abiding standing, sees little conflict when it comes to stealing horses or cattle from Mexicans across the border.  Despite tracking men down for this exact same crime over the course of their entire careers, Mexico is outside the jurisdiction of the United States, so apparently anything outside the law goes, where ironically the entire herd on this legendary drive consists of stolen Mexican cattle.  This reveals the state of mind of Texas Rangers, who had no problem using guns and brute strength to impose their will on others, much like the U.S. Cavalry was doing tracking down the last of the free Indians.  The cattle drive north takes place in 1876 shortly after the death of General Custer, in fact, exactly into the Montana territory of the Little Big Horn where the threat of Indians was everpresent, as Indians had collectively gathered in that region literally to make a last stand against the advancing encroachment of the whites.  While the drive slowly heads north, complete with wind and dust storms, not to mention lightning strikes, Jake has promised Lorie he’d take her to San Francisco, an offer that she leaped at, traveling close to the protection of the cattle men.  But Jake quickly grows tired of the monotony and leaves Lorie alone in search of a card game, where she’s quickly kidnapped by a murderous outlaw Indian named Blue Duck (Frederick Forrest—yes, another white guy in a wig), quickly turning this into a variation of THE SEARCHERS (1956), where Gus goes alone to track her down and bring her back alive.  Like a film within a film, this long and arduous journey coincides with Sheriff Johnson’s fruitless search for Jake and Elmira’s attempted escape north as well, all fraught with difficulties, unexpected horrors, senseless murders, and life threatening situations, where viewers develop a keen sense of how some outlaws, or those beyond the reach of the law, have such a low regard for life itself, routinely killing or brutalizing others for the sheer pleasure of it.  To survive in this vast wilderness outside the safe and supposedly “civilized” confines of the towns and cities required unusual fortitude, expert marksmanship, an ability to survive in the oppressive heat with little to no water, a clear head and a sharp mind, and a kind of fearlessness that doesn’t exist in the ordinary man.  This is what attracts us to a man like Augustus “Gus” McCrae, as despite his warm personal charm, it’s his qualities “outside” the laws of man that make him so endearing, the stuff of myth and legends, where it’s highly appealing to watch this man in action over the course of the entire mini-series.  His adventures carry with it a kind of Greek Odysseus heroicism, as his journey represents places we can only visit in our imaginations.      

Because of the historic setting, just at the time of Custer's last stand, the anxious tone of white settlers continually in fear of unforeseen Indian attacks does accurately represent the state of mind in the West at the time.  Nonetheless, this is hardly an accurate portrayal of Indians, again stereotypically seen as drunk, loco, excessively brutal, and heavily involved in the sex trade of white women (perhaps an idealization of the white male’s biggest fear), or Mexicans, viewed as a lawless nation mixing its citizens among our own, continually projected, along with the Indians, as horribly incompetent shooters, as both groups in the eyes of Texans in particular, are outsider groups known for creating havoc and unwarranted violence in the eyes of whites.  The tone of suspicion bordering on prejudice continues to this day, as Mexicans in Texas and the greater Southwest continue to be portrayed by politicians as illegals, un-American, second class citizens, and a threat to the freedoms of whites.  Unfortunately, this kind of racial perception was largely enhanced by the mythical view of the West, which projected brave men fighting and prevailing against insurmountable odds, where the enemy has been continually dehumanized through newspaper accounts or dime store novels over the course of a hundred years or more so that it has become ingrained and accepted as truth in mainstream American society.  This film makes no attempt to alter the prejudices or misconceptions, but instead uses many of the same deplorable Indian stereotypes seen in nearly all American Western movies, best typified by the great westerns of John Ford.  The real secret of the film’s remarkable success, however, is the strong and endearing characters, so unforgettably placed in the context of American history, making a compelling case for a re-examination of the fundamental principles of American society, many of which were fought over during the Civil War, needing reinforcement in the fragile and potentially vulnerable era afterwards, becoming more solidified over time when justice could finally eradicate the inherent lawlessness of the West.  Perhaps the highpoint of the film is the emotional payoff in the scene of Gus leaving Clara near the end of Pt. III, which is as melodramatic as anything seen in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), a tearful and sweepingly majestic moment that defines how significant it was for there to be valiant men in the West, men of guts and honor and sacrifice, men who deserve to be loved and revered, not forgotten, as it was their vision of a free land that ultimately prevailed.