The Professionals

The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966) In this post-modern Western (post-A Fistful of Dollars and pre-The Wild Bunch), a ranching tycoon (Ralph Bellamy) hires three soldiers-of-fortune, late of the Mexican Revolution, to rescue his wife Maria (Claudia Cardinale), who has been kidnapped by a Mexican revolutionary-turned-bandit, Jesus Raza (Jack Palance), the ransom being $100,000. The wages are $10,000 per man for a 9 day job. The three are Henry "Rico" Fardan (Lee Marvin), Jake Sharp (Woody Strode) and Hans Ehrengard (Robert Ryan), all with different skill-sets and temperaments, for a job that will require stealth, intricate planning, and an assault on an extremely well-guarded encampment deep in Mexico.

Fardan is a weapons expert, Sharp, a former Apache scout and expert with a bow, silent and precise, while Ehrengard is a horse wrangler, with a regard for his charges, more than he does for human beings. 

There's just one man missing: Bill Dolworth (Burt Lancaster), explosives expert. Fardan wants him for that expertise, but also because he and Dolworth rode with Pancho Villa during the Revolution, alongside Raza. But, sentimentality aside, they've been hired for a job and will ride against their former band-mate, and their history with him may prove valuable in the task. It's a job, pure and simple. It won't remain either.

The four start tracking Raza's gang to get a sense of tactics and escape routes. Dolworth sets up explosives in a particularly tight cliff-pass for their end-game, that can be abetted by a train route, the government transport which they spy Raza's men commandeering, while slaughtering all of the Mexican troops on-board. The small troop of professionals don't interfere and Ehrengard is aghast, but Dolworth explains that those troops were dangerous cut-throats who had been responsible for the destruction of a village, killing Fardan's wife in the process.

But, the train will making a handy means of escape to the mountains after the attack on Raza's encampment, so the four take on Raza's men and take it over. Now, they have a quick way to retreat. But now, the tough part begins: an assault on Raza's stronghold under cover of darkness and try to take Maria back. Ehrengard stays behind with the train while Fardan, Dolworth and Sharp continue the rest of the way, three men against a well-armed fortress.

Raza's place is scouted, the sentries timed, dynamite placed, the two biggest targets being a water tower and a machine-gun placement. For Fardan and Dolworth, it's set and forget, giving them an opportunity to get to the area where Maria is being kept, while Sharp—with arrows tricked up with dynamite—provides cover and distraction. Dolworth has the explosives on timed fuses, so there will be ample explosions to send Raza's men scurrying, with Sharp given the opportunity to improvise.

But, when professionals plan, God laughs. There's always got to be a surprise and The Professionals turns on a single phrase: "We've been had, amigo..." Their mission turns out out to be made on a false premise, and it's then that the four have to make decisions of conscience, for which the time in the revolution has provided ample experience. "Maybe there's only one revolution since the beginning: the good guys versus the bad guys. Trouble is, who are the good guys?" And can good guys do inherently good, even when their job is bad...

Oh, and since they have the woman, they have to find a way to get her back...and stay alive while doing so. It won't be made any easier by the fact that the train they have in waiting has been taken back by Garza's men, who have taken Ehrengard hostage...and they're not interested in any ransom—but maybe a trade will do. Maybe.

Brooks' film (based on Frank O'Rourke's "A Mule for the Marquesa") is a nifty little variation on John Ford's The Searchers, but has nothing to do with that film's underlying motivation of family cohesion and race hatred or hysteria. Here, it's all business that sets the search in motion, not family, and in the course of the film, it happens to turn that film's premise on its ear. Things are done for convenience, things are done for commerce, things are done for compromise. There's no passion here, it's a transaction. But, passion wins out in the end.

It's another of those macho films with a woman at the center of it, and its focus—even when Cardinale's Maria isn't on the screen, the characters are always pondering "What makes a woman worth $100,000?" It finally succumbs to a rough-hided romanticism, as if any of the characters would admit to it (which they wouldn't as their credo is usually demonstrated by actions and not words) that might be revolutionary echoes or merely respect. The dialog does get a little too philosophical in intent, but it does have one heck of a clever come-back at the end. And it's an entertaining ride.

There'll be another of the Western genre's "Searchers spin-off's" next week.

The History of John Ford: Sergeant Rutledge

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

When the Founding Fathers decreed that "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence, released 239 years ago, they weren't speaking of civil rights. They were actually refuting the divine right of Kings—that just because you're born in the house of Tudor, Stuart, Plantagenet or Windsor does not give the inherent or even god-given right to rule over other people, whatever their circumstances. That's what the slave-owners who wrote the Declaration meant. But, because that document and the Constitution deal with fundamental ideals of human rights—base-line ideals—on which this country and its governance are formed, they have become "living, breathing documents," and are just as subject to evolution as the species that came up with them, and cannot, in good conscience, remain inert without undergoing re-interpretation, as this country has seen in the last couple weeks. Things change and our laws and our practicing of them, must change, if they are to remain true to the spirit with which this Nation announced itself. The United States of America, that most hopeful of country names, is an experiment in whether a people can put aside their differences, their tribalism and their prejudices and govern themselves, not relying on some potentate given that position by birth. It's an experiment that hasn't been perfected yet—and given those mentioned factors of human beings—may never be perfect to everyone's liking. There are only two ways we, as a people, can only be truly equal—by either putting aside our prejudices and practicing what we preach or by dying. Evolution or extinction will make us all equal. Those are the only choices. But, progress, like evolution, slowly, inexorably gets changed. If anything has defined the history of the United States, it is the story of the African-American, brought over in slave-ships to be propertied labor, no better than cattle, and the Nation's waking up from its privileged slumber to realize that it was deluding itself to say "all men are created equal" in theory while violating it in the worst way in practice. That struggle is the struggle of the United States—to back up its high-minded words with action in everyday life.

Sergeant Rutledge (John Ford, 1960) "Mr. Lincoln said we're free. But that just ain't so."

So says Sergeant Braxton Rutledge (Woody Strode) in another in a series of lesser known films by master director John Ford. This is another—his last, in fact*—look at the U.S. Cavalry, but fills in one of the "gaps" in the "Western" era of the United States, post-Civil War—the era of the Buffalo Soldier, when men who were former slaves were allowed to join the Armed Forces in service to the country that had previously condoned, by inaction, their forced servitude. Sergeant Rutledge (the film) is John Ford's acknowledgment of that conundrum and the hypocritical attitude of the Nation towards the rights of slaves. It is one thing to free them. It is quite another to not keep them enslaved by treating them as second-tier citizens, not equal to the whites under the law. Ford always populated his films of American history with a varied populace—Swedes, Irish, Poles, Germans, Caucasians, mostly, but the occasional Latino, as well—but his films are remarkably free of immigrants of color. It was prescient of him to do Rutledge on the cusp of the Civil Rights era, and before Sidney Poitier broke the box-office color barrier.

Based on the novel "Captain Buffalo" (a title that Ford clearly preferred but was overruled when the studio proved to be white-knuckled about it) by author James Warner Bellah (who wrote the stories for Ford's "Cavalry trilogy" and the subsequent screenplay for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it tackles the service of the Buffalo Soldiers, who, even while defending the Nation, were not equal under the law and not equal in the hearts and minds of the civilian populace they served. Sergeant Rutledge was far afield of the mainstream in its purpose of pointing out and condemning official and social prejudice. John Huston had tackled the same issue in a sub-plot of In This Our Life in 1946, when the word of a black man could not hold the weight against that of a prominent (or even a non-prominent) white in a court of law (And Rutledge appeared before a similarly themed book To Kill a Mockingbird was presented as film in 1961). White truth counts more than black truth. In fact, a white lie counts more than a black truth. The same applies in Sergeant Rutledge: Mr. Lincoln said they're free. But it just ain't so. Not as long as the color of one's skin is a consideration for justice...for anything... no matter the official platitudes saying otherwise.

"They're laying it on a little thick for Sergeant Rutledge", says Lt. Tom Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter, top-billed, although he has less screen-time than Strode, no doubt due to Warners' fears of effect on box-office revenues) and it applies to the tactics inside the film and that of the director. Ford toys with our prejudices in this one, pushing emotional buttons, challenging our own best intentions as an audience against established prejudices, which he pokes and prods, in images that provoke. Against that, he puts forth acts of character that should weigh more than the impressions those images inspire. Those images are informed (or mis-informed) by the testimony of the witnesses in a military court-martial and trial of the title character, and "character" is the chief concern of each attestant, for good or ill. Because of the differing impressions and opinions that are presented as fact, Sergeant Rutledge is Ford's version of Rasho-mon, a tip of the stetson to Japan's director Akira Kurosawa who had been, in turn, evoking Ford throughout his career.

Black man's hand against a white woman's face: images that provoke.

It all revolves around what Rutledge calls "white woman trouble:" A girl (Toby Michaels) is found raped and murdered, and her father (who just happens to be in charge of the 9th Cavalry) is also found slain. Disapproving locals have seen Rutledge helping the headstrong Lucy Dabney—and their prejudices are as much against her as Rutledge—and when she ends up dead, accusing eyes immediately turn to him. Her father ends up dead, and Rutledge is nowhere to be found, deserted. His own 9th Cavalry is sent out to track him down, headed by Lt. Cantrell, who has come out to meet his love Mary Beecher (Constance Towers, so excellent in Ford's The Horse Soldiers from the previous year). Once caught, Rutledge proves too capable to hold on to and escapes. But, when the 9th is under peril from an ambush, he returns to warn them, his sense of duty overriding his surety that he would be incapable of facing a fair trial from the white military commanders sitting in judgement, or the townspeople who'd as soon lynch him as try him.

Lucy Dabney is found murdered—it is only the image that implies she's been violated.

Cantrell, based on Rutledge's actions warning the troop, agrees to serve as defense attorney at his court-martial, but its an uphill struggle. The prosecutor (Carleton Young) bases his case on circumstantial evidence, as well as playing on the prejudices of the court and the spectators (which are not far afield from his own). Rutledge knows he will be damned, but stands trial anyway, lest the accusations besmirch the rest of the 9th. Like in previous Ford Cavalry pictures, the Corps is greater than any one man, or even the truth. The Corps must be preserved, whatever the cost.

The symbolism doesn't get more obvious than this:
The lily-white gloved hand of the prosecutor accuses Rutledge.

It's in the trial portion where Ford becomes his most expressive directing, using lighting and stage techniques to move us from the courtroom testimony to the flashbacks of the events of the witnesses' narratives. Naturalism, which has been prevalent from the beginning of the film, transitions as we move from present into the past of memory and perspective, splintering reality and truth, as the case for and against Rutledge is built. At the same time, Ford uses comedy to show the absurdity and irony of the court's officials charged with the heavy burden of judging a man's life, being far less. Those moments of farce (which disarm any protests of stereotyping as the whites get the brunt of it), especially in the form of Col. Otis Fosgate (Willis Bouchey, in a role that might have been played by Ward Bond, if he had chosen to participate) and his bickering with his harridan of a wife (played by Billie Burke), might seem out of a place if Ford 1) didn't want to break up the drama a bit—as was his wont, and 2) showing the foolishness of the officials raises the stakes (conversely) of the drama by making them less resolute and dependable as authority figures.

One of the great joys for me of Sergeant Rutledge is to see the lengthy performance of one of my favorite character actors, Woodrow Wilson Woolbine Strode, who was usually "tasked" with playing dialogue-less African princes and warriors (he would even play one for Stanley Kubrick this same year in Spartacus) who had a distinctive face that photographed well from any angle.

 

Strode's acting is varied in quality, stiff and a little too brittle on occasion, but in his break-down scene on the witness stand with Ford's camera bearing down on him, he cracks and suddenly you see an amazing performance, right from the umbraged tilt of Strode's head at the prosecution's veiled bigotry, to the crumbling of that stoic face as he must finally reveal himself, rather than keeping his counsel and expressing himself by example. Strode was always a better physical actor (the way Redford is, the way John Wayne is) and some of his most memorable performances (like in Spartacus the same year and Once Upon a Time in the West) he has no lines at all. And Ford, who got more out of actors with looks and gestures than from reams of dialogue, trusted the planes of the face to reveal thoughts and feelings that might move, and even terrify, an audience. 

Folks dismiss Rutledge as one of Ford's "atonement" movies, never questioning why other directors didn't do something similar, nor considering why it was important for Ford to continue to tell the history of the States by filling in some of the less known gaps in "the taming of the West" (especially considering that television at the time was glutted with more typically conventional Western fare) or that market forces might not demand his reassessment of the Western saga. Certainly, the timing for Sergeant Rutledge to garner more attention might have been more appropriate for the later 60's, as opposed to when Ford made it...in 1960. I think Rutledge is brave, stirring, and damning, not just for its time but for ours, as well. We haven't yet reached the point where (as one sage put it) people can be judged by the content of the character and not by the color of their skin." "Mr. Lincoln said we're free. But it just ain't so." And the line continues: "Maybe some day. But not yet." And still not yet, past the time-setting of the film, or the day it was made. Some day we'll live up to our birthright: "all men are created equal." It's why we keep fighting...in the streets and in our hearts. Until we've beat ourselves color-blind.

Woody Strode, along with Jack Robinson, and Ken Washington when they played for UCLA

* Well, he did do some Cavalry coverage in Cheyenne Autumn (which we'll take a look at soon), but the true focus of that film is The Trail of Tears from the First People's point-of-view.

** The publicity department at Warner Bros had to fight two battle to reach an audience: 1) the director was considered an "old codger" who, although he was the only director who'd won three Oscars, was thought a little "out of touch" for young audiences; 2) the story was about a black man in a time before the Civil Rights marches of the '60's. So, the question is this: how do you be ahead of your time for modern audiences but still be an "old codger" in the eyes of the studio? Makes no sense. Now, look at the posters for Rutledge from the Warner publicity department that downplay the story and Strode in favor of a more prominently positioned white. And Ford stalwarts John Wayne and Ward Bond chose not to participate in the film, except to lend their names to generically complimentary praise-plugs.

The History of John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." 

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962) Even the mention of the title invokes a cynical irony for those who have seen it. This crowning glory in the long accomplished (dare one say legendary) career of director John Ford, 68 at the time of its filming, is a bitter pill of a film and a meditation on the inexorable march of time and the brutal boots of history.

It is about "becoming"—not just in the strictest sense of transitioning (although the town of Shinbone, in which it is set, is in the midst of leaving its old West roots behind to take its place as part of the Union of States), but also in the less used sense: of reflecting favorably on the subject to its advantage.

It is also about, as so many of John Ford's films over the years, the taming of a wilderness, and the creation of a society. And the unbecoming truth that to create the veneer of civility, sacrifices must be made, just as sure as Sunday dinner.

Senator Rance Stoddard and his wife Hallie (James Stewart, Vera Miles) return to the town of Shinbone to much hoopla. It is their home-town, of course, but as the Senator now spends all his time in Washington he doesn't get back there much. So the press start nosing around to get the where-fore's of why "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (and rode that acclaim into politics), is there now. The occasion is a funeral for a man nobody knows (or has little regard for), but he's very important to the Stoddards—he is, after all, the man who brought them together. And as Hallie places a cactus on Stoddard's plain pine coffin, Stoddard relates the tale, one that blows away the Senator's folksy bluster with a scouring truth.

The Senator talks of his first coming to Shinbone as a greenhorn lawyer* and his run-in's with local bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, gloriously over-the-top), a malevolent thief and enforcer for the cattle industry who has the small town of Shinbone afraid to come out of their houses. Beaten and bleeding, Stoddard is brought to recover under the roof of the Ericson's (Jeanette Nolan, John Qualen, Miles) by Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), who's sweet on Hallie and is building a house for the two of them outside the city limits. Doniphon is contemptuous of Stoddard's belief in law and order (calling him "Pilgrim," only one of two films where Wayne used that oft-parodied term), believing that the only way to stand up to anarchists like Valance is a loaded pistol.

I say "anarchists" pointedly, because The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Get it? "Liberty" Valance?) is as much about politics as it is a story about a love triangle in the Old West. You have the anarchistic, irresponsible Valance on one side and you have the "book-larned," law-and-order, taming-the-West-by-education-and-civics Stoddard on the other. In between, you have Doniphon, who's all for government (far as it goes) but in his time, you tame the West with bullets and hard work. But that time is passing. Doniphon is late to realize that that taming means the passing of the bad guys who will disrupt, but also good guys with a sense of entitlement. Ford chooses sides, and it's for civilization—because anything else is stagnation and waste. For all the talk of "Freedom" and "Rights," those are granted only under the auspices of control and Law. Because Valance represents not only unbridled freedom, but also the seeds of despotism. As a rancher, Doniphon knows those seeds will take over unless something stronger, hardier is planted in its stead.

Even if it means the death of his way of life.

Sacrifices must be made.

By the time the tale of Stoddard and his benefactor/mentor and rival is told, a bloom has, impossibly, appeared on the cactus, because like Stewart's lack of youth in the flash-backs and the old-age make-up for the young actors in the present, Ford is also playing with time, even going to his own past, using a piece of music from 1939's Young Mr. Lincoln (that put a melody to Lincoln's loss of his first love Ann Rutledge) for the scene of Hallie regarding Doniphon's burnt-out homestead. And so, the telling of the tale of a lifetime is enough time to ensure new life in movie terms.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford goes so far as to state outright something he'd been alluding to throughout his career as a film-maker, story-teller and chronicler of the United States. Given a choice between printing the unvarnished truth or a myth for the common good, the newspaperman says, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes truth, print the legend."

There was never a better-stated justification of film-making.

It's a definitive statement of Ford's career directing movies. But Liberty Valance is also a bridge from Ford's early Westerns to the "modern" "oaters" of the 60's as Valance's wormy toadies are portrayed by Lee Van Cleef (of Sergio Leone's "Dollar" trilogy) and Strother Martin (part of Sam Peckinpah's stock company). Those film-makers were inspired by Ford, and in their own revisionist methods of "printing the truth," made their own legends.

And so the film is its own truth, summarizing one director's past as a pioneer and presaging the future of the Western film, on the edge of its demise, both "becoming" even in the depth of their cynicism.

* One of the criticisms of the film is that both Stewart and Wayne are playing young men when the two were both in their 50's. Wayne can get away with it (as he always plays old...and other reasons), but Stewart doesn't come across as a man in his 20's. I have something to say about that towards the end of the review.