Major Dundee (1965)

Men of War

Soldiers at war. Every time I see Major Dundee it leaves me with a since of lose. Even in victory. They kill. They die. Not very glamorous. Trying honest tell of the cost of battle. June 2, 2008

Damm the French and the Apaches

This is a great western. You have all the basics of the genre: troubled actors trying to do right, hopeless odds, a good spot of violence, and real hated bad guys. The story of this movie pits some rebs and union troops against the french (in mexico) and some apache killers. yes, the good guys are outnumbered and outgunned. but, the chance to kill villans brings out the fact that reb, or yank, they are all americans. in the process we have a real good movie. get it an enjoy!!!!!!!! February 24, 2008

Birth of a Nation...

...would be an apt alternative title for this broken-backed mess of a masterpiece. The plot is simple -- in the closing months of the Civil War, Union officer Dundee, disgraced by un-named misconduct at Gettysburg, is now a gaoler presiding over Confederate prisoners at a fort in New Mexico. An Apache raid on some settlers leads him off on a punitive expedition into Mexico, which Dundee sees as a stab at redeeming his reputation. Short of troops, he impresses his Southern warders unwillingly into combat, and the expedition becomes an aimless Conradian-Vietnam foreshadowing quest into a foreign country riven by civil war (French soldiers oppressing Mexicans.)

All this is an umbrella thrown over the real story peckinpah is telling; the cavalry unit is a motley microcosm of an America being born: Yankees and Confederates, Mexicans and settlers, Irish immigrants,horse thieves, Indianzed white scouts, loyal native Americans, freed black slaves in uniform -- these are the troops Dundee leads, and they would just as soon kill one another as fight the Apache. Dundee is looking for a war, any war, and when the Indians prove foxily unwilling to fight, he'll go after the French. The layers of conflict are staggering -- we have the American Civil War, the Indian wars, the French colonial terrorizing of Mexico (with the Americans acting as unlikley liberators) and a fictitious American skirmish with France, foreshadowing our own entry onto the global stage as an empire post-civil war.

The film had a famously horrific production history, and despite restoration, is still marred not only by cuts, but scenes never filmed and a script not completed at shooting, resulting in frantic improvisation. Moreover, Peckinpah here attempted for the first time his celebrated slow-motion, multi-camera ballets of violence, all of which were axed and never recovered. The film's second act is as wayward as any i;ve ever seen, wherein Dundee flees his army for a drunken bender for what seems like an eternity of screen time: this sequence is fatally irrelevant, unless one sees it as a too-frank autobiographical admission by peckinpah of the demons that were slowly killing him, grafted onto the film. [Like Dundee, Peckinpah too had to be fetched from Mexican whorehouses and rivers of agave, an occupation he eventually abandoned film-making for....]

Yet for all that, this is a brave and fascinating epic of rare intelligence: Peckinpah set out to make Moby Dick on horseback, as the hero's obsessive lust for glory bonds his hetergenous gang into a nascent American killing machine, launching itself after foreign enemies to avoid turning on itself. Peckinpah's film-making skills did not yet match his ambitions; Major Dundee turns out to be a very costly rough draft for the film where he would get it right, The Wild Bunch (and spotting the scenes, characters, and performers that foreshadow that classic is a fun way to watch Dundee). But Major Dundee, warts and all, is a terrific viewing experience in its own right, and this lavish restoration, a true labor of love, is not to be missed by fans of Peckinpah, the Western, and great American art.

Incidentally, the much-maligned Charlton Heston gives a spell-binding, disciplined and thoroughly uningratiating performance here. Legend has it, Peckinpah, who directed by antagonizing, once goaded an enraged Heston into charging him on horseback, sabre drawn, with full intent to run Sam through. Peckinpah grinned, yelled "Cut!" and said, "Fabulous, Chuck, that was just what I wanted." All the same, when Columbia were on the verge of firing Peckinpah for filming scenes he had been ordered to cut from the script (at a cost of a $1.5 million overage in 1963 dollars), Heston returned his salary to keep Peckinpah on -- a favor he had done years earlier for Orson Welles on Touch of Evil under similar circumstances. So when people malign Heston -- like Michael Moore -- I think, well what did you do to save the art of cinema today, jerk? January 3, 2008

We'll never have the true film , so this will have to do

It was a shame that Sam Peckinpah was interfered with in the making of this film , but at least this release goes some way toward making an effort to honestly show what he had in mind .

It is a good action film with solid acting and worthwhile special features which highlight the fact that this film should not be forgotten .

Any film student should have this DVD .
Recommended . July 12, 2007

A Peckinpah Film

The only reason I gave it a 4 star instead of a 5 star is the length of the movie with a slow middle. Sam Pechinpaw movies are always action packed. Heston plays a tought Major who's only purpose was to hunt down some murdering Apaches, but falls in love along the way. June 11, 2007

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