Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXXII

I distinctly remember when the Civil War story Shenandoah came out in the summer of 1965, friends who witnessed it first held a unanimous opinion: it was one of the saddest movies they'd ever seen.  I eventually saw it a few months after its release, and as much as I wanted to be impervious to the sorrow, reminding myself that it was only a film, it was impossible not to share my friends' evaluation.  Fifty-three years later, a long enough period for me to have forgotten the plot details, I recently had an opportunity to see it for the second time.  I guess old age has not desensitized me because the story's grief factor still registers high.

Jimmy Stewart plays a widowed farmer, Charlie Anderson, who owns hundreds of acres of prime real estate in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  The year is 1863.  Virginia is a key Confederate state and the scene of several important battlegrounds.  The war is of no concern to Anderson for so long as neither side upsets his crop and cattle operation.  Although he opposes slavery he certainly is not going to aid the Union, nor is he willing to direct any of his five adult sons, all of whom live on the farm, to join the Grays.  Some of his fellow Virginians question his loyalty for failing to answer the cry of battle, but that does not faze Charlie in the least.  When a Confederate platoon attempts to commandeer some of the Andersons' horses, Charlie and his sons run them off their land.

The big household includes two women, daughter Jennie (Rosemary Forsyth), the best tracker and sharpshooter of the bunch, and daughter-in-law Ann (Katharine Ross), who becomes a new mother.  Forsyth and Ross make their film debuts here, with Ross going on to fame two years later as Elaine in the blockbuster, The Graduate.  Charlie also has a younger son whom everyone refers to as "the Boy."  He is played by sixteen year old Philip Alford, better known to audiences as Jem, the son of Atticus Finch in 1962's To Kill A Mockingbird.  Finally we have Sam (Doug McClure), the gentlemanly new husband of Jennie.  Unlike Jennie's five adult brothers, Sam is proud to serve his native state as an officer in the Confederate army.

I was very impressed by the cinematography of William Clothier, who convincingly makes western Oregon, the actual shooting locale, appear as Virginia.  On the flip side, the work of director Andrew McLaglen falls short.  There are too many scenes which are simply too hokey, and the last scene was pure Hollywood.  Shenandoah was the first and most commercially successful of four movies directed by McLaglen starring Stewart.  Although I generally like him as an actor, Jimmy's performance in this film employs the same mannerisms and voice inflections that he'd been using for the previous thirty years of his career.  I found it to be a little stale.  For a taste of what I'm writing about, check out a Youtube video of comedian Rich Little's impersonation of the famous leading man.    

Shenandoah addresses some issues which were germane not only to the Civil War but also to the United States' involvement in the Viet Nam War, which involvement was relatively new at the time of the film's release.  Some of those issues are the senseless human cost of war, the disparity in treatment of the wealthy and the poor, and the inexplicable reluctance of one army to surrender or at least bargain for a conditional peace once it becomes obvious there remains no hope of winning.

Viewers who can't resist predicting outcomes of certain stories will probably figure that not all of the huge Anderson clan are going to survive to the bitter end.  They would be right, although most remain unscathed until the final half-hour or so.

***

Here are the movies I watched on the small screen during the second quarter of 2018.  There's only one clunker out of the eight, so not a bad run.

1. The Big Chill (1983 dramedy; When one of their former college friends commits suicide, a group of five forty-somethings reunite to pay their respects, then spend the rest of the weekend hanging out as guests of married classmates Kevin Kline and Glenn Close, getting reacquainted, listening to the soundtrack of their lives, and wondering what went wrong.) A-

2. Breakthrough (1950 war drama; Lieutenant John Agar, with help from Sergeant Frank Lovejoy and under the command of Captain David Brian, leads an infantry platoon across France in World War II.)  B

3. George Harrison: Living In The Material World (2011 documentary which chronicles the life of the Beatles' lead guitarist, with a concentration on how Eastern culture influenced his song writing and musicianship.) B+

4. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942 drama; As a young man Joseph Cotton's marriage proposal is rejected by Dolores Costello, but after a twenty year gap their relationship rekindles over the objections of her son, Tim Holt.) C-

5. Molly's Game (2017 drama; Jessica Chastain is a sexy, shrewd and smart young woman who postpones law school so she can learn the craft of running extremely high stakes poker games, invitation only, for multi-millionaires on both coasts.) A-

6. Platoon (1986 war drama; Charlie Sheen is a private who dropped out of college and volunteered for combat, now assigned to a platoon in Viet Nam with internal conflicting allegiances between two sergeants, Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe.)  A-

7. Shenandoah (1965 war drama; Jimmy Stewart, a Virginia farmer, wants no part of the Civil War until it directly affects his large family.) B+

8. Two For The Road (1967 comedy; Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn have a relationship which, over a dozen years, does not have the same pizzaz as when they were crossing France as young lovers on an extended road trip.)  C+