Major Dundee

"Major Dundee" is a Western hard to classify, in part because of some deliberate ambiguity in vision characteristic of director Sam Peckinpah's later work, in part from trying to force too much into too small a space. The result is a picture deeply flawed though never uninteresting.

The concept is terrific, anyway: In the waning days of the American Civil War, an Apache raiding party attacks a Union force and makes off with three small boys. Chasing them, with a mixture of Union, captured Confederate, and irregular civilian forces, is one Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston), a reckless albeit humane seeker of the same kind of glory that led George Custer to Little Bighorn a decade hence.

It's a big role tailor-made for Heston, who fills the part in his singular ham-on-wry way, going for the big moment even when delivering the smallest of lines, doing so with the kind of nuance and wit that carries you along for the ride. Heston imitators like Phil Hartman must have had a field day watching as Heston, stripped to his undershirt but still wearing a manly neckerchief, tells his head scout (James Coburn): "Don't get yourself killed. That would inconvenience me."

Also terrific is Richard Harris as the leader of the captured Confederates, Tyreen, a fellow more noble than Dundee but nursing an even more bloated sense of wounded pride. Harris was another blowhard actor who overdid it a lot but nails it here. Between Dundee and Tyreen is much of the film's central conflict. To Peckinpah's credit the early scenes showcasing this tension are every bit as tense and exciting as the action sequences later on.

Peckinpah even gets great service from such disparate elements as comic actor Jim Hutton (who doesn't seem to belong in a Peckinpah picture, yet makes it work here as a befuddled lieutenant with able help from Heston), location shooting in Mexico, and skysets that sometimes call to mind David Lean's work on "Lawrence Of Arabia."

Peckinpah was trying to make the same kind of epic as "Lawrence," vast in scope and profound in message. Here "Dundee" gets into serious trouble. As Dundee's band rides on, the script ambles off into strange directions, shoehorning a romance and a drinking binge for Dundee that pulls us away from the central story even as that mutates into twin conflicts with the Apaches and the French, all resolved in a rushed and unsatisfying fashion. Minor characters, played by name talents like Dub Taylor and Slim Pickens, are established as if they herald things to come, only to completely disappear instead. The theme music is as ill-fitting as Coburn's phony beard.

By all accounts Peckinpah eventually lost interest in "Major Dundee," and the result is a film that never finds its way. But it is never dull, and often arresting, especially as it gives Heston one of his broadest acting canvases. Dundee would be unsympathetic in almost anyone else's hands, but Heston gives him a humanity that draws him closer, and makes his foibles more real to us, even to some degree shared, as we watch every other character in the film round on him sooner or later and find ourselves pulling for Dundee even when he's wrong.

However lacking in discipline "Dundee" is, you can watch it over and over and come away entertained and with a different feeling each time, which shows something was working. A problem picture, yes, but one with a lot of heart, soul, and vision, a failed experiment but one worth experiencing all the same.

"Major Dundee" is a forgotten, much underrated masterpiece, though admittedly affected by many defects. Indeed, here the director Peckinpah is (almost) as much innovative as in his undisputed best work "The Wild Bunch". The realism of many scenes, like that of the camp-hospital, with the badly-wounded bleeding soldiers lying on the ground, was stark new at the time the film was made. The action scenes are fantastic. In particular, look at the furious violence of the final brief battle on the river, note that a pool of blood spreads out on the water where the horses are hit: never seen such stuff before!

The story is exciting. The photography is wonderful: the beauty of the Mexican locations is definitely stunning. The work of the whole cast is very good.

The clash between Major Dundee (Charlton Heston) and the Confederate war-prisoner Captain Tyreen (Richard Harris) is somewhat conventional, but the character of Dundee can be placed among the best depicted and most interesting in the history of western movies. This frustrated soldier, a typical born-to-fight fellow, has finally his chance to make war, pursuing the cruel Apache Sierra Charriba. And he fights, kills, makes war against everybody and everything (the Apaches, the French army in Mexico, his own soldiers if necessary). Then, suddenly, something goes to pieces inside him. He feels a mortal tiredness; he sinks into drunkenness, dirt, brutish dejection. Then the Apaches reappear, and Dundee finds the strength to exit from his self-built nightmare... and he restarts to fight, fight, fight... This fellow has really no other choice: either to be an assassin, or to be a brute. Strikingly original character!

It's true the movie have several faults. It is too long and often slow-paced. The martinet officer played by Jim Hutton is out of place: this comic character could be appropriate in a John Ford's movie, but he grates much with Peckinpah's tragic vision. The scout played by James Coburn and some other minor characters are uninteresting. And, of course, Senta Berger is completely pointless: but she's so lovely that we can easily forgive her presence.

I learn from other comments that "Major Dundee" was badly butchered by the producers. I saw it twice at the theaters, and some other times on the TV. I can say that the television version is very bad with respect to what I saw on the wide screen. Many interesting details and subtleties have been cut. And by no means we can forgive that two magnificent scenes are ruined: the ambush on the creek and the carnage at the Apache camp in the wide-screen version happen over-night! But in the TV version it seems that it's full light! This leaves a feeling of annoying nonsense on the viewer (are the Apaches sleeping during day?). Too bad!

Luckily enough, for all his misfortunes and troubles "Major Dundee" is a great, magnificent, innovative movie.

A textbook example of how a penny-pinching producer can ruin a potentially great movie by basically sandbagging its (admittedly truculent) director, MAJOR DUNDEE nevertheless works as an answer of thoughts to the glorious Cavalry westerns of John Ford. Sam Peckinpah, on his third film overall and first one with a large-scale budget, was somehow able to pull a good film out of his controversial hat, thanks in no small part to his cast.

Heston plays an ambitious, ego-driven warden of a prison outpost in New Mexico in the closing months of the Civil War. When a rampaging band of Apache slaughter a family at a nearby ranch and then take apart a regiment he sends out to destroy them, Heston sees his way to get out of his routine job and get promoted. But to do this, he must form a garrison of troopers comprised of civilians, blacks, and Confederate prisoners. One of the latter is Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris), who had once been his friend but is now his worst enemy. Furthermore, his pursuit of the Apache, once it starts, will take the troopers across the Rio Grande into French-occupied northern Mexico. Now, they'll not only have to worry about hunting down the Apache and keeping the peace amongst themselves, they also have to worry about French lancers.

Despite the film being butchered so maliciously to the point where many critics rightly complained about its incoherence, plus a marital music score that Peckinpah detested royally (he could have used Jerry Goldsmith here), MAJOR DUNDEE succeeds by pulling out as many stops as it can. It benefits from being shot almost exclusively on location in Mexico (under truly ghastly conditions, which would have happened even without studio interference). The photography by Sam Leavitt is also quite good (though, in another case where the producer overrode the director, Peckinpah couldn't use his favorite cameraman Lucien Ballard on the shoot). And there are those moments of violence and bloodshed that predate, though in a more 'PG-13' fashion, Peckinpah's next film, the far more violent 1969 epic THE WILD BUNCH.

Heston is as good as ever in the title role. But surprisingly, he is nearly matched on screen by Harris, who plays his role as an Irish supporter of the Confederacy with great dash and insight. James Coburn also does good journeyman work as the one-armed scout Sam Potts. Peckinpah rounds out the cast with his Usual Suspects: Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, John Davis Chandler, Slim Pickens, and Dub Taylor.

In spite of all its flaws, MAJOR DUNDEE is still quite viewable, which is why I rank it an 8 out of 10.

NOTE: In 2005, for its 40th anniversary re-release, Sony Pictures released an extended version of MAJOR DUNDEE on DVD, with twelve minutes of footage once thought irretrievably lost placed back in; and they've replaced the original marital music score in favor of one by Christopher Caliendo. It is closer to what Peckinpah had in mind, but with thirty minutes of additional footage irretrievably lost, there's no telling whatsoever how much better this film might have been had Peckinpah not been sandbagged. Nevertheless, it still stands as a slightly flawed but never dull Civil War western.

The first half of "Major Dundee" is gripping and fascinating. The problem is that the second half doesn't deliver on the build-up. The whole point is supposed to be the pursuit of the Apache, yet the film spends more time getting sidetracked from all this, in particular the scenes of Dundee's injury and descent into drunkenness (and did we really need Senta Berger, since her role is really pointless, despite the visual scenery she adds?) and when the Apache is found, it happens too abruptly. Fascinating supporting characters disappear or are downplayed too much in the second half, and the ending is too abrupt as well. Since the expedition ends up returning after the surrender of Lee and the end of the War, I was surprised there was no scene of Dundee returning to the Fort and offering a final reflection on Tyreen. The film literally cried out for it.

Charlton Heston felt that Dundee should have been more about the issues of the Civil War and had they stuck to this approach all through the film we might have had a great film instead of a merely good one.

In 1864, the Apache warriors led by Sierra Charriba slaughter a Union troop of soldiers and a family of settlers. They abduct their three sons and flee to Mexico. Major Amos Charles Dundee (Charlton Heston), who was disgraced at the Battle of Gettysburg and sent to a POW outpost in New Mexico, decides to hunt down Sierra Charriba and his Apache seeking for glory. He recruits an army of Confederate prisoners-of-war, black soldiers, a reverend that knows the boys and outcast people (thieves, drunken etc.) and chases the Apache group seeking also revenge, crossing illegally the border with Mexico.

The restored version of "Major Dundee" is a good film directed by Sam Peckinpah. The story of revenge and seeking glory by a stubborn officer has great moments, mainly the constant friction between Union and Confederate soldiers that are forced to team-up. The lack of chemistry between Charlton Heston and Senta Berger in an unnecessary romance could have been edited. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Juramento de Vingança" ("Vengeance Oath")