Two Rode Together

I have, over the last year been watching my favorite westerns over again, and also viewing westerns I had never seen including this one. A very good western picture with some light moments and some very thought provoking serious sequences. We all know the headliners of the cast, but there are many well known character actors here too. I rated this movie an 8 (7 being above average IMO). The mix of humor and seriousness was very refreshing to me. Director John Ford, I bet was very proud of this movie. Jimmy Stewart is an old crusty lawman who isn't always honest, but has a good heart. For 1950, this movie has the appearance of a newer picture in its quality. The cinematography and music were very good too. I recommend this movie if you are a fan of westerns.

The cynical and corrupt Marshal Guthrie McCabe (James Stewart) has a comfortable life in Tascosa, receiving percentages of deals. His lover Belle Aragon (Annelle Hayes) owns a saloon with a brothel and has just proposed to marry him. However, Guthrie is summoned by the US Army Major Frazer (John McIntire) that sends a troop commanded by his friend First Lt. Jim Gary (Richard Widmark) to bring him to the Fort Grant.

When Guthrie meets Major Frazer, he explains that the relatives of prisoners of the Comanche tribe are pressing the army to bring them back home, but the soldiers can not trespass the Indian lands due to a treat with the Comanche. The mercenary Guthrie demands a large amount to negotiate with Chief Quanah Parker (Henry Brandon) the freedom of the white captives. Guthrie travels with Lt. Jim Gary and they rescue the two last captives, a teenager that has been raised by the Comanche and a young woman, Elena de la Madriaga (Linda Cristal), who has been the woman of the leader of the Buffalo Shields Stone Calf (Woody Strode) for five years. Once in the white society, they are outcast by the "civilized" white society and their reintegration is almost impossible.

"Two Rode Together" is another great western by John Ford, with a different story about the difficulty of reintegration of captives of Indians into the civilized society of the white man. The plot entwines comical and dramatic situations with powerful dialogs. James Stewart is fantastic, as usual, performing an unethical greedy man that changes his behavior after meeting Elena, performed by the gorgeous Linda Cristal. Both characters find redemption in the end. Richard Widmark shows a magnificent chemistry with James Stewart and Shirley Jones. In the end, it is hard to point out the civilized and uncivilized societies. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Terra Bruta" ("Raw Land")

I'm not sure why John Ford had such a problem with Two Rode Together as he did (according to the trivia page Ford considered the film "crap" even after his favorite writer came in to make it more like a Ford picture). It brings many of his favorite, or just preferred, themes to come back to: male camaraderie, the very fragile divide between whites and Indians in the late 19th century, and a sense of balance between leisure pace and high dramatic tension and stakes. Maybe he thought he was repeating himself, or had other ideas that didn't make the final cut of the script or lost them in the direction. There's a lot of meat on the bones of Two Rode Together, even if if it does shy away from real greatness. It takes its story seriously, and also leaves some time for some unexpected human comedy between its two leads (or just mostly James Stewart).

It's premise is a little like a re-working or quasi-sequel to the Searchers. In that film Wayne was on a dogged search for his niece after she'd been captured by the Comanches and spends years tracking them down, only to find her totally changed (he still brings her home anyway). In Two Rode Together, a Marshall, about as tough and gruff and cruelly sarcastic as Wayne in that film, and a Major (Richard Widmark, the more level-headed and honorable of the two, if not quite as interesting), are put to task by the army to go to Comanche territory and bring back a few people that had been taken away years ago. Their families are desperate to see them again, and the Marshall is way more reluctant than the Major as he's had more experience with the Comanches (that, and the lack of pay, very shrewd and greedy he is). But they go ahead to the Comanche territory, track down a couple of them, and bring them back. This is halfway through the movie.

The rest of Two Rode Together sees the dire straits of this assimilation, how one of them, a rowdy boy who doesn't speak a lick of English, isn't even thought to be the right son of the desperate mother, and the other, a Mexican, is pushed aside and made to feel an outcast right away. How Ford and his writer presents this isn't very insightful (I'm sure other films have explored the American-Comanche relationship with more depth or subtlety), but it's still entertaining and full of some compelling scenes. And while Ford keeps the drama moving at a nice clip- sometimes leisurely, sometimes with more force like at the dance later in the film- he lets his two stars do a lot of lifting that makes the movie very worthwhile.

Stewart has been this cranky before, but rarely have I found this kind of grumpy but moral Marhsall so well-rounded. We laugh at some of his drunken outbursts because Stewart gives it some irony and sincerity. And there's some real tension brought out between the two characters; when he pulls out a gun he means to use it, even if he doesn't, and it's this uncertainty about him that makes it so interesting (he's not like 'Duke', for example, who you'd expect this kind of behavior). And Widmark is well-cast in this nicer-but-firm role, as a decent man who has to put up with a lot as a friend-partner-watcher of the Marshall, while also putting on a good face to his possible fiancé.

The action is far from heavy here- only one scene with a gun firing at someone, oddly enough it's a pretty weak scene and not well directed by Ford- so it's mostly a character study, more about the decisions they make, the bit players and their words to say in scenes, and what these two men in uniform will do when they complete their mission. By the end their is some redemption and catharsis, and it's not all happy all-around, and its 'issues' it deals with about racial harmony and acceptance is never too heavy-handed. Ford cares about these people, even if he says he's like his Marshall character, just doing it for the money.

Two Rode Together is directed by John Ford and adapted to screenplay by Frank Nugent from the novel Comanche Captives written by Will Cook. It stars James Stewart, Richard Widmark, Shirley Jones, Linda Cristal and Andy Devine. Music is scored by George Duning and Eastman Color cinematography is by Charles Lawton Junior.

The US Army is under pressure to negotiate the release of Comanche captives and send in a party to ransom for their release. Heading the party are cynical hard drinking Marshal Guthrie McCabe (Stewart) and his pal First Lt. Jim Gary (Widmark). The two men are at odds in how to go about dealing with the problem to hand, but bigger issues are just around the corner.....

The Searchers lite it is for sure, Two Rode Together is a mixed bag that hasn't been helped by the quotes attributed by its director. It's well documented that John Ford only did the film out of kindness and a love of money, the great man going on record to say he hated the film, the source and etc. The shoot was far from being a happy one, with the director pitching his two stars against each other whilst grumpily putting his film crew through the mangler. The end result shows the film to be psychitzophrenic in tone and structure, where airy comedy tries to sit alongside some serious themes and fails miserably. When the moral implications of the picture are to be born out, Ford, in his half-hearted approach to the production, comes off as being either clueless, sarcastically mean or going through the motions since he had already made this film as The Searchers. Well clueless is not something you can comfortably say in relation to this particular director....

However, film has strengths, not least with Stewart's over the top portrayal of McCabe. The actor is really giving it the full treatment, no doubt prompted by his director, this is a shallow man, motivated by ale and cash. This is non heroic stuff, he calls it as he sees it, he thinks nothing off telling the longing relatives of the missing that their loved ones are now alien to them. It's a clinical thread in the piece, deftly setting the film up for its telling last quarter as the moral questions are raised and the bitter irony leaves its sour taste. It's a mixed bag indeed, but hardly a disaster, though, and in spite of Ford's irreverence towards it, there's a worthy viewpoint in amongst all the causticism. It's just a shame that all the great individual aspects don't make a complete and rewarding whole, the blend of comedy and drama, this time, not making for a great John Ford picture. 6.5/10

John Ford's last traditional western was his first with either James Stewart or Richard Widmark; with Stewart first appearing balancing on a chair like Henry Fonda in 'My Darling Clementine' and several of Ford's repertory company still present (including a very eccentric cameo by Mae Marsh).

At first the tone recalls Stewart's subsequent farcical Dodge City interlude in 'Cheyenne Autumn'. But despite the title there's far more talk than riding, and despite a superficial resemblance to 'The Searchers' - from which Henry Brandon returns as a very saturnine Indian chief - Ford plainly wasn't really interested, and the film - as Allan Eyles later wrote - lacks "any real sense of urgency or purpose".

As attractively shot by Charles Lawton in Eastman Color it looks good, however, and it's always good to see either Stewart or Widmark; or Shirley Jones for that matter.