Custer eroe del West

The film begins at the end of the Civil War and ends with the death of Custer and his troops at the Battle of Little Big Horn. It was filmed in single-camera Cinerama and had an impressively large cast.

I think your enjoyment of "Custer of the West" depends a lot on what your opinions are of the man, if any. As a former US History teacher, I look on the man as a very failed (if not a bit stupid) leader...so since I am not a fan, it made enjoying the film more difficult. More difficult still is that the movie didn't do a lot to humanize the man or tell you who he was apart from some general/lieutenant colonel.

Overall, reasonably good but not exactly a crowd-pleaser.

Handsome but dull western (courtesy of Spanish landscapes) to depict Custer on a mission to steal land from the Indians. A blond ROBERT SHAW looks convincing enough on horseback but something about his accent seems wrong and charisma is lacking. The Indians look more European than like American Indians and too many of the action scenes are slow paced and repetitive as Custer and his men go on various missions.

MARY URE as his wife, Libby, has little to do but register impatience with being kept in the background between battles with long waits before she shares the screen with real-life hubby, ROBERT SHAW. A more mature looking JEFFREY HUNTER (sporting gray hairs) is Will Benteen, one of Custer's more loyal officers.

The mountainous plains in Spain are no substitute for our standard glimpses of John Ford territory with not a single shot looking as though photographed in the American West. But it's the dull storyline that defeats the movie from ever becoming anything more than a series of handsomely photographed outdoor sequences. A surprise Indian attack by the Cheyennes on an Indepdence Day Celebration is one of the more colorful moments and triggers Custer's determination to fight the redskins, no matter that they greatly outnumber his men.

Nothing in Shaw's performance suggests the color and vigor of Custer's bigger than life personality nor does the screenplay do any real justice to the man or the myth. As storytelling goes, the first half of the film manages to be just plain dull and the film only picks up speed as it nears the climactic fight at Little Big Horn.

Battle skirmishes with Indians are, on the whole, well staged and full of furious gunsmoke and flying arrows--but the big set piece is saved, of course, for the finale which comes too late to save the first half of the film from the doldrums. One is left with the impression that some inventive fictionalizing would have helped (as it did with THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON).

Summing up: A very miscast Shaw plays Custer as a snarling villain who barks orders and the story has a plodding script. Could have been much more impressive if filmed in the U.S. on more realistic locales with more accurate casting. A cameo by ROBERT RYAN is no help at all.

An unusual cast was gathered for this tribute to a western hero whose accomplishments in real life are dubious to say the least. Scholars and history buffs can argue the facts and merits of General George Armstrong Custer. This review pertains to the actual film. It begins with a very odd credits sequence in which Shaw and Ure are billed as starring, then the title comes up and then zilch. No other actors or crew are mentioned. Then four years of Civil War battles are represented by years popping up on screen as Shaw tears across what looks like the same field on horseback while cannons blast continuously. So much for establishing his war record...from this he basically outran some cannons for four years straight! He gets new orders from superior Tierney (brandishing a very contemporary accent that's just as jarring as Shaw's own British-tinged one) and is soon headed out west to rid the land of Indians. First, he is reunited with his wife (in real life as well) Ure in a series of brief, strange vignettes as they travel to his new post. Once there, he is greeted by a haggard-looking Hunter (who would be dead in real life within a year) and fit, yummy Hardin (miscast as a drunkard.) In fact, the film ties with "Ride the Wild Surf" as having the most cast members change their usual looks for their roles. Brown-haired Shaw goes blonde, blonde Ure goes auburn, Hunter's hair is longer and bushy with fake gray highlights and Hardin's blonde locks are brown and he sports a huge moustache. Ryan, as a soldier who deserts to find gold, pops in long enough to show up everyone else and display what good acting can be. The film details Shaw's struggle to solve the "Indian problem". The government wants rid of them, yet he sees, to an extent, their plight. Unfortunately, the film is so episodic and disjointed in it's scripting that it can't build very much momentum or create a memorable story. Though it is long, the audience never really gets to know the characters very well. A lot of time is spent on rather elaborate set pieces (some of which are impressive) like a wagon wreck, a ride down a log flume, an attack on a train and the final stand off. Another chunk of time is wasted in ludicrous Washington scenes which include a cheaply done speech by Shaw before Congress and a (deliberately?) horrible stage show. (Shaw wrote the lyrics of one of the songs himself!) One of the best sequences involves Shaw's attempt to show his men who is boss through a rigorous training exercise in which all but one fall down completely. One major asset is the wide-screen photography which shows off some nice scenery and a few inventive compositions. The finale, with its horde of Indian warriors, is surely best seen in the letterboxed format. It's surprising to see such an old fashioned us (Cavalry) vs them (Indians) approach in a 1968 film, four years after "Cheyenne Autumn". Aspirations to tell a complex version of the tale are done in by sketchy characterizations and poor performances by some of the supporting cast (including Moore as the primary Indian chief.) The score is distracting and often overly loud. The acting is uneven. The editing is profanely awkward. In the end, the audience has not been enlightened to any degree and has watched a two hour and twenty minute film in which Hardin didn't even take his shirt off once!

I won't go on too long about this. It's an efficiently told, largely fictional story of Custer and his last stand, sweetened up for the Whites in the audience and for their children.

It's impossible to imagine an American Indian watching this without feeling nauseous. Kieron Moore as Dull Knife. And at the end Custer seems to be fighting the Cheyenne -- period -- whereas he fought Sioux almost entirely. There were only seven Cheyenne warriors present at the battle. Westerns seem to enjoy dealing with the Cheyenne whenever they need generic Indians. I think it may be the name of the tribe -- The Cheyenne. It's easy to pronounce, and it sounds good. (It means something like "people with red feet" in Cheyenne.) "Sioux," on the other hand, sounds like a girl's name. "Apache" and "Comanche" are euphonious generic names too, but it's hard to get them all the way up to Montana. So what are you left with -- "Paiute"?

I didn't mind Robert Shaw's accent. He's a decent playwright but, regardless of which accent he's using, he can project nothing more than grim determination. When he seems to be enjoying himself, maybe smiling, you can't help feeling that it's calculated, that he's grimly determined to smile. As written, his role doesn't tell us much about Custer. Sometimes he seems brutal and other times, without too much tiresome exposition, he sounds like a liberal. Mary Ure is really appealing, a decent actress, without being staggeringly beautiful, who died an untimely death. Ty Hardin wasn't much of an actor, and he seemed to go politically bonkers after his brief career as a handsome hunky type. Jeffrey Hunter has a small part as the voice of humanitarianism. Lawrence Tierney has a beaut of a New York accent, but it may not be too out of place. Phil Sheridan was from New Jersey, wasn't he? (I may be wrong, but I don't want to bother looking it up.) Robert Ryan is the best actor in the bunch and his part is completely unnecessary, adding nothing to the picture.

The last stand is epic in a way it probably wasn't in real life, if that matters at all. The dead cavalrymen all wind up in something like a circular pile instead of being scattered along the slope up which they retreated. The Indians leave the remains alone, too, instead of violating them as they actually did. (Custer's body was stripped but unmutilated.) Indians tend not to like this kind of movie. On the anniversary of the battle in 1988 they installed a small plaque of crude, angry cast iron commemorating the many Indians who died in the battle. Right in the shadow of the phallic needle that remembers the 7th Cavalry. As it happens, I was living with the Cheyenne as an anthropologist at the time. I have never met a more admirable people. You don't hear much about Indian resentment of White's assumed superiority because they don't shout loud enough. Jane Fonda on her return from France in 1970 found them boring and too fond of alcohol so she went on to more exciting things.

The film centers around general Custer (Robert Shaw) and wife (Mary Ure), though takes liberties with historical facts . George Armstrong Custer's career begins when is graduated in the known Military Academy of West Point and after that , he intervened in American Civil War where detaches in battle of Gettysburg . General Sheridan (Lawrence Tierney) assigns him the command a regiment at Fort Abraham Lincoln . In 1869 Custer and his 7th Cavalry carried out the massacre of River Washita , where a lot of Indians and their chief Black Kettle were murdered . Later on , Custer takes command a fort and two officers (Jeffrey Hunter and Ty Hardin) will help him to face off Indians with the warring chiefs Dull Knife (Kieron Moore) , Sitting Bull , and Crazy Horse and their tribes Sioux , Cheyenne , the Awpahla and the Munikhanja . The fights go on until the final battle of Little Big Horn (1876) where his entire command was exterminated .

This movie well produced by Philip Jordan blends good action scenes, shootouts , adventures and being quite entertaining , because happen many deeds and fast-moving and that's why it is neither boring , nor dreary, but entertaining . George Armstrong Custer's complex characterization with an unusual point of view is well performed by Robert Shaw who gives a nice embodiment of this Western hero. Robert Shaw's interpretation as a hippie-type, long-haired general , is top-notch , unfortunately he early died , in fact , this is his last film . His wife in the real life, Mary Ure being early dead , as well. The thrilling final confrontation between Custer army and Indians is spellbound and breathtaking similar to ¨ They died with the boots on (1941)¨ with Errol Flynn and directed by Raoul Walsh . The film obtained a limited success in spite of the lavish budget and spectacular sets . Direction by Robert Siodmak is average , in spite of a long career with many cinema classics (Criss Cross , The killers , The spiral staircase , The suspect) and the film is mediocre and overlong , too. The great director Fred Zinnemann even directed some scenes and originally to be directed by Akira Kurosawa, but he ruled out . Cecilio Paniagua's cinematography is glimmering and fascinating and photographed in Super Technirama 70 , the outdoor scenarios are overwhelming , this is the best of the film . Bernardo Segall musical's score is sensitive and moving and performed by Royal Philarmonic orchestra. Splendidly staged battles with obligatory cast of hundreds is well made by the art directors Eugene Lourie and Julio Molina . The motion picture will appeal to biopic enthusiasts and Indians western buffs.

Other adaptations about this historic character culminating in thrilling battle of Little Big Horn are the following ones : ¨Santa Fe trail¨ by Michael Curtiz with Ronald Regan as Custer ; ¨Great massacre Sioux¨ by Sidney Salkow with Philip Carey as Custer and Iron Eyes Cody as Crazy Horse ; ¨Little Big Man¨ by Arthur Penn with Richard Mulligan as Custer ; ¨Son of the morning star¨ TV miniseries by Mike Robe with Gary Cole , among others.