Drango

Intriguing bit of history circa 1865, as a Union Army major is assigned to bring law and order to a burnt-out, starving Georgia town, but finds the residents hostile to post-Civil War change. Director Hall Bartlett also wrote and co-produced this forgotten film for United Artists, which deals with some complex issues and fiercely tangled emotions and loyalties. Jeff Chandler is forthright in the lead, attempting to do his job politely and carefully, unarmed, but forced to fight an entire town seemingly bent on destruction and savagery. The dramatic scope of the proceedings is minimized for a 90-minute format, and the circumstances Bartlett chooses to focus on--a local man's trial, a tyrannical land baron's desired leadership--nearly reduces the power the director manages to build up in smaller corners (such as Chandler bringing a winter coat to an orphaned youngster). The absence of blacks (the freed slaves) is noticeable, though judging the movie on what is presented culls up much bigger problems. The townsfolk flip-flop laughably between the two sides (vicariously cheering evil, glinty-eyed Southerner Ronald Howard one minute, then turning inward and solemn once Chandler's Major Drango takes the floor). We don't see a full-scale view of what is transpiring personally within these people's lives (probably due to a limited budget), and so are forced to rely on the performances (which are adept) and the direction (the writing being alternately too soft and too harsh). The brutalities inherent to the scenario are discreetly presented--with one very important murder happening off-screen--but the affects are still quite strong. An intriguing drama for history buffs. ** from ****

The director and writer of this movie, Hall Bartlett knew the far-west because he made a documentary fiction about a Navajo Indian who was brought up in a white school (Navajo 1952). You can see that this movie looks more real than other westerns. Jeff Chandler as Major Drango is an officer who understands this villagers and he has self-reproach because he sacked the village during the civil war. He did it by order but anyway he wants to make it good. The officer of the confederation, Captain Marc Banning (John Lupton) is full of lust for revenge and at the end there will be the confrontation with his own father -the past- and with Major Drango who claims a peaceful future for the people who lost the war. After each war people have to try to live together again but all wounds cannot be healed in some months. This movie is a serious attempt to show the psychological difficulties in the reconstruction of a nation after a civil war.

Jeff Chandler in the title role of Clint Drango has a disagreeable and difficult duty to perform as military governor of a small Georgia town that not even a year before he had ridden through with General Sherman's army. They did not leave much standing and when the town learns of his military record, Chandler's not left with much support for the difficult job he's trying to do. To bring peace to a conquered and proud people.

The film starts with the lynching of northern sympathizer Morris Ankrum and his daughter Joanne Dru though she hates Chandler at first for not sending Ankrum to safety, she becomes his biggest supporter mainly because she has nowhere else to go.

Behind the resistance is former Confederate officer Ronald Howard who never looked more like his father Leslie than in this film. He was certainly evocative of Ashley Wilkes another Georgia aristocrat. Donald Crisp is Howard's father here and Julie London is another southern aristocrat who Howard uses to gain information. Of course Ashley's attitude toward the conquering Yankees was light years different than than Ronald Howard's in Drango.

Drango's not a bad western, but quite frankly the total absence of blacks from the film is puzzling. There are places in the south which did not have cotton plantations and hence no significant black population at the time of the Civil War. But looking at the mansions that Crisp and London have belies that notion for this section of Georgia.

That absence makes Drango a decent, but very flawed picture.

Drango is directed by Hall Bartlett and Jules Bricken and Bartlett writes the screenplay. It stars Jeff Chandler, Joanne Dru, Julie London, Donald Crisp and John Lupton. Music is by Elmer Berstein and cinematography by James Wong Howe.

In the months that followed the War between the States, the South lay in pitiable desolation. Within the people, a fire still smouldered. proud, unbowed, they watched with ominous foreboding as the hated Yankees again rode down upon their land ... this time as military governors.

Drango offers up two genuine delights for fans of Westerns and Civil War pieces. Firstly it further adds weight to the pro argument case for Jeff Chandler being under valued as an actor, secondly is that the theme of the reconstruction period at the end of the Civil War simply doesn't have enough cinematic ventures. Here in plot we have Chandler as Major Drango, sent into Kennesaw, Georgia, to help rebuild a town that as part of Sherman's March he helped destroy. He is up against it since nobody trusts him and certain factions want to continue the war.

Tone is magnificently set by Wong Howe's (Pursued/Hud) monochrome photography, visually sombre as it portents troubles ahead, this is at one with Major Drango's battle to not only win over the town, but also to exorcise his demons. The bitterness left over from the war is evident, strikingly born out by some scenes that stir the emotional heart, while the political machinations on offer are deftly played into the narrative. The two ladies of the piece are most important, each offering up a different side of the political divide, with both Dru and London competent in their acting turns. Action is played well enough in a film that has more to say in characterisations than blood stirring for sake's sake, all while the great Elmer Bernstein provides a score that tantalises the tonal flow of the narrative.

The whole thing is anchored by Chandler's strong performance, for even when he is not delivering potent dialogue from a thought provoking script, he exudes pained anguish via visual touches, believably so.

The absence of black characters has rightly been noted across the review spectrum, the area where the story is set and the period of reconstruction at the film's heart demands more insight there. And yes! it can be argued that there's a little bias in the writing. But this holds up as a most intriguing pic, it's well performed, with technical merit as well, whilst simultaneously reminding us all that the end of wars doesn't mean work isn't still to be done. 7/10

This film reveals a lot about the reconstruction era in the U. S. after the Civil War. It is amazing to see this era explained without an agenda or politically correct spins that Americans are fed now. The post Civil War era in the South shows the hardships the people faced and how one honorable Yankee military governor attempts to handle it.