Les cavaliers

A Civil War film where the history of the Civil War is all just jumbled together into a pastiche of life in the South while an unconvincing love affair bubbles up between a Union officer and Confederate woman, an oddly built feud between two Union officers breaks out, and the movie just kind of stops because an on set accident let to a death that sapped the director's enthusiasm for the project and he never filmed the ending, The Horse Soldiers is John Ford phoning the effort in. Talked into embracing sobriety by his doctor for his health, Ford seems to have been off his game here, never quite finding the right footing for the cavalry story.

It's the Western Theater of the war and General Grant is setting up his siege of Vicksburg. In order to help ensure his position, he orders Colonel John Marlowe (John Wayne) to head south towards Newton Station, Mississippi, the Confederacy's main train station for supplies to Vicksburg, to destroy any contraband as well as the railroad itself. The mission requires secrecy and guts, heading hundreds of miles into enemy territory, and Marlowe is the man to do it. Before he sets out, he's assigned a new officer, Major Henry Kendall (William Holden), a surgeon who refuses to carry a gun. There's antipathy between the two men from the moment Kendall shows up in camp, but Marlowe follows his orders and takes him along.

In Mississippi, the column soon comes across an isolated country home, Greenbriar, where Hanna Hunter (Constance Towers) and her servant slave Lukey (Althea Gibson) are waiting out the war. After some feigned hospitality, Kendall notes that Hunter is spying on Marlowe's officer meeting, hearing their plan to head straight through past Newton Station once it's sacked to Baton Rouge. Feeling like there's no choice, Marlowe decides to take Hanna and Lukey along so they won't give up the column's position, mission, or destination. So begins the ineffective romance between Marlow and Hanna that starts as a meet cute and never really moves past. She becomes slightly enamored of him because of his...well, it's not entirely clear why. He's a hard man, a dedicated Northerner, a man bred from a lower class (he's a train engineer without a formal education), but he does have a certain sense of honor that she finds attractive, I suppose, most notably when the column comes across a pair of Confederate deserters who have taken the local sheriff hostage. Marlowe gets some information from the deserters before knocking them out and handing them off to the sheriff with a tip of the hat.

There are two great moments in this film, and the first comes in Newton Station. They arrive in the little town with the people, mostly women, screaming at them to go home, and Marlowe figures out that the local Confederate colonel has set up a trap with an approaching train engine that's filled with Confederate troops. The battle that erupts is a slaughter and so poorly thought out from a military point of view that it's a wonder anyone thought it would be a good idea to include in the film (this isn't the great part, it's coming). Then the troops get to work on destroying the railroad, and it's just great to see the mechanics of what it means to tear up a railroad up to and including the creation of Sherman's neckties by wrapping the weakened iron railings around telegraph poles.

And then Wayne gives an impassioned speech about how much he hates doctors, and it's one of the oddest moments of the film. It feels like an idea made up on set rather than planned out. Marlowe hates doctors because some years ago two doctors convinced his wife that she had a tumor. They operated on her, they found nothing, and she died. To have this speech come up more than halfway through the film feels off, especially when this was the war where doctors were hacking off limbs with unclean equipment all the time. A speech about how doctors had lost him many good men during the fighting would have fit so much better. It would have applied to the situation at hand much more intimately, and operated as a direct challenge to Kendall who was in the same job. The use of a long-dead wife just feels random and off.

Anyway, the column moves on, and we get our second great moment of the film. Desperate for men (the scene ends up feeling like it should have taken place in late 1864 instead of early 1863, but whatever) a Confederate soldier shows up at the Jefferson Military School and begs for the headmaster to lead his students into battle against the Union cavalry that terrorized Newton Station. The old man, a reverend, organizing his boys of between 9 and 16 years old, into columns and leading them off to fight the dying cause (again...this fits better with a later in the war story, along with all the references to Andersonville that didn't open until 1864) while a widow begs him to let her have her only son left stay home is remarkably powerful. This could operate as a short film on its own, and it's great.

And then the students find the column, open fire, and Marlow refuses to fire on children while the movie ends up kind of treating the whole thing like a kind of joke.

The finale of the film is around a random bridge somewhere in Mississippi where Marlowe needs to fight off an approaching Confederate skirmishing force while another Confederate force comes upon them from another direction. It's not much of an action scene, doesn't seem to have much in terms of stakes, and doesn't really satisfy all that well. The actual ending of the film was apparently never shot because of the death of the stuntman during the filming of some action, and the movie simply stops with the Confederate column coming upon Kendall, who stayed behind to take care of the wounded.

This movie is kind of a mess, but there is some entertainment to be had. I find John Wayne watchable in just about anything he does, and since he's front and center for most of the film, he's an asset. Most of the looks at Confederate life carry a tinge of melancholy at their losing side that I appreciate. That bit with the boys leaving the military school is honestly outright beautiful in the anguish from the widowed mother. However, the story as a whole feels a bit random, the two major action sequences are lackluster, the romance simply doesn't work, and the professional rivalry between the two main male characters ends up feeling like something from a satire rather than a straight war picture.

I don't hate it, but this isn't exactly one of Ford's or Wayne's best efforts.

As the Civil War goes against the North, General Grant (Stan Jones) is unable to take the Confederate fortress of Vicksburg because the Confederates have it so well defended... He realizes necessity of cutting off that city's supply sources..

Col. John Marlowe (John Wayne) is assigned to take a small brigade of cavalry from Tennessee, ride hundreds of miles into the Confederate territory and destroy the railroad at Newton Station, Mississippi, thereby cutting the supply line to Vicksburg... To do it, he will have to avoid all contact with rebel forces until he has reached his target...

The first problem Marlowe encounters is Major Hank Kendall (William Holden), an obstinate surgeon who will be accompanying the force... Marlowe has the expected contempt of the combat soldier for his colleague who carries no arms... In addition, when Kendall asserts his rights as an officer in the medical corps to declare unfit any soldier he considers so, Marlowe and Kendall clash...

The next problem is Marlowe's second in command, Col. Secord (Willis Bouchey), who makes no secret of his plans to use his military career to further his strong political ambitions...

The third problem is the high-spirited belle Hannah Hunter (Constance Towers). This violent Southern patriot gives him an initial hard time... The Yankee soldiers stay at her plantation soon after they cross into the Confederacy... When Hannah learns their plans, Marlow is forced then to take her along with them for security reasons...

Holden and Wayne (violently opposing strong personalities) perform their assignment with a consummate force, intensity, and expert teamwork... Constance Towers, too, registers a vital presence... At their first dinner, she passes Wayne a platter of chicken... As she leans over, threatening to divulge her engaging décolletage, she says: 'Oh come now, Colonel, a man with a great big frame like yours can't just nibble away like a little titmouse. Now what was your preference, the leg or the breast?'

Incorrigibly sentimental and romantic in his big cavalry epic, Ford's motion picture is full of heroic cavalry on the skyline imagery... Among the more affecting scenes is that in which a harsh compassionate Wayne comforts a dying young soldier and the one in which he registers his love for Towers... There is also a compelling sequence, pure John Ford, in which a group of teenage cadets march out from a Southern military academy to take on the enemy, which makes manifest to battle boys and pulls a retreat, leaving the kids cheering...

General critical consensus seems to feel that John Ford's The Horse Soldiers is a bit of a let-down, at least by the dizzyingly high standards of the director. However, it's quite liberating if you try to forget that you're watching a John Ford movie and just treat it as an American Civil War movie like any other. Then, the film's qualities become more apparent. Yes, The Horse Soldiers is inferior to many of the other John Ford movies. But Ford working at half-speed is still better than most directors working at the peak of their powers. And The Horse Soldiers is still a fascinating, exciting and expertly told war film.

Colonel John Marlowe (John Wayne) is ordered by the Union generals to lead his army 300 miles into the Confederacy, where they are to sabotage and disrupt the vital railway supply town of Newton Station as much as possible. After a disastrous few months of lost battles and heavy casualties, the Union generals are determined to swing the battle back in their favour before the arrival of winter. Marlowe is unhappy to learn that his orders include allowing army surgeon Major Kendall (William Holden) along on the mission. Since the death of his wife at the hands of two blundering surgeons, Marlowe has had little respect for those in the medical profession. To further complicate matters, a feisty Southern belle, Hannah Hunter (Constance Towers) with Confederate sympathies, overhears Marlowe informing his men that Newton Station is the target, and that once the town has been raided the Union forces plan to head for the safety of Baton Rouge. In order to secure her silence, Marlowe has to take her prisoner and suffer her sharp Southern tongue (plus escape attempts) during the trip.

The Horse Soldiers is filmed in loving detail, with gorgeous autumnal backdrops. Its story is very interesting, especially the volatile relationship between Wayne and Holden, and the mission itself provides excitements along the way. In particular, a street battle at Newton Station is memorable, as is a scene later in the film when the Union soldiers come under attack from an army of Confederate army cadets still at schoolboy age. Towers' character is written as a very cunning and feisty woman, who disguises her attributes by coming across as a melodramatic, gossipy airhead. Towers plays the part well, but because of how she's encouraged to handle the role she becomes rather irritating too. One disappointing moment in the film comes when Wayne and Holden reach breaking-point with each other and ride off to a secluded glade to slug it out. The sequence is set to be a real humdinger, but is curiously cut short by the arrival of the enemy forces. On the whole, though, The Horse Soldiers is a good, solid Civil War entertainment, well worth a look.

The fields, woodlands and rivers of Tennassee drenched in summer sunlight are in stark contrast to the horrors of civil war as depicted in John Ford's "The Horse Soldiers". John Wayne's mission to lead a troop of Yankee soldiers behind Confederate lines to destroy a railway base vital to the South's supply lines is fraught with danger. Skirmishes inevitably result in injuries and death, the former often giving rise to amputations. Although made well before the time that the full appalingness of warfare come to be depicted in films such as "Saving Captain Ryan", from "Drums Along the Mohawk" onwards Ford never shirked the unpleasant. Incurable romantic that he was, he gave his work a hard edge whenever it was needed. Although the term "road movie" to categorise films based on journeys was not then in general usage, this fascinating work, with horses replacing cars, stands as one of the genres finest examples. And yet, judging from many of this site's user comments, it remains one of Ford's most under appreciated films. I find this rather strange as it contains most of the ingredients that are the hallmarks of those generally regarded as masterworks, westerns such as "The Searchers", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "My Darling Clementine", not forgetting his glorious Irish romp, "The Quiet Man". A shrew is tamed, there is a measure of drunken knockabout and the soundtrack pulsates with rousing cavalry tunes and bugle calls. I have no quarrel with the fact that it is episodic rather than tightly knit. This somehow makes it all the more compatible with its journeying structure. Each episode on the way is brought out in sharp relief, be it the Southern belle's false hospitality and attempted betrayal, the central climax at the railroad station or the delightful interlude of the attack by the boy soldiers from the Confederate military academy (one of my favourite sequences from any Ford film). John Wayne plays what is almost a variation on his Ethan role in "The Searchers", his anger here not vent on Indians but on the medical profession which he holds responsible for his wife's death. His embittered relationship with his company's medical officer played by William Holden gives this otherwise picaresque film a strong dramatic unity. I can only advise those who consider this one of Ford's minor works to see it several times. From my own experience I find it emerges stronger on each viewing.

Director John Ford was notably sentimental about the actors and crew who had worked with him over the years in his film 'family.' Among these was an old stunt man and western wrangler, Fred Kennedy. Against his better judgment, Ford gave Kennedy a stunt ride in "The Horse Soldiers." Kennedy's horse fell, breaking the old actor's neck. The scene was retained in the final cut. But Ford was broken-hearted with guilt.