Major Dundee **** (1965, Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, James Coburn) – Classic Movie Review 5680

Charlton Heston gives a bravura turn as the tormented cavalry Major Amos Dundee and Richard Harris excels too as Captain Benjamin Tyreen, a dashing Confederate rebel, in director Sam Peckinpah’s troubled 1965 epic Western about a cavalry attack led by Major Dundee on marauding Apaches.

The reliable playing from a remarkable cast and the director’s vivid handling of the action nearly produces a major Western. But the movie is marred by the Columbia Studios’ post-production cutting, which leaves it looking unconstructed.

Also Peckinpah seems to have had script problems in his screenplay with Harry Julian Fink and Oscar Saul, and here, as with some of his other films, is struggling to pull all the characterisations and narrative together in a coherent, compact whole.

Nevertheless some scenes have greatness stamped upon them, and the big-studio production with all Mexican locations certainly looks wide and handsome. It is a beautifully produced, cultish film, with glorious cinematography in Eastman Color by Sam Leavitt and a great roster of masterly character actors, and well worth a look.

The script is based on a true incident also used in Two Flags West (1950).

Also in the cast are Jim Hutton, James Coburn, Michael Anderson Jr, Senta Berger, Mario Adorf, Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, R G Armstrong, L Q Jones, Slim Pickens, Karl Swenson, Michael Pate, Dub Taylor and John Davis Chandler.

In April 2005, Film Forum premiered the 136-minute original cut authorized by producer Jerry Bresler before he left Columbia Studios, which had then been recently found in Sony Pictures’ archives. All the cuts were edited out of the 123-minute released version at the last minute by the studio after a disastrous premiere and hostile reviews. This restored version played in selected cities in North America and is released on a Region 1 DVD. Peckinpah’s unreleased director’s cut ran 156 minutes, though his original cut was four hours and 38 minutes. No wonder there are plot holes!

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5680

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