The Reivers **** (1969, Steve McQueen, Sharon Farrell, Mitch Vogel, Rupert Crosse, Ruth White) – Classic Movie Review 3325

Director Mark Rydell’s brightly coloured 1969 vehicle for Steve McQueen is a lively and delightfully quirky turn-of-the-last-century adventure yarn based on an attractive work by novelist William Faulkner.

McQueen looks as though he is enjoying his hand-picked role as the plantation handyman Boon Hogganbeck, a carefree hired helper zooming off in the family’s new bright yellow 1905 Winton Flyer jalopy with a 12-year-old kid called Lucius McCaslin (Mitch Vogel) and Lucius’s stable boy mate and mulatto cousin Ned (Rupert Crosse) to drive to Memphis for three days of illicit pleasure and coming of age.

In Memphis, they find Boon’s sweetheart Corrie (Sharon Farrell), who works in a whorehouse. While Ned trades the car for a racehorse, Lucius is confronted by the strange and complex world of adults.

Director Rydell is perhaps to be criticised for a lack of urgency in his story telling, but that is unfair as it is clearly intended as that laid back kind of movie. And it is a sweet and highly appealing film rich with charming, funny incidents like the visit to a brothel and the climactic horse race.

Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jnr turn out one of their warm, literate and beautifully crafted screenplays, cinematographer Richard Moore makes it look a treat in Technicolor and there’s a John Williams score too.

And it is helped along enormously by one of McQueen’s most engaging and funny performances in a good change of pace for him at the time.

Also in the cast are Will Geer, Michael Constantine, Lonny Chapman, Juano Hernandez, Clifton James, Roy Barcroft, Lou Frizzell, John McLiam, Florence St Peter, Ella Mae Brown, Jon Shank, Logan Ramsey, Shug Fisher, Raymond Guth, Lindy Davis, Sara Taft, Gloria Calomee, Vinnette Carroll, Charles Tyner, Pat Randall, Ellen Geer, Diane Ladd, Allyn Ann McLerie, Dub Taylor and Ruth White.

Just so you are in the know, the advertising kindly helps you out : ‘Boon is a reiver (that’s a cheat, a liar, a brawler and womaniser) and he had just four days to teach young Lucius the facts of life (like cheating, lying, brawling and womanizing)’.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3325

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