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Donal Scully

The Horse Soldiers
John Wayne,  William Holden, Constance Towers
Director: John Ford
Director John Ford is renowned for being the godfather of the classic  western, credited with formulating many of the genre's conventions.
Yet The Horse Soldiers is the only one of his feature films set in the US  civil war, which is surprising considering the  filmmaker's fascination with war as a theme in several of his non-westerns.
The Horse Soldiers is based on the true story of  a raid deep behind enemy lines by Union cavalry to destroy a Mississippi supply depot.
Initially, it all seems familiar territory as Colonel Marlowe  (played by Ford's signature leading man John Wayne) accepts his assignment of a 'journey to hell', with typically phlegmatic attitude, from General Ulysses Grant.
Ford loves observing men of principle under duress and has heaps of material here after Marlowe is forced to bring along a surgeon, Major Kendall (William Holden). The two are soon, and often, at loggerheads over operational decisions that conflict with Kendall's Hippocratic oath.  Holden's  dignified restraint contrasts  well with  Wayne's crusty 'I'm the boss' routine. (Wayne and Holden were good friends off screen but worked together on only this film.)
An extra ingredient enters the mix when the raiders temporarily occupy a plantation run by Miss Hannah Hunter (Constance Towers), whose curtseying and gentility fail to disguise her contempt for the invaders.
When her mask slips it does so in a memorably searing outburst: 'Do you think our Confederate boys are asleep down here? Why you nameless, fatherless scum, they'll cut you to ribbons and I hope I'm there to see it.'
Once she becomes a security risk, Marlowe is compelled to bring Hunter along as a prisoner.
Marlowe outwardly bears the unavoidable Wayne hallmarks - the peculiar swaggering gait, the drawn-out drawl and the squinting eyes. But gradually we see he  is more than the standard Wayne macho man.
Marlow eschews  a pistol, lands only four punches  in the whole two hours and is more proud of his peacetime job as a railway engineer than his military rank. When the centrepiece battle does erupt it comes almost by happenstance, with Wayne (above with Towers) dodging bullets and shouting: 'I didn't want this. It's hard to avoid a fight.' There is poetic licence at work here as the real raid was almost entirely bloodless.
Wayne gets a rare chance to emote when, drunk in the aftermath of battle, he breaks down, near tears while recounting why he  doesn't trust doctors.
Ford handles the political nuances of the civil war in a delicate manner, crediting the viewer with a basic working knowledge of the historical context. When Miss Hunter's maid Lukey (played by Althea Gibson, the first black woman to win the Wimbledon singles tennis championship) is killed by a Confederate sniper's bullet it prompts great grieving from Hunter and deep sorrow from her captors - but not a whit of discussion about the evils of slavery. The director trusts his audience to connect the dots themselves without bashing them over the head.
Ford, who practically made Monument Valley, Utah, his  personal backlot for location shooting in his more traditional westerns, took his crew to Mississippi and Louisiana for  The Horse Soldiers. And cinematographer William H. Clothier  frames some beautiful backdrops amid the  rural territory of fields, swamplands and rivers.
While not in the class of other Ford works such as The Searchers, My Darling Clementine, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance or his cavalry trilogy, The Horse Soldiers still packs a punch 50 years on.



FILM (1960)