Re: [Marxism] Santa Fe Trail

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

J. Rothermel wrote:
Curtiz also directed "They Died with Their Boots On", a love letter to 
Custer.

Fred comments:
"They Died with Their Boots On," one of my favorite movie titles (along with
Godard's "Two or Three Things I Know about Her", the Number One) was not
directed by Michael Curtiz, but was Raoul Walsh through and through.

It was a more liberalizing fantasy than "Santa Fe Trail" as Custer is
portrayed as a military rebel, friend of the Indians contending against the
rigidity of the government and military higher brass who won't listen to the
Indians' side, and who knows that Little Big Horn was a doomed mission but
was Only Following Orders. It's not a great movie, but pretty good of kind.
Of course, to criticize it, which is certainly called for, does not require
any knowledge of movies but only of history as the history of social
struggles.

As a movie it is not bad. Probably, as a nearly life long
pro-Black-Nationalist, I would not appreciate Santa Fe Trail as much.

It's not the best explosion of cavalry sentimentality. This prize certainly
goes to John Ford's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" with one of John Wayne's best
(and most handsome) performances. He should have stuck with the moustache. A
great movie though much less than worthless as history.

Michael Curtiz, in my opinion, was one of the inspired
hack-craftsman-artists of Hollywood in fifty years of moviemaking beginning
in 1911 in Hungary and ending with his death in 1961. The number of
great-to-fine-to -competent movies this guy directed in not likely to be
purely an accident of production values, good actors etc. The highest points
are, of course, the super-classics Casablanca and the Adventures of Robin
Hood. But there was also Captain Blood, the Unsuspected, The Sea Hawk,
Passage to Marseiles, and many others down to the western, "The Hangman" in
1959 

You can find a complete list of his movies (which, if you are a movie-lover,
will probably impress you) on Wikipedia under Michael Curtiz filmography.
Everything until 1931 (all the silents) are Hungarian.
Fred Feldman



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