Manny Farber's best films of 1951, #1: "Little Big Horn," directed by Charles Marquis Warren

Nobody refers to 1951 as an annus mirabil­is for Hollywood film, world cinema, or any­thing else for that mat­ter. Which isn’t to say that the year did­n’t see the release of some note­worthy, ground­break­ing, or even clas­sic films: ’51 was the year of An American In Paris, A Place In The Sun, Strangers On A Train, and A Streetcar Named Desire, to name but a few American movies. (Quo Vadis was the year’s box-office champ.) Our friends over­seas gave us the likes of Tales of Hoffman and Rashomon.

And none of those pic­tures are even men­tioned in Manny Farber’s art­icle ” ‘Best Films’ of 1951,” pub­lished in the January 5, 1952 num­ber of The Nation. “Let Stevens and Kazan win their Oscars,” Farber announces right off the bat; “The Nation’s Emanuel—a life-size drip cel­lu­loid statue of Kirk Douglas, rant­ing and dis­in­teg­rat­ing in the venge­ful throes of death—goes to the man or men respons­ible for each of the fol­low­ing unher­al­ded pro­duc­tions of 1951.” After this tongue-in-cheek (or was it? so hard to tell nowadays…) intro, Farber more-or-less soberly extols the vir­tues of a very inter­est­ing crop of genre pieces.

In cel­eb­ra­tion of Farber, and of the recent Library of America pub­lic­a­tion of Farber on Film, in which the above-cited piece is reprin­ted, I figured it would be fun, and per­haps even illu­min­at­ing, to have a look at the pic­tures Farber praises therein. One a week, in order of cita­tion, until we get to the end. And so we start with the Robert-Lippert-produced B Western Little Big Horn.

Here’s Farber’s mini-assessment: “This tough-minded, uncon­ven­tion­al, per­suas­ive look-in on a Seventh Cavalry patrol rid­ing inex­or­ably through hos­tile ter­rit­ory to ward Custer about the trap Sitting Bull had set for him, was almost as good in its unpol­ished hand­ling of the reg­u­lar army sol­dier as James Jones’ big nov­el. For once, the men appear as indi­vidu­als, rather than types—grousing, ornery, uprooted, com­plic­ated indi­vidu­als, rid­ing off to glory against their will and bet­ter judg­ment; work­ing togeth­er as a team (for all their indi­vidu­al­ism) in a genu­inely loose, effi­cient, unfriendly American style. The only nat­ur­al­ist­ic pho­to­graphy of the year; per­haps the best act­ing of the year in [John] Ireland’s grace­ful, somber por­trait of a warm-hearted but com­pletely dis­il­lu­sioned lieu­ten­ant, who may or may not have phil­andered with his cap­tain’s wife.”

I do love that tossed-off “unfriendly,” don’t you?

The cap­tain men­tioned is played by Lloyd Bridges, in a stol­id, stiff by-the-book fash­ion that at the time prob­ably recalled Fort Apache’s mar­tin­et Colonel Thursday but will likely remind con­tem­por­ary view­ers of Bridges’ self-spoofing in the Airplane! pic­tures and such. No mat­ter. The wife is played by Marie Windsor, always a pleas­ure to see, but the love tri­angle here is really a red her­ring of sorts. 

“Only nat­ur­al­ist­ic pho­to­graphy of the year:” I can­’t judge that state­ment entire, obvi­ously. There are a few shots—the mag­ni­fi­cent sil­hou­ette of the patrol lined up against the sunrise—that appear to be spliced in from oth­er films, but oth­er­wise, Warren’s shot selec­tion and cine­ma­to­graph­er Ernest Miller’s views are nat­ur­al­ist­ic indeed, and effect­ively so. They cap­ture, almost to a fault, the tedi­um of riding/leading horses through rough ter­rain and try­ing not to advert­ise your pres­ence to hos­tile forces. “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod,” I thought at one point. I also recalled the con­cen­trated shots of horses’ hooves and knights’ boots in Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac. But this is a B Western after all, and Marquis is savvy and eco­nom­ic­al enough to know when and how to break up the sim­ul­tan­eous monotony/tension with an action jolt. I like how he stages a bit of hand-to-hand com­bat between Indian and army man near an open fire, for instance, for an extra fris­son of sad­ist­ic potential. 

What’s uncon­ven­tion­al about the pic­ture is dir­ectly tied in to what Farber finds admir­able about its depic­tion of army reg­u­lars. There are really only two through-lines in the film’s story (the screen­play is also by Marquis, from a story by Harold Shumate): the res­ol­u­tion of the con­flict between Bridges’ and Irelands’ char­ac­ters, and the story of one of the reg­u­lars who’s look­ing for­ward to meet­ing a mail-order bride, of sorts. The rest of the film has a more overtly mod­u­lar feel than most, in that it con­tains what could be taken as dis­crete mini-narratives, each focus­ing on one aspect of the patrol and then anoth­er. There’s a story of two-would be desert­ers and their fate; a story of how a deck of cards determ­ines the choice of a “point rider” —or does it?; a story of a sol­dier who does­n’t trust his Indian guide, and then has his life saved by him. All these present indi­vidu­al por­traits of inter­est­ing char­ac­ters, sharply drawn. While at the same time build­ing up a feel­ing of dread for the fate this patrol has in store.

The tor­tured, half-crucified sol­dier propped up there like a scare­crow later asks his buddy, “Please shoot me,” mak­ing me won­der if this film provided at least a soupçon of inspir­a­tion for a sim­il­ar scene in Alien. 

The way Marquis tips his nar­rat­ive hand some­times is kind of charm­ing. This is a pic­ture with prac­tic­ally no clos­eups; so, when this shot of King Donovan’s Private Corbo occurs, you know some­thing really bad has gone down.

And so it has. If you’ve been pay­ing atten­tion, you know exactly what. Still, the shot startles. 

The sig­nal vir­tues of this small pic­ture are still almost entirely intact, and the pic­ture is one of two on a DVD called “Western Film Noir” from VCI/Kit Parker Double Features. (The oth­er film is Rimfire.) Well worth see­ing, and the print/transfer isn’t bad. Tell ’em Manny sent you.