Major Dundee

Plot synopsis:
During the American Civil War, Union cavalry officer Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston) has been relieved of his command for an unspecified tactical error at the Battle of Gettysburg (it is implied that he showed too much initiative) and sent to head a prisoner-of-war camp in the New Mexico Territory. After a family of ranchers and a relief column of cavalry are massacred by an Apache war chief named Sierra Charriba (Michael Pate), Dundee seizes the opportunity for glory, raising his own private army of Union troops (black and white), Confederate prisoners led by his former friend and rival from their days at West Point, Captain Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris), several Indian scouts, and a gang of civilian mercenaries to illegally pursue Charriba into Mexico. Tyreen bears a grudge against Dundee. Before the war, Dundee cast the deciding vote in Tyreen's court-martial from the U.S. Army for participating in a duel, leading to Tyreen later becoming an officer in the Confederate Army. However, having given his word of honor, the chivalrous Tyreen binds himself and his men to serve loyally, but only until Charriba has been dispatched.
When the diverse factions of Dundee's force are not fighting each other, they engage the Apaches in several bloody battles. Though they rescue several young children captured by the Apaches, the Americans lose most of their supplies in an ambush, forcing them to raid a village garrisoned by French troops supporting Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. However, there is little to loot, and Dundee ends up sharing some of his dwindling food with the starving Mexicans. Beautiful resident Teresa Santiago (Senta Berger), the Austrian widow of a doctor executed for his support of the rebels under Benito Juárez, causes further tensions between Dundee and Tyreen.
Dundee makes it easy for his French prisoners to escape. When they return with reinforcements as he had expected, Dundee surprises them in a night attack and makes off with badly needed supplies. Teresa and Dundee have a brief affair. In an unguarded moment with her, he is attacked by the Apaches, and wounded in the leg, forcing him to seek medical help in French-held Durango. The doctor successfully removes the arrow, but Dundee has to remain there to recuperate. He is tended by a pretty Mexican, whom he eventually takes to bed. When Teresa comes upon them unexpectedly, her relationship with Dundee comes to an abrupt end. Dundee starts drinking heavily as a result. Tyreen has to sneak into town and shame Dundee into resuming his mission.
Charriba proves difficult to pin down, so Dundee pretends to give up and starts back for the United States. The Apaches give chase and end up in a trap. Charriba is finally killed. With their bargain concluded, Dundee and Tyreen prepare to resume their personal battle, but the vengeful French appear, forcing the two men to set aside their differences. With the French having positioned a portion of their force on the American side of the Rio Grande, blocking Dundee's forces from crossing into U.S. territory, the two cavalry forces charge each other at the Rio Grande, with major loss of life on both sides. Tyreen sees a French soldier seize the U.S. regimental colors, and seemingly moved by a patriotism he had thought dead, he takes back the captured American flag, and hands it over to Dundee – only to be hit in the stomach. With his last strength, he rides off to singlehandedly delay a second detachment of French cavalry while the others escape across the Rio Grande, and set out for home, greatly reduced in number.
As Dundee's force heads home, the narration notes that it's now April 16, 1865, and the soldiers are still unaware that the Civil War is over and President Lincoln has been assassinated.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
A textbook example of how a penny-pinching producer can ruin a potentially great movie by basically sandbagging its (admittedly truculent) director, MAJOR DUNDEE nevertheless works as an answer of thoughts to the glorious Cavalry westerns of John Ford.
Sam Peckinpah, on his third film overall and first one with a large-scale budget, was somehow able to pull a good film out of his controversial hat, thanks in no small part to his cast.Heston plays an ambitious, ego-driven warden of a prison outpost in New Mexico in the closing months of the Civil War. When a rampaging band of Apache slaughter a family at a nearby ranch and then take apart a regiment he sends out to destroy them, Heston sees his way to get out of his routine job and get promoted.
Now, they'll not only have to worry about hunting down the Apache and keeping the peace amongst themselves, they also have to worry about French lancers.Despite the film being butchered so maliciously to the point where many critics rightly complained about its incoherence, plus a marital music score that Peckinpah detested royally (he could have used Jerry Goldsmith here), MAJOR DUNDEE succeeds by pulling out as many stops as it can.
Peckinpah rounds out the cast with his Usual Suspects: Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, John Davis Chandler, Slim Pickens, and Dub Taylor.In spite of all its flaws, MAJOR DUNDEE is still quite viewable, which is why I rank it an 8 out of 10.NOTE: In 2005, for its 40th anniversary re-release, Sony Pictures released an extended version of MAJOR DUNDEE on DVD, with twelve minutes of footage once thought irretrievably lost placed back in; and they've replaced the original marital music score in favor of one by Christopher Caliendo.
The work of the whole cast is very good.The clash between Major Dundee (Charlton Heston) and the Confederate war-prisoner Captain Tyreen (Richard Harris) is somewhat conventional, but the character of Dundee can be placed among the best depicted and most interesting in the history of western movies.
"Major Dundee" is Sam Peckinpah's rehearsal for "The Wild Bunch." The stories for both films are basically the same (men whose time has come and gone and they know it, and who don't fit in either society they are forced to be in, and they know that, too).
"Dundee" has a good story, excellent action scenes and a sterling supporting cast of first-rate character actors (R.G. Armstrong, John Davis Chandler, Warren Oates, among others), but as previously noted, the film tends to fall apart during the second half.
("Logan's Run") as a green, wet-eared bugle boy, the film's narrator; future Oscar-winner James Coburn ("The Great Escape", "Cross of Iron") as an one-armed, half-breed Indian tracker; Senta Berger (also of "Iron") as a sweet but strong village doctor and Brock Peters ("Soylent Green" with Heston; "To Kill A Mockingbird" and the first African-American actor to work on a Peckinpah film) as the leader of free African slaves-cum-Union soldiers.There's also Peckinpah's stock actors: Ben Johnson, Warren Oates, John David Chandler, L.Q. Jones, Dub Taylor, Slim Pickens and R.G. Armstrong.
Plus, Berger's assistant in "Dundee" is played by Begonia Palacios, who would later be the infamous director's second wife.And there's the film's bad stuff, including characters coming and leaving during important plot points, back story details being scant (Peckinpah co-wrote the screenplay on a tight budget and schedule with Harry Julian Fink, who later co-created "Dirty Harry" with his wife, and Oscar Saul, who wrote the screenplay of "A Streetcar Named Desire") and behind the scenes animosity, like Heston, on horseback, nearly cutting down Peckinpah with a saber, and Peckinpah himself being locked out of the editing room by film producer Jerry Bresler (the two "Gidget" sequels) and then-executives at Columbia Pictures, who wanted a "John Ford-like cavalry film".
To Peckinpah's credit the early scenes showcasing this tension are every bit as tense and exciting as the action sequences later on.Peckinpah even gets great service from such disparate elements as comic actor Jim Hutton (who doesn't seem to belong in a Peckinpah picture, yet makes it work here as a befuddled lieutenant with able help from Heston), location shooting in Mexico, and skysets that sometimes call to mind David Lean's work on "Lawrence Of Arabia."Peckinpah was trying to make the same kind of epic as "Lawrence," vast in scope and profound in message.
The most annoying thing about this film (besides the bad editing and music) is the narration, it seems so out of place.Major Dundee is about a drunken battle harden officer who must lead a rag tag bunch of p.o.w.s, prisoners and calvary men across the southwestern desert and into Mexico searching for some "wild Indians".
Pekinpah's excellent Western which works as standard Cavalry movie, a meditation of loyality and friendship and a study in a dangerous obsession.Heston is very good as the titular Major who will risk everything to catch the raiding Apache's and restore his good name - he is stiff necked and inflexible and plays nicely against Harris's dashing Southern Captain who only wants to get home.
This is still a fine movie, with action, humor, suspense and even a little history of the French incursion into Mexico during our civil war.Charlton Heston is the star, and title role, but Richard Harris steals the show as the flamboyant Captain Tyreen.
He takes no action in a situation that could doom the entire mission, and is fortunate that the preacher and captain bail him out.It seems that the money or patience ran out and the film ends in a frenzy of fighting with the Apaches and then the French.I recommend this movie to any Civil War or Western fans, you won't be disappointed.
The restored version of "Major Dundee" is a good film directed by Sam Peckinpah.
In this shortened version a lot of what happens may not appear to make sense.Charlton Heston plays the Yankee Major Dundee of the title who leads a troop made up of Northern soldiers as well as renegades and confederate prisoners in search of the apaches who massacred a garrison and kidnapped a group of male children.
On route they encounter a platoon of French soldiers who have taken over a Mexican village, fall out amongst themselves, (the leader of the confederates, Richard Harris, vows to kill Dundee when the apaches are caught or destroyed) and finally come up against the Indians themselves.It is a complex, morally ambiguous film, (though perhaps the complexity is largely to do with the cutting of the picture), and there are great things going on in it, (the relationship between Heston's Dundee and Harris and between Dundee and his men are beautifully delineated), and both Heston and Harris are superb.
Here in the new millennium we are able to see a restoration of the film with added scenes that gives the film are more cohesive structure, and yes it improves the film ten fold because the characters have flesh on their bones, yet still we are only really glimpsing three parts of Peckinpah's vision since there is another 30 minutes of film seemingly lost forever, and that is a crying shame because this film could have been a western masterpiece had it been allowed to flourish.There is still a lot to enjoy here tho, Major Dundee leads a rag tag army of Union soldiers, Confederate rebels, convicts, loonies, and a one armed James Coburn into Mexico to hunt down an Apache army who are responsible for deadly attacks on U.S. bases in Texas.
James Coburn plays a very interesting character, but it's a character that demands more time on screen than we actually get (perhaps the victim of the cretinous cuts?), and it leaves a hankering feeling that never quite leaves you.It's a fine journey, it's a fine character piece, and everyone also note that the wide screen shoot is gorgeous, but at the end of the day Major Dundee is only hinting at the genius that would deliver The Wild Bunch four years down the line, but it could have been so much different...Forgive them for they know not what they do.
It is set during the last winter of the Civil War, cavalry officer Major Amos Charles Dundee (Charlton Heston) leads a contentious troop of Army regulars along with a band of Confederate prisoners led by Captain Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris) who volunteer to go into Mexico and track down a band of rampaging Apache Indians .
It is his narration which tells the rest of the story which by the way, takes place during the Civil War.Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston) arrives a Union prison to form a group of volunteers to go after the Apaches and exact revenge for the massacre.
He assembles a group of volunteer misfits including regulars Lt. Graham (Jim Hutton), Trooper Ryan, Sgt. Gomez (Mario Adorf), a grizzled one-armed scout (James Coburn) as well as a vengeful Reverand (R.G. Armstrong), a horse thief (Dub Taylor) and the disheveling Wiley (Slim Pickens).Not having enough men, Dundee brings Aesop (Brock Peters) and his freed slaves on board and is then forced to ask for volunteers from the Southern prisoners led by Captain Tyreen (Richard Harris) to round out his force.
No doubt Peckinpah loved the Western genre so allowing him total free rein over a movie like this is kind of like letting a child loose in a sweetie shop and will lead to one thing - Disaster No doubt if this had been filmed in the 1970s we'd have seen MAJOR DUNDEE analysed as being a very good example of how the director is the auteur of a movie but in the mid 1960s Hollywood studios didn't allow this type of maverick behaviour so it's highly unlikely anyone made this as freely structured art and the producers should be blamed for a lack of discipline .
If you're aware of the films of Sam Peckinpah you'll know that he can make an absolutely outstanding movie when he's forced into it , THE WILD BUNCH is arguably the greatest western of all time while CROSS OF IRON is in my opinion the greatest movie set during the second world war but more often than not his films are bizarre exercicises in excess and MAJOR DUNDEE is a good example .
Enjoyed this film directed by Sam Peckinpah who also directed "Straw Dogs" in 1971 created a great story during the 1860's and at the end of the Civil War. Major Amos Dundee, (Charlton Heston) is a major who was in the Union Army and was disgraced and put in charge of a Confederate prison camp.
Major Dundee (Heston) leads a group of Union soldiers and Confederate prisoners on a mission against Apaches in Mexico.
(Although the story told by the film is fictitious, it is a historical fact that some captured Confederate soldiers, known as "Galvanized Yankees", did volunteer to fight for the Union, normally against Native Americans).Peckinpah concentrates less on the military conflict between the Cavalry and the Apaches than on the personal conflict between Dundee and his second-in-command, Captain Ben Tyreen, one of the "Galvanized Yankees".
There is also a subplot about Dundee's romance with Teresa, the Austrian-born widow of a Mexican doctor executed by the French for supporting the rebels.There are some good things about the film; both Heston and Richard Harris as Tyreen play their parts well, and the battle scenes are well-handled.
The final edited or, in this case butchered version of Major Dundee was not the film either Peckinpah, Heston or the studio intended it to be.
In anycase, the scene and the movie were eventually completed and Major Dundee today remains a classic example of both malign studio interference and a lost opportunity of creating a great film..
In a way it's a very good film to see as a marker of the times- big budget pictures with big name stars meant to bring in anyone who might be somewhat in the market and isn't glued to a TV set or out on the streets marching for a cause- and for the future for the director.It's on the one hand the epic story of Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston), who led his cavalry of prisoners and soldiers, union and confederate, on a crazy mission to kill a bunch of Apaches that have been raiding US bases which would get him in a lot of trouble if caught by his superiors, and of course if he got his men killed by the wrong people.
If a film can be good, as Orson Welles once said, if it reflects to a degree the person who made it, Major Dundee turns out to be better than might be expected.'Expected' in the sense that it's Peckinpah before he broke out as the true madman of American movie-making for a good half a decade between The Wild Bunch and Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
Sam Peckinpah's cavalry oater follows tough Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston) as he leads a motley troop of Union cavalry, Confederate prisoners, and colourful civilians into French occupied Mexico to rescue children kidnapped by the Apache, extract revenge against the renegade chief, find glory, and repair his reputation.
However, the cast is great and has a lot of Peckinpah regulars like Ben Johnson, Warren Oates(who would reunite next in Sam's masterpiece The Wild Bunch), James Coburn, LQ Jones, RG Armstrong, Slim Pickens, as well as Richard Harris,who was awesome as nemesis for leading man/antihero Charlton Heston, who gives one of his most interesting performances in this picture.
Though at times this displays director Sam Peckinpah's penchant for self-indulgence, most of the film is spot-on, with a muscular script, great Mexican locations, and an excellent, macho performance by Charleton Heston, in a role he was seemingly born to play.
Likewise, Richard Harris is magnetic (in his first western) as his imprisoned Confederate counterpart, while James Coburn, along with the Peckinpah stock company, are a whole lot of fun to watch too.The only real flaw, in my opinion, is the subplot involving Dundee's seemingly forced romance with European widow Senta Berger and his recuperation from an enemy's arrow.
Major Dundee leads a group to Mexico to destroy a band of Apaches.His group contains of Army regulars, Confederate prisoners and Indian scouts.The prisoners' group is led by Benjamin Tyreen, Dundee's former friend and rival.Major Dundee from 1965 is a Sam Peckinpah movie.This is not the best of the director.But the actors do all great work.Charlton Heston plays the part of Major Amos Dundee.Richard Harris is Captain Benjamin Tyreen.Jim Hutton portrays Lieutenant Graham.James Coburn does the role of Samuel Potts.Michael Anderson Jr. is Trooper Tim Ryan.Senta Berger plays the part of Teresa Santiago.Brock Peters plays Aesop.The western guy Ben Johnson portrays Sergeant Chillum.Then there are some of the Peckinpah regulars, with Warren Oates playing O.W. Hadley, R.G. Armstrong playing Reverend Dahlstrom and L.Q. Jones playing Arthur Hadley.Slim Pickens is Wiley who likes the booze.Dub Taylor plays Benjamin Priam.Although not the finest of Peckinpah, the movie has its moments.Like the scene where Dundee is wounded by an Indian arrow after taking a swim with Teresa.And the friction between Dundee and Tyreen is captivating to watch.All the Peckinpah fans should get a kick out of this movie..
(Palacios, who plays his love interest, married director Peckinpah after this.) The primary problems seem to come in the mid to late section of the film when many things happen to the characters in swift succession and it's hard to completely gather their motivations and the timing of the actions.
(Palacios, who plays his love interest, married director Peckinpah after this.) The primary problems seem to come in the mid to late section of the film when many things happen to the characters in swift succession and it's hard to completely gather their motivations and the timing of the actions.
Because director Sam Peckinpah sandwiched this film between "Ride the High Country" (1962) and "The Wild Bunch" (1969), you'd think there must be some meat in "Major Dundee".
Now, the film looks like it needs to be edited down.**** Major Dundee (3/15/65) Sam Peckinpah ~ Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Michael Anderson Jr., Jim Hutton.
With a title like MAJOR DUNDEE, I'd expect either a Shirley Temple movie or a comedy; certainly not an excellent western-historical drama with a multi-star cast and an exceptional, complex story to tell.Set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, a US Cavalry commander pulls together a unit made up of his own men plus Confederate prisoners, regular criminal prisoners, ex-slaves, Indians and Mexicans in order to chase down an Apache army that massacred a US Cavalry unit and captured 3 children.
It's during the waning days of the Civil War, and the nearest Union outpost is Fort Benlin, a POW camp run by Major Amos Dundee (Charlton Heston), a glory-seeking officer who arrives to late to stop the massacre and raises an army of guards, Rebel POWs, including his former Army buddy-turned-enemy Captain Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris), black Union soldiers, and various miscreants and criminals, to pursue Sierra Charriba "until the Apache is taken or destroyed".
From my point of view, this movie has almost everything going for it: Directed by Sam Peckinpah, one of my favorite directors, A dream cast of Charlton Heston, Richard Harris and James Coburn with a utopia of rich character actors supporting them.
The one who stood out for me was Richard Harris as Confederate Captain Ben Tyreen, continuously holding his men in line whenever circumstances arose to challenge Major Amos Dundee's (Charlton Heston) command of the ragtag Cavalry bunch.
Sam Peckinpah's 1965 western Major Dundee is a near-great film that has a checkered history.
This is too bad since the film is likely the most realistic and gritty Western ever made, and on the heels of Ride The High Country (1962) showed Peckinpah as a director with a bright future.It is filled with great shots, a great lead performance by Charlton Heston as the lead character, Major Amos Dundee, and terrific supporting performances.