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Posted: |
Aug 8, 2014 - 11:01 AM
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By: |
Ralph
(Member)
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Alex North’s score is a displacing rehash of “Spartacus,” with a few feathers and tree log drums thrown in. It’s John Ford admitting that no other director killed more native Americans in westerns that provides a minimal interest in “Cheyenne Autumn.” He would try to make up for his lack of social conscience — by depressing the hell out of us about the insufferable plight this country has put the natives through. (And still does.) As sincere as he may have been, he didn’t have the depth of script or acting from his cast to measure up to his intentions, so in the end this Super Panavision 70 epic is one final travelogue of his favorite locales. You keep suppressing the bitch, “How many more times must we see the same g.d. stone monuments?” Just when he began to suspect he and the material were boob-trapped is open to some speculation. During the rushes about midway through production? When he put together a rough cut? He claimed that he didn’t want an intermission, ostensibly to keep the “mood” in place, but of course that runs counter to what he provided (under pressure?) — a sequence using James Stewart as Wyatt Earp and Arthur Kennedy as Doc Holiday, in effect a brief getaway from the relentless march of gloom. There’s not a movie lover or Ford devotee who doesn’t ask, WTF? (Of the three laughs in the whole dreary enterprise, Stewart supplies two, Edward G. Robinson the third.) Richard Widmark does his screamer routine; Carroll Baker does her earnest thing; Karl Malden has a drunken madman exit; Robinson gets robbed of the prestige he brings when jarring, nearly fatal studio process shots are used for his pivotal scene with the Indians. One of the pitfalls for older westerns has always been casting central Indian characters — it almost never works because we usually end up with well-known Hispanics (or sometimes bronzed numbers like Rock Hudson and Jeff Chandler) sounding nutsy spieling off the nutsy native lingo. Fully aware of how bigoted that reads but with Gilbert Roland, Delores Del Rio and Ricardo Montalban subbing, it’s the awful truth. Peacock Sal Mineo struts sans dialogue, the wisest decision Ford makes throughout.
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I can't go along with that at all. Whatever its origin, "Gladiators Fight to the Death" seems to me totally integral to the score. As for "intrinsic overscoring"---really? I can't imagine the scene without that music. I know much of the fight was choreographed to a piano reduction, so where the sore thumb fits in I can't imagine. I consider that scene a classic example of brilliant scoring, pointing up both the horror and banality of the scene
oh whats the matter now?? kill him, you imbecile!!
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In fact, I'll go you one better, and say that I think jazz influenced EVERY Alex North score. Remember, this was the young man in Moscow who wept at the sound of a Duke Ellington record and knew that it was high time he got himself back to the USA...(Stan Kenton was a name with which I was very familiar without ever hearing much of his music until I read some folks' opinions about the similarities to certain North scores and cues, which prompted me to finally buy a Kenton album and give it a listen and, yes, hear the resemblance.)
Agreed, Preston.
Listen to the "Resurrection of Ulrich" from DRAGONSLAYER, notice the rolling pitch timpani and the rips from the horns. Jazz inflections and intonations all over the place.
Then listen to a couple of the better cues ("Bond Meets Bambi and Thumper", "Death at the Whyte House") from DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. It's Stan Kenton meets Benny Herrmann.
And Herrmann himself was no slouch when it came to Jazz, as in TAXI DRIVER.
North, Barry, and Herrmann. Quite possibly the top three all-time.
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Cheyenne Autumn is an extremely ambitious film with a score to match but ultimately you can't get around the fact that it is big and plodding. It moves slowly and with such downbeat tone -- even the romantic story threads have no energy -- that it fails as entertainment.
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ok, so we wandered a bit off the trail to discuss the level of jazz influence of norths other scores, however we didnt wander far and now we are back on the reservation with the indians...
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Isn't Howard Fast the same guy who wrote the novel of Spartacus? (all roads lead to...)
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so there are these indians, tired, on a long trek, when suddenly this roman army marches past and changes formation into squares...
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Just a word in defense of Ford -- not of CHEYENNE AUTUMN, mind you, but of its director allegedly killing more Indians than any other. I may be misremembering, but I think it was Ford himself, discussing CHEYENNE AUTUMN, who claimed that he had killed more Indians than any other film-maker. A look at some of those earlier Ford films, however, makes it clear that showing white soldiers killing a lot of Indians is not necessarily the same thing as the director demeaning them. I'm thinking particularly of the two films in Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" with which I'm most familiar, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON and FORT APACHE. In the former, the Indian character we get to know is an old contemporary of John Wayne's captain, and their relationship is clearly a mutually respectful one. And in the latter, it is abundantly clear that, although Henry Fonda's commander accuses the Indians attempting to negotiate peace of being "without honor," they are the very soul of dignity, especially compared with Fonda's prejudiced S.O.B., whose reckless and foolhardy dismissal of the Indians leads to a bloodbath -- in which it is the Cavalry, not the Indians, who get the worst of it.
Just saying.
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