In "The Horse Soldiers" John Ford returns to the theme of the US Cavalry which he had immortalised in his "Cavalry Trilogy" made around a decade earlier. As in all three films of that trilogy, the leading role is taken by Ford's favourite actor, John Wayne, although this film is not set in the West but in Mississippi during the American Civil War. (Despite being set in the eastern half of the USA, it is nevertheless occasionally referred to as a "Western").
The story is a fictionalised version of the real-life "Grierson Raid" of 1863 in which a unit of Union Cavalry penetrated deep behind Confederate lines in order to destroy a strategically important railroad junction being used by the Confederates to supply their garrison at Vicksburg. Wayne plays the raid's commander, here called Colonel John Marlowe, who ironically was a railroad building engineer before the war. Apart from the battle scenes, much of the drama in the film arises from the clashes between Marlowe and his politically ambitious second-in-command, Colonel Philip Secord, and between Marlowe and the regimental surgeon, Major Henry Kendall. Kendall makes little secret of his dislike of war and sees himself as a doctor first, a soldier second. He considers that his main duty is to relieve human suffering, wherever it may occur, rather than to further the military aims of the Union armies.
An additional complication occurs when the unit stops at a plantation house and Marlowe discovers that the plantation's attractive young mistress Hannah Hunter and her black slave Lukey (played by the tennis star Althea Gibson) have been spying on them. To prevent them from betraying his mission to the Confederate forces, and unwilling to shoot two unarmed women in cold blood, Marlowe is forced to take them with him.
Ford does not really attempt to explore the causes of the war or the moral issues involved. Three years earlier he had made "The Searchers", in which he analysed the nature of racism in the Old West, but here he does not take up the challenge of analysing racism in the Old South in the same way. Doubtless, however, he was well aware of the economics of Hollywood film-making. The most commercially successful films were those that could appeal to audiences both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and in the fifties a film which took too hard an anti-Confederate line would be likely to alienate Southern sympathies.
Although the film is essentially a war film, it combines action with other elements, including psychological analysis and occasional humour. There is even an element of romance, something not generally found in films of this type, as Marlowe falls in love with Constance Towers's Hannah, something I did not find particularly element in the film; it struck me as an unsuccessful attempt to import into an action drama that hoary old convention of the romantic comedy whereby two characters start off as bitter enemies and end up falling in love. (As had had shown in films like "A Man Betrayed", Wayne was not the world's greatest exponent of romantic comedy). Wayne is, however, very good when he concentrates on being a tough soldier rather than a sentimental lover, and William Holden is also good as the no-nonsense medic Kendall. "The Horse Soldiers" is not perhaps quite in the same league as "The Searchers" or "Fort Apache", but it is a good action-drama and one of the better Ford/Wayne collaborations. 7/10
The story is a fictionalised version of the real-life "Grierson Raid" of 1863 in which a unit of Union Cavalry penetrated deep behind Confederate lines in order to destroy a strategically important railroad junction being used by the Confederates to supply their garrison at Vicksburg. Wayne plays the raid's commander, here called Colonel John Marlowe, who ironically was a railroad building engineer before the war. Apart from the battle scenes, much of the drama in the film arises from the clashes between Marlowe and his politically ambitious second-in-command, Colonel Philip Secord, and between Marlowe and the regimental surgeon, Major Henry Kendall. Kendall makes little secret of his dislike of war and sees himself as a doctor first, a soldier second. He considers that his main duty is to relieve human suffering, wherever it may occur, rather than to further the military aims of the Union armies.
An additional complication occurs when the unit stops at a plantation house and Marlowe discovers that the plantation's attractive young mistress Hannah Hunter and her black slave Lukey (played by the tennis star Althea Gibson) have been spying on them. To prevent them from betraying his mission to the Confederate forces, and unwilling to shoot two unarmed women in cold blood, Marlowe is forced to take them with him.
Ford does not really attempt to explore the causes of the war or the moral issues involved. Three years earlier he had made "The Searchers", in which he analysed the nature of racism in the Old West, but here he does not take up the challenge of analysing racism in the Old South in the same way. Doubtless, however, he was well aware of the economics of Hollywood film-making. The most commercially successful films were those that could appeal to audiences both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and in the fifties a film which took too hard an anti-Confederate line would be likely to alienate Southern sympathies.
Although the film is essentially a war film, it combines action with other elements, including psychological analysis and occasional humour. There is even an element of romance, something not generally found in films of this type, as Marlowe falls in love with Constance Towers's Hannah, something I did not find particularly element in the film; it struck me as an unsuccessful attempt to import into an action drama that hoary old convention of the romantic comedy whereby two characters start off as bitter enemies and end up falling in love. (As had had shown in films like "A Man Betrayed", Wayne was not the world's greatest exponent of romantic comedy). Wayne is, however, very good when he concentrates on being a tough soldier rather than a sentimental lover, and William Holden is also good as the no-nonsense medic Kendall. "The Horse Soldiers" is not perhaps quite in the same league as "The Searchers" or "Fort Apache", but it is a good action-drama and one of the better Ford/Wayne collaborations. 7/10