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Reviews
Major Dundee (1965)
Microcosm of the post civil war USA
I enjoyed this even though most westerns put me to sleep. Amazing cast...Warren Oates and Ben Johnson, LQ Jones...and just about everybody. Dundee's crew is made up of Union soldiers, Confederate prisoners, black Union soldiers and a few native Americans, a portrait of our post Civil War nation, with roughly proportional representation. They agree to put aside differences at least until they destroy the Apaches. Does this suggest America is a country made up of hostile camps only united by common enemies and the pursuit of wealth?
Dundee's crusade is questionable. He is operating without official sanction. He wants to prove he's better than a mere jail keeper. The Confederate and black Union soldiers also want to "prove their worth." So they roam across northern Mexico spilling blood, ooops. At one point they discuss abandoning the hunt but there is an unspoken they might then start fighting each other. Tyrene pledged to kill Dundee once the mission was complete...and the other Confederates weren't in a much better temper. If this wasn't a commentary on Vietnam, it certainly fits.
The Homecoming (1973)
Small world
Filming a play often fails because the excitement of live theater is absent while a sense of claustrophobia might result as we lack the full view of the stage. But in this case, where the action and dialog consist mainly of vicious personal attacks, those limits become assets, providing more force for the verbal assaults as these battlefield generals maneuver and assault. The mobile camera provides a point of view that might not be available to a theatrical audience . In this household (can it be called a home?), vulnerability is merely an invitation for abuse and kindness is served in stingy portions only to legitimize the verbal brutality that must follow. The characters are desperately trapped in their own private hells and we are permitted to join them.
Other people and places are referred to but we never see them. No one ever walks by a window, which are all shut. One scene is shot just outside the apartment but it's the wee hours and not a soul is in sight. It's very creepy; it might as well be on Mars. One other outdoor shot shows Joey, a boxer, training alone in the bleak pre-dawn gloaming of North London. This isolation is essential as any awareness of a wider world would allow a perspective that makes these characters and their concerns trivial. It's existential, is it not?
Vivien Merchant is excellent as a female counterpoint to these thugs and their boyish pranks. She speaks very little but communicates a great deal. While it appears she is being victimized one feels confident she can take care of herself and will probably end up nursing these pathetic, lost individuals like a lioness with her cubs.