"The Horse Soldiers"

Tonight's movie was "The Horse Soldiers" (1959), directed by the great John Ford and starring his oft-used leading man John Wayne as a U.S. Cavalry officer in the Civil War, who is tasked with leading his troop from a Union Army base in Tennessee to Baton Rouge, Louisiana - deep into Confederate territory - where they are supposed to demolish a railroad junction and blow up a bridge in order to cut off a major supply line used by the rebel forces. That is always an important tactic in warfare, cutting off the supplies of the enemy, and here in the Civil War, they are doing it on horseback. Just 80 years later, soldiers would perform similar missions in heavily armored and mechanised tanks.

How the heck did they make such advancements in a mere 80 years, and why did it happen during that time period? After all, wars had been fought on horseback for millennia. And then, all of a sudden, between 1860 (only Eight Grandpas ago) and 1940 (Four Grandpas), we went from horses to tanks, and to electric lights, and refrigeration, and antibiotics and plastics and then space travel by 1960.

It's pretty weird, when you think about it, that Human Technical Progress more or less plodded along for many, many centuries, and then - all of a sudden - slam bang whammo Space Age progress came into being. A truckload of stuff happened in a mere hundred years, including the atomic bomb. Yeah, sorry for mentioning it.

But thousands of years from now, what will they make of that 100 year period from The Civil War to The Space Age?

For me, I find it truly mind-boggling.

But back to the movie, it was very much in the style of Epic Westerns of the 1950s, which usually told a "big picture" tale, often historical, as opposed to the smaller scale of "character based" Westerns, which most often told stories of bandits and posses, or town sheriffs and bad guys bent on revenge. Or even Cowboys and Indians. The character based Westerns are my favorite, because in most cases they evoke the feeling of The Old West with what I imagine it must have been like, through the portrayals of the people who come alive onscreen, by the talent of the actors.

The Epic Westerns are good too, like "How The West Was Won", and "The Horse Soldiers" is based on a true story and has a script that is filled with small scenes that add detail to the trek the cavalry soldiers have to make to enter the territory of the South. The first place they come across is a large house owned by a woman (long time soap star Constance Towers) whose own husband has been lost to the war. She and her slave maid (played by tennis great Althea Gibson) are alone on the property, which is promptly commandeered by John Wayne, for use by his troops. Confiscation of property has always been done in war, only this time - in the Civil War - it was done right here in America; by Americans and against Americans.

We are still against each other only 160 years later. Red States against Blue.

We have never gotten past the Civil War, because we haven't gotten past the cultural differences. I am not even talking about racism now, and I won't get into that issue because I don't believe it to be as pervasive as it is made out to be. I live in California where people are just people.

But as for The Civil War? That happened a mere 8 generations ago, and the stories and legacy get passed down during that relatively short time, and though we have made a lot of cultural progress since then, we are still only as advanced as our least educated and emotionally mature citizens.

These are your people who vote for Donald Trump.

People who are still psychologically stuck in The Civil War era.

It is very late, and so I am going to need you to fill in the gaps tonight in what I am trying to say, but I am sure you can do it if you put your mind to it.

"The Horse Soldiers" was great as a historical tale, and it never lagged as a two hour story of a Civil War mission by Union soldiers. John Ford's direction seems a bit mechanical, or "by-the-book", so that you never really feel inside the character's heads, but he builds you up to a rigorous finale - a final battle between the professional Union soldiers and a battalion of teenaged boys from a Confederate military school, who were the only soldiers available to the South at that point. In desperation, they used kids and old men, just like Hitler did at the end of WW2

I give "The Horse Soldiers" a solid Two Thumbs Up, mostly for the details that make up all of the many small scenes included in the overall plot, but also for the performances of all the actors, including William Holden as a military surgeon.

You have needed a Western Fix for quite some time now, and tonight you got one.

I will therefore see you in the morning, knowing that you are sleeping well.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)