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Major Dundee is a 1965 American Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, and James Coburn. Written by Harry Julian Fink, the film is about a Union Army cavalry officer who leads a contentious troop of Army regulars, Confederate prisoners, and Indian scouts on an expedition into Mexico during the American Civil War to destroy a band of Apaches who have been raiding United States bases and settlements in the New Mexico territory. Major Dundee was filmed in various locations in Mexico. The movie was filmed in Eastman Color by Pathécolor, print by Technicolor.
Major Dundee became notorious for its difficult shoot and post production, which saw the movie greatly cut from Peckinpah's original vision. He later called the film ""one of the most painful things that ever happened in my life."Weddle p 253
Dundee's recruits include bugler Tim Ryan, the only survivor of the massacre (and the film's narrator), as well as a horse thief, a drunken mule-packer, a vengeful minister, and a small group of black soldiers who are tired of doing menial tasks. Dundee reluctantly appoints the inexperienced Lieutenant Graham as his second-in-command. Eventually, facing a hanging which may or may not be a bluff on Dundee's part, Tyreen binds himself and 20 of his men to loyally serve Dundee, but only until Charriba is "taken or destroyed".
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, Dundee's men lose most of their supplies in an ambush, forcing them to raid a village garrisoned by French troops supporting Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. However, little remains to be looted, and Dundee ends up sharing some of his dwindling food with the starving Mexicans. Beautiful resident Teresa Santiago, the Austrian widow of a doctor executed for his support of the rebels under Benito Juárez, causes further tensions between Dundee and Tyreen, as they compete for her attentions. Dundee makes escaping easy for his French prisoners. When they return with reinforcements, Dundee surprises the French column and makes off with badly needed supplies. After this success, the men begin to get along. However, one of the Confederates, O. W. Hadley, attempts to desertion. Dundee orders his execution, but Tyreen shoots Hadley himself to quell any resentment from his men.
Teresa and Dundee have a brief affair. In an unguarded moment, he is attacked by the Apaches and wounded in the leg, forcing him to seek medical help in French-held Durango. The doctor removes the arrow, but Dundee has to remain to recuperate. He is tended by a pretty Mexican, whom he eventually takes to bed. When Teresa comes upon them, her relationship with Dundee comes to an abrupt end. Dundee starts drinking heavily. Graham leads a small group of men to distract the French, while Tyreen shames Dundee into resuming his mission. Dundee has no hope of catching the Apaches, so he pretends to give up and starts back for the United States. The Apaches give chase and fall into Dundee's trap. Ryan kills Charriba in the ambush.
Dundee and Tyreen prepare to resume their private vendetta, but the French appear. They position a portion of their force on the American side of the Rio Grande. Two other columns come up fast south of the river. The Americans and the northern French contingent charge each other, fighting in the river. Tyreen sees a French soldier seize the regimental colors. He takes back the flag and hands it over to Dundee. Shot in the stomach, Tyreen singlehandedly charges the French cavalry, enabling the others to cross the Rio Grande. Only Yankees Dundee, Graham, Potts, Ryan, and Sergeant Gomez, plus Confederates Chillum and Benteen and a few others survive.
As Dundee's force heads home, the narration notes that it is now April 19, 1865. The soldiers are unaware that Lee has surrendered, the Civil War is over, and Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated.
Bresler thought Sam Peckinpah might be an ideal director for the material. He showed Heston Ride the High Country (1962), Peckinpah's latest movie. Heston admired it, writing in his diary, "He's made a damn good Western, for almost nothing, though MGM blew it in release. I'd like to work for him."Heston p 173 Peckinpah agreed to direct Major Dundee for a fee of $50,000.Weddle p 230
Actor R. G. Armstrong, who had a small part as a reverend who tags along with the expedition, referred to the 156-minute version of the film as " Moby-Dick on horseback".
While Fink wrote a draft, Peckinpah scouted locations in Mexico. Filming was to begin in December 1963, but when the director read Fink's script in September, he was dissatisfied with it. Bresler agreed to push filming back until February, the latest they could move it before Heston started work on The Agony and the Ecstasy. He then arranged for Oscar Saul to work on the script with Peckinpah.Weddle p 232
Heston was sent a full script in November. He wrote in his diaries, "There's a lot of good work in it, but I'm more than a little disappointed. The characters are there, and the bones of the story, but there's a lot of excess mishmash."Heston p 183
Peckinpah rewrote the script, but at the start of filming, Heston reflected, "There are holes in it; serious holes, I think. That means either he Peckinpah knows a lot less about scripts than I do ... or a lot more. I'm perfectly willing to accept the latter premise, but it's a bit spooky just now. The main thing wrong is the girl's part, which is very sloppily written."Heston p 192
Heston later recalled the main lesson he learned from Major Dundee was to "never, never, never start shooting without a complete script... it was a major stumbling block on Dundee". Heston said part of this "was the fault of a very inadequate writer who was on at first and worked for six months without really producing anything remotely shootable, forcing the studio into what finally became a five-month postponement." According to Heston, the studio asked Peckinpah to rewrite it, but "we still weren't really ready when the second shooting date came up. Also, it may be that we all had different films in mind: the studio, Sam, and me."
The film was the first of several Coburn made with Sam Peckinah.
The production of the movie was very troubled. Peckinpah was often drunk on the set, and was supposedly so abusive towards the cast that Heston had to threaten him with a cavalry saber to calm him down; he even charged Peckinpah on horseback at one point, leading the director to panic and order the Crane shot he was working on to be raised fast.
Peckinpah also fired a large number of crew members for very trivial reasons throughout the shoot. Columbia studio executives feared that the project was out of control, and that Peckinpah was too unstable to finish the picture, so they cut the shooting schedule of the film by several weeks.
Harris and Heston clashed during filming. Harris collapsed during the shoot, in part because of his heavy drinking.Callan p 91-92 Heston wrote in his diary that Harris "does seem to be one of those people who enjoys ill health. In any event, on this picture, he was from time to time spectacularly taken with a seizure of one kind or another."Heston p 194 He also called Harris "something of a fuck-up, no question" for making mistakes during the film, although Heston later called himself "unfair" for making such judgements. "It was a grueling location, and Dick Harris wasn't used to working with either horses or guns," wrote Heston. "If he was a fuck-up, I was a hard-nosed son of a bitch."Heston p 197
Heston recalled, "As the schedule neared its end, more and more pressure began to be exerted from the studio to curtail the shooting in some way — to eliminate this or that; to somehow cut down the mounting overages."Shay p 116
Heston was worried Peckinpah would be fired and lobbied the studio in support of his director. Heston called Columbia's studio head, Mike Frankovich, and offered to give up his entire salary for the film to keep Peckinpah on the project. The studio staff originally refused, but changed their minds and took Heston's money.Heston p 195
Filming finished on 30 April 1965. The movie went $1.5 million over budget, which meant it cost as much as originally budgeted.Weddle p 244 Heston wrote shortly afterwards, "I get the feeling Bresler would almost be willing to have the film fail, if only to justify his misgivings about Sam."Heston p 198
Heston saw a cut of the film in September. He wrote, "it neither as bad as I feared (talking to Sam), nor as good as I hoped (working with Sam). The people are believable, the dialogue good, as are all the performances (yes, I think all). The opening, cutting the one we shot at such cost, doesn't work for me. Most of the rest of the film does, but the whole thing is somehow diffuse. The story is as it always was, too complicated. It may work though... you never know."Heston p 208
In February 1965, Heston saw a release cut and wrote, "it seemed not quite good enough to be a success as a serious film, and probably has too many subtleties, too much footage devoted to character, to succeed as an action film. There are excellent things in it; I think I'm good, but we didn't make it with this one."Heston p 216
Heston later observed, "I'm not persuaded that even if Sam had had total control over the cutting of the final print that he could have had a film that would have pleased him — or me — but I think we would have had something a little better than what we have."
Critics of the film have also pointed out similarities between this and Herman Melville's classic novel Moby-Dick. Many of the characters are similar to those from that book, with Dundee as Captain Ahab, Tyreen as Starbuck, Ryan as Ishmael, and other minor characters, with Sierra Charriba and his Apache tribe substituting for the whale, as is the general plot line (an obsessive idealist drives himself to destruction, disregarding the effects on others). These references to Moby-Dick were likely intentional on the part of the screenwriters. Some have also pointed out similarities of the plot to the Vietnam War, which are highly unlikely to have been intentional, as the war had not significantly escalated at the time of the film's production.
The opening scene at the Rostes Ranch and the funeral after the first skirmish with the Indians were inspired by scenes from The Searchers, while the scene in which Dundee's troop exits Fort Benlin, each faction of the command singing its own distinct song, is a deliberate parody of an equivalent scene in Fort Apache. The characterization of Dundee, particularly his personality as a martinet and his relationship with Tyreen, has been related to John Wayne's character in Howard Hawks' Red River. The Mexican Civil War setting recalls Robert Aldrich's Vera Cruz. The film also includes several references to David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia – the execution of Hadley, and Dundee's drunken exile in Durango, closely mirror sequences from this film.
The film "seems a direct reaction to [John Ford]]'s Fort Apache ... with Charlton Heston cast as a more psychotic, more bluntly careerist version of Ford's Lt. Col. Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda)," according to a New York Times review of the film at the time of the 2013 Blu-ray release. Reviewer Dave Kehr went on to write that Peckinpah "plays Heston's square-jawed intransigence against the aristocratic refinement of a Southern officer (overplayed by ... Harris)" and that Peckinpah "would essentially reshape this material into The Wild Bunch four years later, wisely dividing Dundee's divided character into two separate figures" played then by Robert Ryan and William Holden.Kehr, Dave, "Early Salvos From 'Bloody Sam'", New York Times, May 12, 2013. The Blu-ray DVD includes both the 1965 and 2005 cuts. Retrieved May 14, 2013.
Restored scenes are listed below. These include both brief inserts and additions to existing scenes, as well as four major scenes restored to the film.
Available as extras on the DVD are an unfinished knife-fight scene between Potts and Gomez in a Mexican village, a longer version of Teresa and Dundee's interlude at the lake, and several silent outtakes – including a master shot that would have opened the massacre scene at the beginning, of Lt. Brannin and his men riding past a sheep farmer to the Rostes Ranch.
A new score was composed by Christopher Caliendo for the restored version. This score was composed and recorded with a small studio orchestra to authentically sound the way director Peckinpah might have approved it had he been alive at the time of the film's restoration, and the way the music might have been done in its original 1965 release as opposed to today's larger orchestra-type scores. The new score is regarded by some critics as being better than the original, which was disliked by film experts and featured the title song performed by the Mitch Miller Sing-a-Long Gang, though many concede the new music is far from perfect; for example, criticism arose of Caliendo's decision to leave unscored several sequences, which did have music in the original version.
Many of the flaws identified by film critics in 1965 were addressed in the 2005 restored version, and film reviews of the DVD are much more positive. In his review in Alt Film Guide, Dan Schneider called Major Dundee "a near-great film that has a checkered history" and "likely the most gritty and realistic Western ever made."
The film holds a present-day 97% approval rating based on 32 reviews (with an average rating of 7.3/10) on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with the site's critics consensus declaring the film "a Western-type with big war scenes, shot with bombast typical of Sam Peckinpah". Metacritic, another review aggregator, reports a score of 62/100 based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in the 2008 lists: AFI's 10 Top 10, nominated Western Film
Major Dundee helped cement Peckinpah's image as a renegade filmmaker, which he would enhance with the conflicts on his later films, such as The Wild Bunch (1969), Straw Dogs (1971), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Peckinpah biographer David Weddle, in his 1994 book If They Move ... Kill 'Em! The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah, argues that Peckinpah is just as much to blame for the final product as Columbia and Jerry Bresler. Since its release on DVD, Dundee has begun to get recognition and notice from the public at large, and not just Western fans.
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