No doubt not the best known of the films of the impressive career of John Ford (approximately 130 films spread over half a century), The Horsemen However, it is an exciting feature film to put into perspective his most famous works. Enjoying a restored version at Rimini Editions in a nice box accompanied by the book John Ford, Monument Man: the director and his westerns written by Marc Toulelec, back galloping on The Horsemen (a.k.a. The Horse Soldiers).
Where is the horizon?
A northern cavalry detachment headed south with a specific purpose: to destroy a railway line to isolate the southern enemy. Lead by Colonel Marlowe (good old breaker of John Wayne) flanked by a medecin-major whom everything opposes (William Holden), they will fall on a revealed southerner (Constance Towers) along the way. She'll be forced to follow them on their journey...
The colour cinema of John Ford is a resolutely ochre cinema, filming the vast American expanses crushed by l For The Horsemen, Ford makes a 180-degree turn: exits the great large American spaces, Ford focuses on a country America, more corset in the plan, and resolutely greener colors. A drastic chromatic change that also translates into what is being explored The Horsemen.
Indeed, if the gentleman was passionate about the American civil war, he had never dealt with that theme in his monstrous filmography. It's now done with The Horsemen, story based on a true story, which explores with some ambivalence the history of its torn country. Invariably political, The Horsemen avoids all manicheism and drapes with humour slapstick Quite amazing. The reac The Black Sergeant A year later remained relatively bold for the time) would soften? Maybe. In any case, difficult to see The Horsemen without detecting a point of self-reflection about his own career and this is certainly an exciting feature film.
The melody of misfortune
Clin d'oeil à la B.O. de The Desert Prisoner (1956), music The Horsemen It is a variation around a war march: fifres, clairons and choruses, it comes to rhythm the feature film at regular intervals. Orchestrated by David Buttolph who passes after Alfred Newman (composer of many of the fordian masterpieces), she will know how to film so much to launch The Horsemen with a scene as intoxicating as it is amazing (this long procession of riders, taken over in the video below) that accompanies much more melancholic moments.
The anti-John Ford?
While formally the film is very different from other western fordians, it is also definitely deceptive to the expectations of a Ford regular. More stuck, tighter, the attacks don't have the panache of his other films. The outcome of the clashes is not exalted. The fighting is more like cold massacres, where heroism struggles to find its place. Hard to do something else from the original material of the feature film and the political positioning of the director: Ford claimed to be a Nordiste, but did not hide his respect for the southern fighters.
Even more, and it becomes meta-textual, Ford is organizing here the dismantling of a railway track more than thirty years after filming the exact opposite in The Iron Horse (1924). This heralds a certain movement in John Ford's career: the one who filmed the transcontinental construction of a railway uniting the USA now sticks to his film its dismantling. Worse, he reverses the movement. Horizontality in The Iron Horse, it moves to a North-South verticality in The Horsemen. An antithetical path that leads mostly nowhere. The goal is blurred, the journey untaboti.
Interesting when it is known that the film itself is the result of a tragic failure for the director. Indeed, his friend and stuntman Fred Kennedy died during the shooting of one of the last scenes of the film because of a sudden fall of horse. An impossible mourning for Ford who was devastated by this death and who completely rewrites the end of his feature film: instead of a triumphant return from Marlowe, The Horsemen ends on a half-tone farewell.
Anyway, you'll understand, The Horsemen is an atypical John Ford, who offers his spectator a fertile soil to dig into the career of American director iconoclast. Its exit restored in Blu-ray/DVD by Rimini Editions within a limited mediabook edition, will offer the possibility to re-dive, but also and above all extend the viewing with numerous bonuses including the 184 pages book « John FORD, Monument Man: the director and his westerns » written by Marc Toulelec.
Data sheet
Blu-ray Region B (France)
Publisher: Rimini Editions
Duration: 120 min
Release date: 06 November 2024
Video format : 1080p/24 – 1.85
Soundtrack : English and French DTS-HD MA 2.0
Subtitles French
[...] we talked about John Ford Les Cavaliers' unsung feature film, how this western turned away from the codes inherent in the genre. His [...]