The Alamo

Previous Cowboy Movies

Next Cowboy Movies

Buy This Item The Alamo by MGM (Video & DVD)  Available from Amazon  $9.94  on 11-26-2008     John Wayne drew on what he learned from John Ford, Howard Hawks, and practically everyone who directed him during his long career when he made his own directorial debut on this labor of love. <I>The Alamo</I> is a sprawling, unabashedly patriotic epic of the sacrifice made by 187 men defending the Alamo from Santa Ana's bigger and better equipped army. Wayne stars as Col. Davy Crockett, the straight-talking, fun-loving frontiersman turned senator, with Laurence Harvey as the stiff, by-the-book Col. William Travis and Ricahrd Widmark as the legendary Jim Bowie who bristles under Travis's military protocol. The mix of regular army soldiers, Texican irregulars, scouts, and civilians makes for a volatile melting pot, but they all come together in a time of crisis in this metaphor for Wayne's heroic vision of America. Wayne spared no expense in this, one the last of the old fashion Westerns, re-creating the Alamo in exacting detail and corralling a cast of Western icons and old friends, including Richard Boone, Chill Wills (who earned an Oscar nomination), Hank Worden, Denver Pyle, Ken Curtis, and Olive Carey, in addition to teen heartthrob Frankie Avalon and Wayne's son Pat. Even old pal and spiritual godfather John Ford lent a hand shooting second-unit footage. Wayne is no Ford, but despite himself (and a talky script), he delivers an entertaining film full of intriguing characters and excellent action scenes, earning the film an Oscar nomination for Best Picture in 1960. Remember the Alamo! <I>--Sean Axmaker</I> Reader Reviews With the exception of the recent Billy Bob Thornton retelling of the tale, few epics have had quite as bad a press as John Wayne's The Alamo. If it is not the masterpiece Wayne set out to make, it is also certainly not the disaster it is often painted. Even financially the film eventually turned a very healthy profit, although the staggered nature of its roadshow release meant that it didn't do so quickly enough to save Wayne from having to sell his share in the picture he had invested so much in. Very much a personal crusade, he raised the $12m budget partially from a trio of Texas millionaires and from his own pocket. The set and surrounding village were actually built three years before shooting, ostensibly so that vegetation could grow naturally around it, though problems raising the budget seem more likely. Nonetheless, the film's much-trumpeted great pains to look authentic extends to the casting, enhanced by some of the great faces in the supporting cast, not least of them the irreplaceable Hank Worden, replacing Old Mose Harper's desire for a rockin' chair for 'the time to live and a place to die' in one of his best performances as the Parson. Laurence Harvey, a man reputedly in life as innately impossible to like as his character in The Manchurian Candidate, carries the dramatic element as Travis more than efficiently, while Wayne and Widmark give perfect demonstrations of fleshing out a part through star quality as Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie. Along with 55 Days at Peking, this was the biggest of the siege epics of the sixties (Zulu, Khartoum, The War Lord), recounting a somewhat romanticised version of the iconic battle that saw some 185 men hold off 7000 Mexican soldiers for thirteen days. Very much a populist epic, it is broadly entertaining but with a quiet dignity at its heart, and while there is sentiment, it is pure and honest enough not to seem desperately manipulative. Wayne's direction is a strong point, with a good visual eye that owes nothing to John Ford (who had less to do with the film than is commonly believed and nothing to do with the truly spectacular battle scenes) and a surprising generosity to friend and foe alike. There are many moments of pure visual poetry, too - a rider galloping through a stream, defeated Mexican troops reflected in a muddy pond while their women carry away the bodies of their loved ones and the astonishing finale where the screen is packed to bursting with thousands of extras. The cavalry sequences in particular are strikingly well handled, with a healthy respect for the horses (unlike many sixties epics, none were hurt or killed). True, it sure is a long time a-comin', but if there's a more spectacular battle scene on film this side of Bondarchuk's Waterloo, I've not seen it. Unfortunately, the DVD is something of a travesty. Facing personal bankruptcy, two weeks after the film opened Wayne asked his producer son Michael to cut the film to get in more shows to improve its cash flow - the film was popular, but at nearly three-and-a-half hours was limited to only two shows a day at a handful of theatres. No prizes for guessing which version MGM/UA have chosen to release. Although the uncut version was available on video and laser disc, the company's rationale for releasing the cut version to DVD was that since there were no foreign language soundtracks surviving for the uncut version and they were committed to releasing multiple-language versions, the cut version was preferable to subtitling the film for foreign languages. To add insult to injury, even the hour-long documentary produced for the laserdisc release has been cut back to 40 minutes to paper over any mention of the restored version! As a result, some half an hour of footage is now missing once again not much more than a decade after it was restored. Even the Overture, Intermission, Entr'acte and Exit Music from Dimitri Tiomkin's superb score have been lost. The only positive is that the widescreen transfer at least makes the most of Wayne and cinematographer William Clothier's careful Scope compositions - and films like this are what Scope is all about. As for what you're missing, much of the extra running time was taken up by slightly extended scenes, such as Travis' explaining why he knows "I am better than that rabble" that he commands, crucial to understanding his character. Nonetheless, there are several 'new' scenes, the more significant additions including: more of Bowie's opening scene and various bridging scenes enlarging on his conflict with Travis; the death of the profiteer Emil when he tries to stop Crockett taking the gunpowder from the church and a subsequent love scene between Crockett and Flacca; nearly a full reel after the Intermission where Bowie decides to leave the Alamo but is dissuaded by Patrick Wayne reluctantly lying about the number of reinforcements on their way; Scotty's patrol discovering the cattle and coming off badly at the hands of some pursuing Mexican Lancers and Dragoons; and the death of Parson and Crockett's quietly effective prayer. Even if to some the film still felt too long at 203 minutes (and frankly, it do), none of these scenes should have been the ones to be cut, and their restoration helped the film flow more smoothly than the shorter version. Worse, it's not an isolated incident - MGM/UA meted out similar treatment to the restored version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World] on DVD, while some other titles like The Dogs of War and F*I*S*T are available in two different cuts on either side of the Atlantic. The film's reputation may limit its appeal to Wayne's fans and the epic collector, but it's a fine film that deserves better treatment on DVD than it received.

The Alamo Available from Amazon Price: $9.94 Updated on 11-26-2008.

SPONSORED LINKS