Ulzan's Raid (1972): A Re-Revisionist Western

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Bruce Davison, Jorge Luke
Music: Frank DeVol
Director: Robert Aldrich
Screenplay: Alan Sharp
Director of Photgraphy: Joseph Biroc

In 1954, Robert Aldrich directed and Burt Lancaster starred in ‘Apache’, a re-consideration of the negative role accorded Native Americans in the western film. Just under twenty years later, they re-united for another examination of the same subject, but the revisionism this time was as much a response to the kind of film made possible by the likes of ‘Apache’, as it was to the old myths of whooping villains (a la ‘Stagecoach’). Attention is paid to creating an almost deadpan examination of the minutiae of life in the west, with a literate script depicting the complex moral dilemmas that were faced in a time of rough-and-ready law-and-order and rampant racism. Not only the settings but the characters are more believable than was the norm for the western at the time (and, given such recent efforts as the re-make of ‘3:10 to Yuma’, is the norm today as well). Thus, we have such closely thought-through detail as the army scout shooting himself and the settler he’s escorting back to the fort, to save them from being tortured by the Apaches, and the tactical manoeuvres centring on how long horses can last during a lengthy pursuit. In addition, the scout played by Lancaster isn’t (as he probably would be today) the ‘cynical’, ‘world-weary’ character who must redeem himself by some heroic action; rather, he’s a competent professional, a man who lives with an Apache wife but who doesn’t buy the ‘Little Big Man’ myths of the peace-loving noble savage– a hippie era antidote to the racism of ‘classic’ westerns that actually presented a view just as distorted as theirs. ‘Ulzana’ is far from a one-man film, though, and it’s the relations between Lancaster and other characters that make it such an interesting picture. Most notably, there’s the idealistic young officer (Bruce Davison) who leads the expedition to chase Ulzana, the Apache who’s fled his reservation in frustration and is leading a war party to rape and murder local homesteaders. The son of a clergyman, the young man believes that it’s “an absence of Christian feeling” that’s led to the situation of mutual enmity between white men and Native Americans; however, when he sees the aftermath of Ulzana’s raids (for instance, a mutilated settler has a dog’s tail placed in his mouth; as Lancaster wryly observes, Apaches have a strange sense of humour), he quickly swings to the opposite view, and wonders how Lancaster can have dealt with the Apache for so long without hating them. The fact that men could be so cruel offends his notion that man is essentially good (“made in God’s image”) – particularly so when members of his own cavalry troupe start to mutilate the corpse of Ulzana’s teenage son. Lancaster, though, sees through the bullshit, implicitly pointing out that such a ‘humane’ viewpoint over-simplifies the questions of culture clash caused by the white man’s invasion of Native American territory. It would be easy to characterise the tribes as mistreated innocents suffering at the hands of bloodthirsty colonialists (the hippie view), or, as the young officer does, to believe that a little talking and good-faith would sort things out, and that both sets of men could exist together in peace, motivated by similar feelings of love and brotherhood, following ‘good moral principles’ in harmony. What that ignores, though, is the brutality present in the tribal culture (at least, in that of the Apaches, who were feared by other tribes as well as by the white men); commenting on the rape of white settlers, several characters note that “they don’t treat their own women much better.” A culture that is based around rites of manhood (as documented in ‘A Man Called Horse’) and the feats of male warriors is not all that dissimilar to that of bloodthirsty white men masquerading behind Christianity, ‘the American way’, or simple lust for land. Yet just as one is not going to be able to ‘understand’ the Apache by caricaturing them as evil, heathen savages, one is also not going to be able to understand them by trying to view them as surrogate white liberals: there is a difference, an otherness which should neither be romanticised nor ignored. Appropriately enough, all of Ulzana’s dialogue is presented, unsubtitled, in his native tongue: no cushy Kevin Costner characterisations here. Overall, then, one might characterise the film’s nuanced approach as re-revisionism: a corrective both to the old Hollywood myths which everyone by now knew to be untrue, and to the new hippie myths which were perhaps more ‘worthy’ but were also riskily naïve.

NB. Ward Churchill's 'Fantasies of the Master Race' might help to point up some of the errors in the above post. At least, it might teach me to do some more research, rather than just taking on trust what I've seen in a film (which is, after all, fictional).

Valdez Is Coming (1971)

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark, Jon Cypher
Music: Charles Gross
Director: Edwin Sherin
Screenplay: Roland Kibbee, David Rayfiel
(based on the novel by Elmore Leonard)
Director of Photgraphy: Gábor Pogány

Like Martin Ritt’s ‘Hombre’, made a few years earlier, this was adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel, and, like ‘Hombre’, it presents as its hero someone from an oppressed minority who is forced into a confrontation against heavy odds, due to the violent actions of some unscrupulous characters who hold him in racial contempt. Happening across a shooting party, Mexican lawman Bob Valdez (Burt Lancaster) is forced into a confrontation with an innocent army veteran, a black man accused by the rancher who’s leading the party of a murder he didn’t commit. Stricken with guilt at having killed the man, Valdez tries to get the rancher to give him $100 to compensate the dead man’s Native American widow; however, he’s met with contempt and physical violence, and the main part of the film sees him taking his revenge. (Although one should note that it’s not straightforward revenge, as Valdez is acting as much to prove a point – to make the rancher accept his guilt and show some concern towards the oppressed – as he is to avenge a personal slight or injury.)

Less downbeat and more unbelievable in its development than ‘Hombre’, this is nonetheless a film I wanted to like, and one which certainly has something to lift it above your average western. It’s not a ‘message’ picture, as was the vogue at the time (‘Little Big Man’, ‘Solider Blue’ et al); rather, its revisionism is gentle and easy to miss, often just a seemingly throw-away line (asked when he hunted Apache, the titular hero replies “before I know better”). The fact that Valdez is a Mexican also runs counter to the usual western clichés of those ‘over the border’ being either caricatured bandidos (Calvera from ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and General Mapache from ‘The Wild Bunch’) or poor, oppressed farmers, essentially innocent but often incapable of defending themselves without the help of white mercenaries (again, we can turn to ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘The Wild Bunch’ for examples). Indeed, an exchange between Valdez and his old friend Diego, where Valdez impersonates the rancher who will prove the villain of the piece, nicely captures the mix of scorn and idealisation which characterises the white man’s view of the Mexican: “well, you’re a good greaser, Diego. As long as you’re a good greaser, I treat you fair and square – yes sirree, Diego, you people sure know how to live: singing, dancing, screwing – you don’t worry about nothing.” It’s one of the best moments of the film, in part because it’s so understated, yet underlain with a certain dramatic tension: having begun wryly, ironically, Lancaster delivers the final line with what is almost a sigh; a shift to a new, quiet seriousness and determination which is signalled by the faint rattle of Morricone-esque percussion on the soundtrack, and which sees him ride out on his horse for his near-fatal second encounter with the rancher.

Given all this, it’s unfortunate that the Mexican is played by a white man in make-up, although I’d accept that, back in the 70s, there were less bankable Latin stars of the kind who crop up in Hollywood films today (one can imagine Benicio del Toro playing this role, for example). Not that Burt Lancaster’s make-up is particularly bad; and, after all, the fact that he played the hero of Robert Aldrich’s ‘Apache’ in similar ‘brown-face’ didn’t prevent him from giving a very fine performance in a very fine film. His blue eyes do look a little out of place here though, and the henchman character, ‘El Segundo’, looks like a pantomime villain, with hair that sprouts in huge, wild tufts on either side of his head, and dollops of face-paint which make him look like Laurence Olivier’s Othello. Indeed, several of the protagonists also look distinctly like 70s TV characters: I’m thinking primarily of the woman Valdez kidnaps, and her man, the villain of the piece.



Particularly in the second half of the film, ‘Valdez is Coming’ threatens to become a rather tedious revenge/chase movie, though the plot is slightly more complex than this. Nonetheless, there is something rather pulpy about the way that Lancaster turns from put-upon minor lawman to brilliantly competent guerrilla fighter, shooting a man from a 1,000 yards, easily picking off the numerous armed riders sent after him, and sneaking into the heart of the enemy camp without anyone noticing. It’s particularly noticeable partly because of the understated, resigned quality that characterises his performance in the initial stages of the film: moving slowly and speaking carefully, almost deferentially, Valdez is a character not exactly resigned to his lot (which is being treated with open or concealed contempt by his white neighbours) but understandably cautious about being too outspoken. From the moment he pulls his old army gear from under the bed and starts to growl, “Valdez is coming,” he is suddenly athletic, hyper-alert, and a crack shot who never misses the target. The one-man-against-impossible-odds storyline seems here actually more unbelievable than in ‘Chato’s Land’, where Charles Bronson’s character has the advantage of knowing the terrain – as the film’s title indicates, it is the desert which accounts for the fate of the posse he stalks as much as it is the actions of Chato himself. Valdez, though, eludes capture with such ease that the fact he is forced into a final showdown comes as rather a surprise – though, given the mechanics and conventions of plot, it has to happen.

It’s the old Elmore Leonard trick (seen also in ‘Mr Majestyk’) of having the passive, good-natured hero take his revenge after suffering some memorable indignity (in ‘Majestyk’, this involved the machine-gunning of a crop of melons; here, the incident has Lancaster forced to struggle through harsh terrain with a wooden cross strapped to his back). But whereas that sort of thing might be expected in a simple action film like ‘Mr Majestyk’, imposing such a cliché on what could have been a reasonably realistic look at life in the Old West means that ‘Valdez is Coming’ fails to live up to its initial promise. The end result is a rather uneasy compromise between action-movie set-pieces and something more thoughtful and interesting. Still, it’s worth an hour and a half of your time – even if that’s for what it could have been more than for what it is.