She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

Saw She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), a western directed by John Ford.  I don't like John Ford's films, although they garner a lot of critical acclaim.  It makes it hard to review his films because I dimly suspect a lot of my criticism comes from prejudice or nitpicking.  In my defense, Ford does his part to make this difficult for me by dealing often with unfortunate and badly aged subjects and heroes.

This film follows a cavalry troupe lead by an aging John Wayne, only five days from retirement.  They are in a tricky situation because the Indians have been emboldened by the recent death of General Custer and are on the war path.  Wayne must remove the women-folks from the camp which women folk consist of the Major's wife, a tough lady who has been in the army some time, and their niece who is a pretty woman, first introduced demanding to be allowed to picnic with her beaux, a trust-find kid, only to be stopped by her other beaux, an incredibly rule-bound smart boy who is some kind of army robot and an ex-confederate soldier.

So, we're dealing with a lot here.  Modern perception of the Indian Wars has changed dramatically since the 40s when this film was made.  Ditto the civil war which, as of the 40s, was still being told to us by the letters of Robert E Lee, and which still had the veneer of being about something besides slavery.  So, our heroes are fighters for colonialism and slavery.  How charming.  I want to see the good in this film, but the bad is right there.  It's like watching the Jazz Singer casually applying blackface.

Ditto also this picnicking woman.  She's portrayed as a classy, possibly fussy lady who is assailed and accused of adventuring and of not taking the toll of war seriously.  But ... she's accused of this in dialogue by one of her boyfriends.  There's no indication that that's what's going on in reality, outside of that guy's head.  Unless I missed it.  Did I miss it?  She's the girl everyone loves and she has some strange daddy-fixation on Wayne's character.

Let me just talk about what's good for a moment: the visuals are stunning.  The film takes place in Utah's monument valley and it's gorgeous and breathtaking.  This scenery is goosed considerably by mists and thunderstorms and fires and elaborate lighting.  At one point John Wayne visits his family's grave (not a spoiler, this is establishing back story) and the picnicking lady shows up.  She's standing in front of the subset and half of the image is red and the other half is black and it's stunning and I loved it.  The final scenes are (of course) of someone riding off into the sunset and boy howdy does that sunset weep with color.  The film is unequivocally beautiful.

The plot becomes more sentimental as it plays out, which is typical of Ford.  He makes lovely films with troubling elements that stick in my grim, sour craw, and this is no exception.  I didn't like it, but I dimly feel I missed the point and I also know that this film was straight-up not meant for me, so it is what it is.