"The Alamo" and Some Other Movies It Reminded Me Of
They ran "The Alamo" along with some other John Wayne movies over the Thanksgiving weekend and I did what I could to give "The Alamo" a full look.
I found these points of interest:
ONE: Its incredible how much Laurence Harvey's role in this film is a full dress rehearsal for his character in "The Manchurian Candidate" two years later, Raymond Shaw:
In both films, as a military man, Harvey is his own worst enemy: cold, unfeeling, arrogant and at once unwilling and unable to "hang out" with the soldiers around him in their moments of drunkenness, partying and womanizing. As Frank Sinatra TRIES to humanize Harvey in TMC, John Wayn TRIES to humanize Harvey in The Alamo. Harvey's performance is exactly the same in both films -- except without the "hypnotized brainwashed zombie in a trance" mode he affects in his killing scenes in the latter. Still, its amazing: same damn performance of practically the same damn character. And both films underline the same sadness ABOUT Harvey's character: he finally DOES thaw out, does become more of a "regular guy," but it is too late, and he has to die. In both films.
TWO: The Jaws "three guys at odds as pals" formula. In Jaws, it will be Scheider the police chief, Hooper the shark expert, Quint the old sea salt. Here its Harvey the military martinet, Richard Widmark, the "frontier military volunteer guerrila hero Jim Bowie" and Wayne's Davy Crockett, the "Congressman celebrity articulate good ol' boy." The roles are well cast and well-contrasted and maybe Wayne didn't want a lead, but he IS the lead. Its funny to watch Widmark and Harvey hate each other but both confide in Wayne as a friend. Widmark(to Wayne on Harvey): "I wouldn't believe what he said if he told me day was light and night was dark." Harvey,(On Widmark to Wayne): "He's a drunk and he only commands volunteers." Wayne is trusted confidante to both and all, and there are a couple of scenes with all three men together in which their mutual "military respect,' the mutual hate between Harvey and Widmark, and Wayne's "man in the middle" sense of compromise all work quite well. I liked all three characters, apart and together.
THREE: The three main stars are introduced one at a time - first Harvey, then Widmark, then -- considerably late in the film, you have to wait for him -- Wayne. THAT's kind of like Jaws, too. But "bonus guest star" Richard Boone opens the movie, playing the highest ranking man in the movie -- General Sam Houston, and berating the martinet Harvey not to rat out Widmark as being asleep and drunk and then noting, "I could never get myself to like you, Travis(Harvey), but you, too are a man I would trust with the life of Texas." This was done while Richard Boone was a big TV star(Have Gun Will Travel) but a few years before he crucially modified his persona into "amiable dangerous good ol' boy." Boone's Sam Houston takes himself and everything way too seriously("I asked you a QUESTION!") -- but he has to. Its the Alamo...
FOUR: I'll hardly say that John Wayne was our greatest of film actors. He read some lines woodenly or oversold his "schtick." But The Alamo proves he could be an actor of great, quiet sophistication, too. He moves through The Alamo AS a superstar(everybody recognizes Davy Crockett) and extends the kind of modest-but-knowing power that a star already has, AS Davy Crockett.
But Wayne really shines in a quite long, meandering scene (of no particular relevance to the plot beyond one small point) involving beautiful widowed Senora Linda Crystal(gorgeous) as she is being hassled by a bullying American who wants to force her to marry him so that he can obtain her Mexican lands.
Its a nighttime scene, very quiet. Wayne as Crockett witnesses the other American man bullying the beautiful Mexican woman and just sort of follows them around as they move about and eventually head up to her room. Whereupon Wayne follows them up there and thus begins a superb comical bit where Wayne keeps knocking on the door at intervals(a recognizable four knocks each time), so that the American bully has to come out and be a bit more irritated with Wayne each time, with the beautiful Linda Crystal becoming more attracted to Wayne each time.
Its really a quiet comedy scene and I'd call it "John Wayne does Lubitsch."
You keep THINKING its going to lead to Wayne punching the bully out, but it goes in a another direction: the bully sets a team of about eight henchmen out to fight the Duke(he, smartly and quite un-John Wayne like,runs away before they catch up with him) and then Richard Widmark's Jim Bowie "rides to the rescue" and helps Duke beat everybody up. Fun.
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I mention all these scenes above because I think what surprised me about The Alamo was how much it was actually like "Rio Bravo" -- en route to the big battle scenes and despite the politics of the piece(General Santa Anna's armies are, noted one critic, standing in for the Communists Wayne so despised)...the movie spends a lot of time just getting to know these guys, allowing itself to be a comedy and a buddy movie and a bit of a romance(Wayne and the lovely Linda Crystal). "The Alamo" looks like a John Ford movie(and against Wayne's wishes, Ford actually haunted the location and ended up filming some second unit stuff Wayne threw out), but it plays like a Hawks movie.