Shenandoah
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DVD Cover Information Actor: Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, James Stewart, Patrick Wayne, Rosemary Forsyth Director: Andrew V. McLaglen Brand: Universal Studios Cinematographer: William H. Clothier Editor: Otho Lovering Producer: Robert Arthur Writer: James Lee Barrett DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed) Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen Picture Format: 1.85:1 Running Time: 105 minutes DVD Release Date: 2003-05-06 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Studio: Universal Studios |
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Movie Reviews of Shenandoah
Movie Review: Away you rolling river
Summary: 2 Stars
Jimmy Stewart plays the cigar chomping patriarch of a Virginia family during the waning days of the Civil War in SHENANDOAH, an old-fashioned epic western. For half of the movie it ain't "his" war, and the movie lumbers ahead lethargically until something happens to throw him, and his brood, into it.
I remember seeing and enjoying SHENANDOAH a generation or so ago. I watched it again recently and was a little surprised how annoyed I was with it. One of us has changed.
To begin with, the small historical inaccuracies, although nothing in themselves, accumulated to critical mass and forced me to pay attention to them. Charles Anderson's (Stewart) brood would NEVER have been allowed to respectfully decline to join the Confederate army. The South was drafting men from 15-55 by the time this movie took place. A musketeer fires a minie ball into a covered cart and the cart explodes in a fireball. Minie balls were small lumps of lead, hot but not explosive or hot enough to cause an explosion. An integrated Union unit comes across a young pair of boys so the African-American soldier can tell the black youth that "he's a slave no longer." No Union units were integrated, save that most were commanded by white officers. At one point daughter Jennie (Rosemary Forsyth) tells Pa Anderson that "That's the last of coffee." Unless they were independently wealthy, or had been growing their own coffee, the Anderson's last cup of coffee was about three years earlier. Towards the end of the war, coffee was worth its weight in gold in the south....
Okay, I'm nitpicking and I'll stop, although I've still got more in my cartridge box and could carp about everything from costumes to a ludicrously improbable train hijacking. I wouldn't have been so critical if the movie had caught a spark sometime before the half-way point, but it wasted so much time establishing things. And I do mean wasted - a wedding that should have taken about a minute of screen time is blown up to about 8 minutes worth, with the married couple, for no discernable reason, reciting their vows en tote. Both of them.
Still, the movie picks up a bit when events conspire to make it Pa Anderson's war, as well. Stewart is a great actor, maybe the greatest screen actor ever, and it's fortunate for this movie that he's in it. Who else could read a line like this convincingly? "We have to try. If you don't try, you can't do. And if we don't do, why are we here on this earth?" Why, indeed?
Okay. Leaden pacing, historical inaccuracies up the wazoo, goofy script. Have I missed anything?
Yep. The director sheds some unnecessary blood at the end and shamefully manipulates the audience in the final scene. Two stars. One for the photography, one for Stewart.