The Plainsman
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Movie Reviews of The Plainsman
Movie Review: Faux Historical Epic; Nevertheless Engaging Entertainment!
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Plainsman" represents the directorial prowess of Cecil B. DeMille at its most inaccurate and un-factual. It sets up parallel plots for no less stellar an entourage than Wild Bill Hickok (Gary Cooper), Buffalo Bill Cody (James Ellison), Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur), George Armstrong Custer and Abraham Lincoln to interact, even though in reality Lincoln was already dead at the time the story takes place. Every once in a while DeMille floats dangerously close toward the truth, but just as easily veers away from it into unabashed spectacle and showmanship. The film is an attempt to buttress Custer's last stand with a heap of fiction that is only loosely based on the lives of people, who were already the product of manufactured stuffs and legends.TRANSFER: Considering the vintage of the film, this is a moderately appealing transfer, with often clean whites and extremely solid blacks. There's a considerable amount of film grain in some scenes and an absence of it at other moments. All in all, the image quality is therefore somewhat inconsistent, but it is never all bad or all good - just a bit better than middle of the road. Age related artifacts are kept to a minimum and digital anomalies do not distract. The audio is mono but nicely balanced.
EXTRAS: Forget it. It's Universal!
BOTTOM LINE: As pseudo-history painted on celluloid, this western is compelling and fun. Just take its characters and story with a grain of salt - in some cases - a whole box seems more appropriate!
Movie Review: Plainsman, a great story with a history twist.
Summary: 4 Stars
The Plainsman, which changes American history of the West, still was quite enjoyable. The actors did fine jobs and the directing was on target. I don't know if people were bothered by it's overlapping, twisted history when it first came out, but I bet they enjoyed the story and the players.Movie Review: Obscure battlefield accurately depicted
Summary: 3 Stars
As someone who has actually been to the hard-to-find Beecher's Island battlefield site (in the badlands of NE Colorado), I was pleasantly amazed to note how accurately the terrain is depicted in "The Plainsman." I have been to the sites of other notable Indian fights, including both the Fetterman Massacre and Little Big Horn, and although distinctive in their own ways, they are basically just dusty hills in barren grasslands. Beecher's Island was different. It occured near a rare shady spot along a "river" which now is usually nothing but a dry shallow gulch running through some private grazing land; at the time of Major Forsyth's engagement with the Cheyenne under Roman Nose the Arikara River was a formidable obstacle with a few spits of sandy ground--the "island"-jutting up in the middle. At one end of the gulch/river bed there is a bluff some fifty feet or so high from behind which the Cheyenne formed, launched their charges, and rallied. At the summit of the bluff lies Roman Nose, killed in the battle, his lonely grave marker still (as of the mid-1990s) faithfully tended by unknown locals. The "island" itself looked completely unlike any other battlefield of the Plains Indian Wars, being tiny, made of sand, and strewn with dirftwood, which Forsyth and his little band formed into a sort of breastworks.
Almost all of this terrain is faithfully recreated in "The Plainsman." Obviously DeMille didn't shoot this in the Colorado Badlands; there was a contemporary pencil sketch in Harper's Weekly, and perhaps they based the scene on that. Whatever the reason, I was impressed. Now, if only they had had the Buffalo Soldiers rescue Forsyth's party, as they did in reality (a monument to them is present at the battlefield). . . .
I would be curious to know if anyone else has some insight into this?
The three stars are a compromise: 4 for entertainment value, 2.5 for historical accuracy.
Movie Review: FAUX HISTORICAL EPIC - FLASHY BUT INACCURATE
Summary: 3 Stars
"The Plainsman" represents the directorial prowess of Cecil B. DeMille at its most inaccurate and un-factual. It sets up parallel plots for no less stellar an entourage than Wild Bill Hickok (Gary Cooper), Buffalo Bill Cody (James Ellison), Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur), George Armstrong Custer and Abraham Lincoln to interact, even though in reality Lincoln was already dead at the time the story takes place. Every once in a while DeMille floats dangerously close toward the truth, but just as easily veers away from it into unabashed spectacle and showmanship. The film is an attempt to buttress Custer's last stand with a heap of fiction that is only loosely based on the lives of people, who were already the product of manufactured stuffs and legends.TRANSFER: Considering the vintage of the film, this is a moderately appealing transfer, with often clean whites and extremely solid blacks. There's a considerable amount of film grain in some scenes and an absence of it at other moments. All in all, the image quality is therefore somewhat inconsistent, but it is never all bad or all good - just a bit better than middle of the road. Age related artifacts are kept to a minimum and digital anomalies do not distract. The audio is mono but nicely balanced.
EXTRAS: Forget it. It's Universal!
BOTTOM LINE: As pseudo-history painted on celluloid, this western is compelling and fun. Just take its characters and story with a grain of salt - in some cases - a whole box seems more appropriate!
Movie Review: RUN OF DeMILLE !
Summary: 3 Stars
This film is NOT a DeMille great - It becomes quite tedious in fact, after the first 40 min's. - due in no small part to Jean Arthur's atrocious miscasting and annoyingly whiney voice (what on earth was her appeal?). James Ellison (of the very great & crazy THE GANG'S ALL HERE) is totally absurd as Buffalo Bill. And poor Cooper seems ill at ease with the silly script.
One can usually count on DeMille to "deliver the goods", here he delivers the not so goods. And there is'nt even a "bath scene"!
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