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Harrison Alfred Andrews:
Major Dundee: Keltic Dualism
The elements of command
Opposites: complementary aspects of the same phenomenom.
The time is 1864-1865, the nation is divided but under attack by renegades. Manpower is scarce but stern disciplinarian Major Amos Dundee has some Rebel Prisoners remnants of a Confederate advance into New Mexico. Dundee needs Rebel cooperation to fight Apache renegades. An ex-friend Rebel Captain Ben Tyreen can deliver the troops Dundee needs, but there is a heavy price: cancellation of a death penalty and a duel at the end of the trail. Iron-willed, indefatigable, Major Amos Dundee (Charleton Heston) accepts and leads the hastily organized motley crew of ex-rebs, freed African Americans, cowboys, and green union troops against a fearsome renegade marauder who faces down challengers with a haunting dare "who will you send against me next?" These words tingle in the air. The character and the scenes in this pre-revisionist mission of vengeance are well sculpted and well played. The title character is a natural role for a younger Charleton Heston who exudes the grit of power. Both Dundee and his rebel counter-number Ben Tyreen are towers of strength but their human failings are always close enough to the surface to make the characters real.
Dundee, a frustrated soldier, born-to-fight fellow, has been sidelined from the terrible Civil War raging back East, but atrocities committed by the cruel Apache Sierra Charriba gives new life to the old campaigner who loves a fight so much he'll make war against everybody from Apache renegades to the French army occupying Mexico to his own soldiers. Despite all Dundee's arrogant moralizations which he fires freely at Tyreen, Dundee is trapped in an ever-present moral vacuum which absorbs Dundee into a consuming nightmare of drunken despair. Dundee's strength feeds on the fight. Without a fight, Dundee is lost. Americans may marvel at such strikingly realistic original character, well established in the literature of more sophisticated nations.
The Rebel Captain Ben Tyreen played by Richard Harris is a very different type of leader than Major Dundee of a more democratic type whom men obey because they want to, not out of fear. Dundee calls Tyreen soft, but Tyreen for all his invocation of the virtue of giving a man a second chance will pull the trigger on a deserter when he has to. Tyreen can molt from a hardened soldier to a child's playmate amusing two recaptured white captives with a rendition of Minstrel Boy in Gaelic, done so softly that only an attentive viewer will tell that Harris is singing in a foreign language.
Young Trooper Tim Ryan (Michael Anderson Jr.) the other Irish character narrates the tale. In the book version Ryan aspires to be a writer and pays careful attention to documenting the mission. The movie to an extent follows the story line of Harry Julian Fink's novel, but it is interesting to see how the novel treats with the fate of Trooper Ryan's journal.
Where Major Dundee triumphs over Rio Grande is that study of the nature of leadership pitting Dundee against Tyreen two distinct styles both of which the US army recognizes as valid. Perhaps to carry the question just one step further, Major Dundee may prove that both forces of leadership must work in tandem for a command to function. There is a hint of that concept in Rio Grande but it's not well developed. Among American films, only Godfather I & II and Twelve O'Clock High approach Major Dundee in coming to grips with studying the nature of leadership. Even Sam Peckenpah's magnificent Harrison Alfred Andrews is RPPS Commandant.
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MAJOR DUNDEE (1965)
