Ulzana's Raid

Ulzana's Raid is a 1972 American Revisionist Western film starring Burt Lancaster, Richard Jaeckel, Bruce Davison and Joaquin Martinez. The film, which was filmed on location in Arizona, was directed by Robert Aldrich based on a script by Alan Sharp. It portrays a brutal raid by Chiricahua Apaches against European settlers in 1880s Arizona. The bleak and nihilistic tone of U.S. troops chasing an elusive merciless enemy has been seen as allegory to the United States participation in the Vietnam War.[3][4]

Ulzana's Raid
Film poster
Directed byRobert Aldrich
Written byAlan Sharp
Produced byCarter De Haven Jr.
StarringBurt Lancaster
Bruce Davison
Richard Jaeckel
Jorge Luke
Joaquín Martínez
CinematographyJoseph Biroc
Edited byMichael Luciano
Music byFrank De Vol
Color processTechnicolor
Production
companies
De Haven Productions
The Associates & Aldrich Company
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release date
  • October 27, 1972 (1972-10-27)
Running time
103 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2.8 million[1]
Box office414,559 admissions (France)[2]

Plot

Following mistreatment by Indian agency authorities, Ulzana breaks out of the San Carlos Indian Reservation with a small Chiricahua war party. When news reaches Fort Lowell, the commanding officer sends riders out to alert the local settlers. However, both troopers are ambushed separately; one is dragged away while the other kills the European woman he is escorting and then himself. The Apaches play catch with his liver. The woman's husband, who stayed behind to protect his farm, is captured and tortured to death. McIntosh, an ageing U.S. Army scout, is ordered to bring in Ulzana. Joining him will be a few dozen soldiers led by the inexperienced lieutenant, Garnett DeBuin, a veteran Cavalry sergeant and Ke-Ni-Tay, an Apache scout. Ke-Ni-Tay knows Ulzana because their wives are sisters.

The cavalry troop soon discover the brutal activities of the Apache war party. The soldiers know they are facing a merciless enemy with far better local skills. DeBuin is shocked by the cruelty and harshness he sees because it conflicts strongly with his Christian morality and view of humanity. After failing to find Ulzana, McIntosh and Ke-Ni-Tay consider how to outwit their enemy. But DeBuin remains cautious and mistrustful of Ke-Ni-Tay because Ulzana did not let him join his war party.

Ulzana and his warriors decide to continue on foot to tire out the pursuing cavalry while their horses are circuitously led back the other way. However, after Ke-Ni-Tay notices that the tracks are of unladen ponies, McIntosh leads an ambush that kills the horses and their two Apache escorts; one of whom was Ulzana's son. Despite angry protestations, DeBuin forbids his men from mutilating the dead boy.

The war party attack another farm, burning the homesteader to death and seizing two horses. McIntosh realizes that the remaining Apaches physically and psychologically need horses and will try to obtain them by raiding the troop. A woman at the burned-out farm, instead of being murdered following her gang rape, was left alive but injured so that the cavalry will be forced to send her to the fort with an escort. By splitting the troop, Ulzana hopes to successfully attack the escort and seize its horses. McIntosh suggests a decoy plan to make Ulzana falsely believe that his tactics are successful.

Ulzana's warriors ambush the small escort detachment obtaining all of its horses and killing the sergeant and his soldiers before DeBuin can arrive with the rest of his force. McIntosh is left mortally wounded. Only the woman survives unharmed though now apparently crazed by her experiences. Ke-Ni-Tay scatters the captured horses just as bugle calls from the cavalry ineptly alert the Apaches to DeBuin's approach. Ulzana flees on foot as the remnants of his band are killed. Ke-Ni-Tay confronts him and shows him the Army bugle taken from the body of his son. Ulzana puts down his weapons and sings his death song before the Apache scout kills him. A corporal suggests that Ulzana, or at least his head, should be taken back to the fort. However, DeBuin, now hardened by what he has witnessed during the mission, sternly orders him to be buried. Ke-Ni-Tay insists on carrying out the task himself. The surviving troopers led by DeBuin pack up to leave but McIntosh knows that he will not survive the journey back to the fort, so chooses to stay behind to die alone.

Cast

Production

Writing

The film is an original screenplay by Alan Sharp, who said he was inspired by John Ford's 1956 western The Searchers because he regarded it as "the best film I have ever seen".[5] Sharp later described Ulzana's Raid as:

Apart from being my sincere homage to Ford [...] an attempt to express allegorically the malevolence of the world and the terror mortals feel in the face of it. We all have our own notions of what constitutes the ultimate in fear, from personal phobias to periods in history. [...] Three historical landscapes that I shudder most to consider are the Third Reich, Turkey during the First World War, and the American Southwest during the years 1860–86. [...] In Ulzana's Raid I am not intent on presenting a reasoned analysis of the relationship between the aboriginie and the colonizer. The events described in the film are accurate in the sense they have factual equivalents, but the final consideration was to present an allegory in whose enlarged features we might perceive the lineaments of our own drama, caricatured, but not falsified. [...] The Ulzana of the Ulzana's Raid is not the Chiricahua Apache of history, whose raid was more protracted and ruthless and daring than the one I had written about. He is the expression of my idea of the Apache as the spirit of the land, the manifestation of its hostility and harshness.[5]

Lancaster later said in 1972 that in his entire career the only "first screenplays" that he really liked were Birdman of Alcatraz and Ulzana's Raid.[6]

Aldrich later claimed "From the time we started to the time we finished the picture, I'd say fifty, sixty percent of it [the script] was changed. Alan Sharp, the writer, was very amenable and terribly helpful. And terribly prolific. He can write twenty-five pages a day. He couldn't agree more with my political viewpoint—so that was no problem. And fortunately, Lancaster and I felt pretty much the same about the picture. It was good that I had support from Sharp and Lancaster, because I don't have the highest regard for Carter DeHaven, the producer."[7]

Casting

It would be the first time Burt Lancaster and Robert Aldrich had worked together since Vera Cruz (1954).[8] Aldrich said Lancaster's character, John McIntosh, was named after John McIntire, the actor who played the Indian scout Al Sieber in the film Apache he directed in 1954. It was an "inside joke ... I'm not sure that Alan Sharp ever knew just why we did that."[7]

Filming

The film was shot on location in the southeast of Tucson, Arizona, at the Coronado National Forest and in Nogales, as well as in the Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.

Versions

There are two cuts of the film because Burt Lancaster helped to produce the movie. The American release was edited under the supervision of Aldrich while the European version was overseen by Lancaster. Although the overall running times are similar, there are enough differences between the 2 cuts, including several complete scenes only to find in one of the versions. A non-authorized version compiled by a German TV station in 1986 combined all scenes from both versions, with a runtime of 111 min.[9]

Reception

Although it was not a commercial success, Aldrich said he was "very proud" of the film.[7] Critics such as Gene Siskel wrote that the film was one of the ten best of 1972.[10] Vincent Canby of the New York Times also said it was one of the best films of the year.[11]

Later reputation

Although the film is considered to be a revisionist Western, it is not through the sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans that is so common in this genre; it is because of its allegorical message about America's conduct in the war in Vietnam at that time.[12] American film critic and professor Emanuel Levy has called Ulzana's Raid one of the best Westerns of the 1970s saying it "is also one of the most underestimated pictures of vet director Robert Aldrich, better known for his sci-fi and horror flicks, such as Kiss Me Deadly and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane."[13]

Quentin Tarantino called it "hands down Aldrich’s best film of the seventies, as well as being one of the greatest westerns of the seventies. One of the things that makes the movie so remarkable is it isn’t just a western; it combines the two genres that Aldrich was most known for, westerns and war films. "[14]

See also

Notes

Citations
  1. Alain Silver and James Ursini, Whatever Happened to Robert Aldrich?, Limelight, 1995 p 284
  2. French box office results for Robert Aldrich films at Box Office Story
  3. Williams, Tony (2004). Body and soul: the cinematic vision of Robert Aldrich. Scarecrow Press. pp. 181–185. ISBN 978-0-8108-4993-8.
  4. "In Ulzana's Raid, the Vietnam War's in the Arizona desert". www.chicagoreader.com. August 14, 2013. Retrieved February 15, 2020.
  5. Sharp, Alan (May 13, 1972). "Movies: White Man Unforks Tongue for 'Ulzana'". Los Angeles Times. p. k20.
  6. Malcolm, Derek (August 4, 1972). "Interview with Burt Lancaster". The Guardian. p. 10.
  7. Aldrich, Robert (March–April 1977). ""I CAN'T GET JIMMY CARTER TO SEE MY MOVIE!"". Film Comment. New York. 13 (2): 46–52.
  8. Murphy, Mary (November 27, 1971). "Aldrich, Lancaster Reunited". Los Angeles Times. p. a9.
  9. Brad Stevens (June 30, 2000). "Variant versions of Robert Aldrich's films: a case study". screeningthepast.com. Retrieved March 10, 2019. The scenes that Lancaster cut include a pre-credits sequence showing Ulzana and his men leaving the reservation in the middle of the night. [...] The major deletions relate to the character of McIntosh (Lancaster)'s Indian lover, played by Aimee Eccles, who has been completely removed from the European edition
  10. Siskel, Gene (December 31, 1972). "Movies: Gene Siskel picks top 10 films of 1972 Chicago's best films ... the pick of 1972's pack". Chicago Tribune. p. O1.
  11. "Critic's Choice -- Ten Best Films of '72: Critic's Choice -- Ten Best of '72". New York Times. December 31, 1972. p. D1.
  12. Nelson, Andrew Patrick (2015). Still in the Saddle: The Hollywood Western, 1969–1980. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 92. ISBN 9780806153032.
  13. Levy, Emanuel (April 12, 2008). "Ulzana's Raid".
  14. Tarantino, Quentin (December 22, 2019). "Ulzana's Raid". New Beverly. Archived from the original on March 23, 2020. Retrieved March 23, 2020.

Bibliography
  • Lusted, David (2011). "Ulzana's Raid". In Geraghty, Lincoln (ed.). Directory of World Cinema: American Hollywood. Intellect Books. p. 59. ISBN 9781841504155. Encyclopedia entry that discusses Ulzana's Raid and other westerns in the context of the then-current US-Vietnam war.
  • Sachs, Ben (August 14, 2013). "In Ulzana's Raid, the Vietnam War's in the Arizona desert". The Chicago Reader. An extended review of Ulzana's Raid in the context of Aldrich's career.
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