She wore a yellow ribbon

Yesterday evening, ITV3 let us down for once, and BH had to trawl through the higher numbered Freeview channels to find something - eventually alighting on John Wayne on the Sony Movie channel (or some such): 'She wore a yellow ribbon' - a film which premièred in Kansas City just about two months before I was born.

Not altogether convinced that we would make it all the way through, and in many ways the film lived up to what one might expect from the poster which Bing turned up, included above. Complete with Monument Valley, lots of bugle calls and loud, stirring music. Conquest of the west rules!

Indeed, it did drag a bit. But at the same time it did deal with some serious issues, particularly what happens to an ageing career soldier, not particularly successful in that he only made captain, as his retirement approaches; retirement from the only life he has known as an adult. Also the need to give junior officers the space in which to learn their trade, to strike the right balance between telling them what to do and getting them to find out for themselves. With possibly fatal results if they get it too wrong. Also the role and place of wives and women in a frontier fort.

Furthermore, the story was basically linear, with only one thing going on at a time. It was not festooned with digressions, sub-plots or other extras. Definitely a plus for the older viewer.

I was pleased that at the end, in the middle of the night, Wayne stampedes the hostiles' horses so that they have to abandon the war path and return to their reservations, thus avoiding considerable loss of life on both sides. No gratuitous slaughter - although I dare say, at the time, there was plenty of that too - certainly if Cormac McCarthy did his homework before writing his westerns. There was also mutual respect between Wayne and at least one of the hostiles' leaders.

We shall watch some more of these Wayne-Ford collaborations. Which I would not have thought likely beforehand!

PS 1: and checking with Wikipedia, I find that he was not exactly a draft dodger during the second world war, as I had thought, although I dare say he could have been a bit more energetic about circumventing his exemption from the draft if he had really wanted to serve. And Wikipedia suggests that his gung-ho patriotism afterwards was, in part at least, a product of guilt over same.

PS 2: Tuesday: I noticed this morning that Monday's illustration had been cropped. This second, less cropped one was turned up by Google Image Search on the basis of the first one.