Shenandoah

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The “Anderson” family are farmers hoping to sit out the American Civil War in Confederate Virginia by basically minding their own business. Dad “Charlie” (James Stewart) regularly has conversations with his six sons and one daughter over dinner as to what axes to grind they might have to cause them to participate. They have no slaves, nor want them; neither do they see any purpose in risking their lives or their livelihood by joining a conflict that doesn’t appear to be going very well. Then serendipity takes an hand as the youngest son (Philip Alford) is apprehended by a passing troop of Yankee soldiers and imprisoned. What now ensues sees “Charlie” and his family set off to find the missing boy whilst that youngster finds himself uncomfortably close to the dregs of the war as he manages to escape captivity and tries to make his own way home. Stewart’s characterisation works on multiple fronts here as he plays a loving father, a determined farmer and also a decent individual who knows the brutality of war yet refuses to sacrifice his integrity to it - even when it impacts tragically on his own family. Alford also delivers quite well as the sixteen year old, as much as because he engagingly epitomises so many of the real soldiers who fought here who were that age and no more equipped for battle than they were to fly. In many ways it depicts a more fearsome lawlessness than was largely missing from this genre by 1965, but it does it in a thoughtful fashion leaving us with something to think on, too.

What do you do with dead soldiers? Shenandoah is directed by Andrew V. McLaglen and written by James Lee Barrett. It stars James Stewart, Patrick Wayne, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Rosemary Forsyth, Phillip Alford and Katharine Ross. Music is by Frank Skinner and Technicolor photography is by William H. Clothier. As the American Civil War rages, a Virginian patriarch keeps his large farming family in the act of isolationism. But will the war leave them alone? A superbly acted and written Civil War Oater, Shenandoah is moving and poignant without over doing the anti-war message. First half of the pic lets us into the lives of the Anderson family, their beliefs, their loves and losses, and decisions that will shape their futures. Circumstances will of course come knocking at the door, which shifts the film into darker territory, where it is here that McLaglen and his team brilliantly show the emotional and physical hardships of the war between the North and the South. Story and the characters are consistently compelling, all while the locations envelope the dramatics with a beauty that is realised by the legendary Clothier. And then there is Stewart, a class act and the axis, the fulcrum of everything that is great about the pic, his character brought vividly - and crucially believably - to life, one of the best father portrayals in classic film. Battles rage, of the war, the heart and of the mind in one of the 1960s best American Oaters. 9/10