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randy_byersLast night I watched Dodge City -- a 1939 Technicolor Western directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Alan Hale fresh from the triumph of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), but alas no Una O'Connor. There's no movie that couldn't be improved by the presence of Una O'Connor, and while Dodge City has some great moments, it needed something more. Although I'll give it credit for giving us a Western hero played by the Australian Errol Flynn as an Irish soldier of fortune turned cowpoke turned (over the course of the movie) frontier sheriff. I also liked one of the early title cards: "Dodge City, Kansas - 1872. Longhorn cattle center of the world and wide-open Babylon of the American frontier - packed with settlers, thieves and gunmen."
Curtiz gets some love from auteurists like Dave Kehr, but I haven't really noticed a particular thematic voice in his work. He was a very successful studio director who was given big budget projects like Dodge City. This is one of those A list spectacles that strings one familiar trope after another and stages them in grand style. One of the best sequences is an epic barroom riot. But what was interesting from an auteurist point of view was what started the brawl. One group of bar patrons started singing a song, and then another group started trying to drown them out with "Dixie". The two groups try to outsing each other at the top of their lungs. This is of course reminiscent of the scene in Curtiz's Casablanca (1942) where the Nazis start singing "Das Deutschlandlied" in Rick's Cafe and the other patrons counter with a stirring rendition of "La Marseillaise" -- always one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
I didn't recognize the song that was countered by "Dixie," but I'm really wondering about that. It turns out to be a famous Civil War song by Henry Clay Work called "Marching Through Georgia." Is it really possible that I've never heard this song, or did I just not recognize it? It sounds like I really should know it. The Wikipedia article claims that "Outside of the Southern United States, it had a universal appeal: Japanese troops sang it as they entered Port Arthur, the British Army sang it in India, and an English town thought the tune was appropriate to welcome southern troops in World War II." I'm fascinated by the lyrics, particularly this verse:
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground
While we were marching through Georgia.
They just don't write war songs like that anymore, do they?
Curtiz gets some love from auteurists like Dave Kehr, but I haven't really noticed a particular thematic voice in his work. He was a very successful studio director who was given big budget projects like Dodge City. This is one of those A list spectacles that strings one familiar trope after another and stages them in grand style. One of the best sequences is an epic barroom riot. But what was interesting from an auteurist point of view was what started the brawl. One group of bar patrons started singing a song, and then another group started trying to drown them out with "Dixie". The two groups try to outsing each other at the top of their lungs. This is of course reminiscent of the scene in Curtiz's Casablanca (1942) where the Nazis start singing "Das Deutschlandlied" in Rick's Cafe and the other patrons counter with a stirring rendition of "La Marseillaise" -- always one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
I didn't recognize the song that was countered by "Dixie," but I'm really wondering about that. It turns out to be a famous Civil War song by Henry Clay Work called "Marching Through Georgia." Is it really possible that I've never heard this song, or did I just not recognize it? It sounds like I really should know it. The Wikipedia article claims that "Outside of the Southern United States, it had a universal appeal: Japanese troops sang it as they entered Port Arthur, the British Army sang it in India, and an English town thought the tune was appropriate to welcome southern troops in World War II." I'm fascinated by the lyrics, particularly this verse:
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground
While we were marching through Georgia.
They just don't write war songs like that anymore, do they?
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Date: 2009-10-23 06:09 pm (UTC)