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Sargento Rutledge
SergeantRutledgePoster.jpg
Póster de teatro de una hoja (1960)
Dirigido porJohn Ford
Producido porWillis Goldbeck como
Patrick Ford
Escrito porJames Warner Bellah
Willis Goldbeck
Protagonizada
Musica porHoward Jackson
CinematografíaBert Glennon
Editado porJack Murray
Empresa de producción
Producciones John Ford
Distribuido porWarner Bros.
Fecha de lanzamiento
  • 18 de mayo de 1960 (Estados Unidos) (1960-05-18)
Tiempo de ejecución111 minutos
PaísEstados Unidos
Idiomainglés

Sergeant Rutledge es una película criminal del oeste americano en tecnicolor de 1960dirigida por John Ford y protagonizada por Jeffrey Hunter , Constance Towers , Woody Strode y Billie Burke . [1] Seis décadas después, la película sigue atrayendo la atención porque fue una de las primeras películas convencionales en los Estados Unidos en tratar el racismo con franqueza y en darle un papel protagónico a un actor afroamericano. [2] En 2017, el crítico Richard Brody. observó que "El mayor cineasta político estadounidense, John Ford, dramatizó implacablemente, en sus westerns, las distorsiones mentales e históricas que surgen de los orígenes violentos del país, incluido su legado de racismo, al que se enfrentó a lo largo de su carrera, en ninguna parte de manera más radical que en Sergeant Rutledge ". [3]

La película fue protagonizada por Strode como el sargento Rutledge, un primer sargento negro de un regimiento de color de la Caballería de los Estados Unidos. En un fuerte del ejército estadounidense a principios de la década de 1880, está siendo juzgado por un consejo de guerra por la violación y asesinato de una niña blanca, así como por el asesinato del padre de la niña, que era el comandante del fuerte. La historia de estos eventos se cuenta a través de varios flashbacks.

Trama [ editar ]

The film revolves around the fictional court-martial of 1st Sgt. Braxton Rutledge (Strode) of the 9th U.S. Cavalry in 1881. At the time, the United States Army maintained four colored regiments, including the 9th Cavalry. His defense is handled by Lt. Tom Cantrell (Hunter), who is also Rutledge's troop officer. The story is told through a series of flashbacks, expanding the testimony of witnesses as they describe the events following the murder of Rutledge's Commanding Officer, Major Custis Dabney, and the rape and murder of Dabney's daughter Lucy, for which Rutledge is the accused.

La evidencia circunstancial sugiere que el primer sargento violó y asesinó a la niña y luego mató a su oficial al mando. Peor aún, Rutledge abandona después de los asesinatos. Finalmente, es localizado y arrestado por el teniente Cantrell. En un momento, Rutledge escapa del cautiverio durante una incursión india, pero más tarde, regresa voluntariamente para advertir a sus compañeros de caballería que están a punto de enfrentar una emboscada, salvando así a la tropa. Luego lo vuelven a traer para enfrentar los cargos y los prejuicios de un tribunal militar totalmente blanco.

Finalmente, es declarado inocente de la violación y el asesinato de la niña cuando un hombre blanco local se derrumba al ser interrogado y admite que violó y asesinó a la niña.

Transmitir [ editar ]

  • Woody Strode como el primer sargento Braxton Rutledge, novena caballería. El sargento Rutledge fue la primera de las cuatro películas que hizo Strode con John Ford. En una entrevista, Strode recordó cómo fue elegido para el papel: "Los grandes estudios querían un actor como Sidney [Poitier] o [Harry] Belafonte", recordó Strode. "Y esto no es una broma, pero el Sr. Ford me defendió; y no sé si esto está sucediendo. Él dijo:" Bueno, no son lo suficientemente duros como para hacer lo que quiero que sea el Sargento Rutledge ". [4]
  • Jeffrey Hunter as 1st Lt. Tom Cantrell, 9th Cavalry (counsel for the defense). Hunter's role in Sergeant Rutledge was the last of his three roles in films directed by Ford. He was previously cast in The Searchers and The Last Hurrah.
  • Constance Towers as Mary Beecher. Towers had also been cast in Ford's previous film, The Horse Soldiers.
  • Billie Burke as Mrs. Cordelia Fosgate. Burke was a veteran actress who had played a good witch in The Wizard of Oz (1939); her part in Sergeant Rutledge was her final film role.
  • Juano Hernández as Sgt. Matthew Luke Skidmore, 9th Cavalry
  • Willis Bouchey as Lt. Col. Otis Fosgate, 9th Cavalry (president of the court-martial)
  • Carleton Young as Capt. Shattuck, 14th Infantry (prosecutor)
  • Judson Pratt as 2nd Lt. Mulqueen, 9th Cavalry (court-martial board member) (uncredited)
  • Toby Michaels as Lucy Dabney (uncredited)
  • Jack Mower as Courtroom Spectator (uncredited)

Production & release[edit]

The screenplay for Sergeant Rutledge was original and was written by the film's co-producer, Willis Goldbeck, and by James Warner Bellah. Bellah has written that he and Goldbeck interested John Ford in directing a film after a screenplay was completed. Bellah had previously written the stories on which John Ford based his "cavalry trilogy" of films: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950). The screenplay was subsequently adapted by Bellah for a novel of the same name.[5]

Parts of the film were shot in Monument Valley and the San Juan River at Mexican Hat in Utah.[6]

As illustrated in the poster image above, for the 1960 domestic theatrical release of the film the theater patrons were warned that they could not be seated during the final 10 minutes of the film in order to preserve its suspense. The film did poorly in U.S. theaters. Scott Eyman summarized: "Sergeant Rutledge is a film of considerable formal beauty about the bonds between a black band of brothers. Not surprisingly, it did miserably at the domestic box office, grossing $784,000. It did considerably better overseas, grossing $1.7 million, but was probably still a marginal financial failure."[7]

Other countries[edit]

In Spain, the film was shown under the title of El Sargento Negro (The Black Sergeant).

Recepción [ editar ]

Black Classic Movies mentions that this is one of the few American films of the 1960s to have a Black man in a leading role and the first mainstream western to do so.[8] Lucia Bozzola at All Movie gave it four out of five stars and mentioned "the expressionistic use of light and color, particularly during Rutledge's encounter with a sympathetic female witness, points to the repressed sexual terror that drives the case against him" and praised Strode's performance.[9] Jonathan Rosenbaum at Chicago Reader considered the film to be "effective", but "slightly long" and mentioned that it is "one of Ford's late efforts to treat minority members with more respect than westerns usually did."[10] Time Out agreed that the film is "often pigeonholed as one of Ford's late trio of guiltily amends-making movies" and although it praised it, it concluded that "he can't confront the cultural fear of miscegenation that mechanises [the movie], only its distorted expression."[11]

In Mike Grost's anthology presenting Ford's movies, the film was described as being one of his best, but also one of his most underrated. It also mentioned how the film mocked traditional femininity as being an "artificial construct".[12] TV Guide said the film "is a fascinating, detailed look at racism" and mentioned how some characters are directly racist, while others suffer from "repressed racism".[13] Variety said that the movie has an "intriguing screenplay which deals frankly, if not too deeply, with racial prejudice in the post-Civil War era."[14] The Movie Scene was more mixed, saying it is an "interesting movie because it is slightly different to what you expect from a John Ford western", but mentioned that it "is not the intelligent courtroom drama of say Anatomy of a Murder", but that it instead relies on Ford's customary use of the flashback.[15]

Home media[edit]

A region 1 DVD was released in 2006 in the United States as part of a set of movies directed by John Ford.[16] In 2016 the film's DVD was released individually.[17] A VHS tape had been released in 1988.[18]

See also[edit]

  • List of American films of 1960
  • Military history of African Americans
  • Racism
  • Expressionism in Cinema

References[edit]

  1. ^ Harrison's Reports film review; April 16, 1960; page 64.
  2. ^ Manchel, Frank (1997). "Losing and finding John Ford's 'Sergeant Rutledge' (1960)". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 17 (2): 245–259. doi:10.1080/01439689700260711. Ford's message and his means of delivering it create problems. But his agenda and its relevance to film history are significant. The film itself may not provide the most memorable moments in the director's career, but it is an important contribution to our understanding of race in the 1960s.
  3. ^ Brody, Richard (August 1, 2017). "The Front Row: 'Sergeant Rutledge'". The New Yorker.
  4. ^ Manchel, Frank (Spring 1995). "The man who made the stars shine brighter: An interview with Woody Strode". The Black Scholar. San Francisco. 25 (2): 37–46. doi:10.1080/00064246.1995.11430718.
  5. ^ Bellah, James Warner (1960). Sergeant Rutledge. Bantam Books. OCLC 28370899. Novelization of the film's screenplay. Bellah describes the development of the screenplay in the novel's preface.
  6. ^ D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. p. 289. ISBN 9781423605874. OCLC 862976339.
  7. ^ Eyman, Scott (2015). Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford. Simon and Schuster. p. 453. ISBN 9781476797724. OCLC 1075793427. Reprinting of book published in 1999.
  8. ^ "Sergeant Rutledge". Black Classic Movies.
  9. ^ Bozzola, Lucia. "Sergeant Rutledge (1960)". allmovie.com.
  10. ^ Rosenbaum, Jonathan (October 1, 1994). "Sergeant Rutledge". Chicago Reader.
  11. ^ "Sergeant Rutledge". Time Out (magazine). Ford can show us an innocent victim of American racism, and stress in courtroom flashbacks his heroic credentials in white man's uniform, but he can never make the leap to offering us a black who actually rejects the role of honorary white.
  12. ^ Grost, Mike. "The Films of John Ford". Grost's reviews are included in Rotten Tomatoes; see "Michael E. Grost". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  13. ^ "Sergeant Rutledge". TV Guide. Sergeant Rutledge was the first mainstream western to cast an African-American as the central heroic figure. There already had been other westerns with black characters--from the 1923 silent The Bull-Dogger to Bronze Buckaroo (1938) and Harlem on the Prairie (1939)--but these films were low-budget, all-black productions that were never screened for white audiences. Not only was Sergeant Rutledge produced by a major studio, but also it was directed by one of filmdom's most-respected talents, Ford.
  14. ^ "Sergeant Rutledge". Variety. December 31, 1959. Give John Ford a troop of cavalry, some hostile Indians, a wisp of story and chances are the director will come galloping home with an exciting film. Sergeant Rutledge provides an extra plus factor in the form of an offbeat and intriguing screenplay which deals frankly, if not too deeply, with racial prejudice in the post-Civil War era.
  15. ^ "Sergeant Rutledge (1960)". The Movie Scene. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  16. ^ Sergeant Rutledge (DVD (region 1)). Warner Bros. June 6, 2006. ISBN 9781419828898. OCLC 670135945.
  17. ^ Sergeant Rutledge (DVD (region 1)). Warner Archive Collection. December 6, 2016. ISBN 9781419828898. OCLC 967732398.
  18. ^ Sergeant Rutledge (VHS (NTSC)). Warner Bros. 1988. ISBN 9780790716879. OCLC 317252228.

Further reading[edit]

  • Brody, Richard (June 26, 2014). "The Direction of Justice: John Ford's cinematic fight for civil rights". The New Yorker. Ford, of course, is most famous for his Westerns, and one of the best of them, “Sergeant Rutledge,” from 1960 (July 19), set in Arizona in 1881, stars Woody Strode in the title role.
  • Crego, Miguel Ángel Navarro (2008). «Sergeant Rutledge», de John Ford, como un mito filosófico. ISBN 978-84-6928-947-1. OCLC 868721564.
  • Gallagher, Tag (1986). John Ford: The Man and His Films. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bert Glennon's photography makes it Ford's most expressionistic color film (and possibly his most brilliant - characters set against black, light-streamed fog, trains roaring through the night. ... But suspense is not Ford's forte, and, anyway, Sergeant Rutledge is too much a discombobulation of genres — suspense film, wester, racial melodrama, theoretical expressionism.
  • Miller, Jack (December 9, 2019). "Sergeant Rutledge: Ford's Rashōmon". Indiana University - A Place for Film. Indiana University. the film finds Ford returning, at various points, to a kind of full-blown expressionism, especially during the stormy, nocturnal sequences that mark the first couple of flashbacks, which are rendered in some of the most layered and striking compositions of Ford’s oeuvre.
  • Mims, Sergio (December 3, 2016). "John Ford's "Apology" Western Sergeant Rutledge Starring Woody Strode Returning to DVD". Shadow and Act.
  • Rupp, Erik (May 3, 2010). "Sergeant Rutledge (1960) DVD". Vista Records.
  • Schwartz, Dennis (September 21, 2010). "Sergeant Rutledge". Ford’s film must be given kudos for bringing up real questions about racial relationships that were mostly ignored previously by Hollywood. Rated "B" on an A-F scale.
  • Thompson, Howard (May 26, 1960). "'Sergeant Rutledge'". The New York Times. Admirably, scenarists James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck (co-producer with Patrick Ford) have explored a little-known chapter in Army history: the solid, brave service of a group of Negro recruits, including former slaves, under white officers during the Indian Wars.
  • Tracy, Andrew (April 2004). "Sergeant Rutledge". Senses of Cinema (31). With an effortlessness which belies the film’s clunky flashback structure, Ford deftly traces the manifestations of racist fear in societal life, from the knee-jerks of the subconscious ('It was as though he’d sprung up from the earth… from a nightmare') to the self-deceiving rhetoric of the political establishment ('Incidentally, I’m glad that none of you gentlemen has mentioned the colour of the man’s skin').

External links[edit]

  • Sergeant Rutledge at IMDb.
  • Sergeant Rutledge at AllMovie.
  • Sergeant Rutledge at the TCM Movie Database
  • Sergeant Rutledge at the American Film Institute Catalog
  • Sergeant Rutledge at Rotten Tomatoes