I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The first must-see film of the year.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I thought I'd try another western, by none other than John Ford, since it came by late one night on the BBC. The story is rather unusual for its time, as I understand it, and the flashback motif works pretty well with that. The (sort of) running gag with the judge and his wife was wearing a little thin at some point, though.The cast members play quite well, with Wooody Strode as the stout-hearted Sergeant Rutledge as my personal favorite. Toby Michaels (uncredited), in the role of victim Lucy Dabney, was a positive ray of sunshine, which will help the viewer rooting for any angry mob out for justice. The story stays interesting enough, even if there are no real surprises, and things stay sort of goody-goody most of the time.A good 7 out of 10.

Unlike most of Director John Ford's Westerns that feature much action, "Sergeant Rutledge" is mainly a courtroom drama told mainly in flashback. The time is 1881. The gist of the story is a black Ninth US Cavalry sergeant accused in the rape and murder of a teen-aged white girl Lucy Dabney (Toby Michaels) and also the murder of her father. Woody Strode ably plays the role of the sergeant, Braxton Rutledge. When he tells his enlisted men about "white woman's business" we know he is talking about serious trouble. Rutledge's capable courtroom defender is Lt. Tom Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter), whose job is to piece together the facts, despite constant badgering by the prosecutor, Captain Shattuck. In a highly emotional setting, Shattuck likes to make racial innuendos although he is dealing with a military court of savvy men. Complicating matters is an Apache Mescalero outbreak of hostilities. Later in the film there are two interesting engagements between the Buffalo soldiers and the Apaches. The movie is fine enough despite two drawbacks: (1) It is too long and (2) the weak trial resolution. The confession by the real murderer is over-dramatic and contrived. It is doubtful that anyone in US court has made such a strange confession, especially when the evidence was hardly circumstantial ("I had to have her!"). Perhaps the real killer had a change of conscience. But, despite its drawbacks, the film was groundbreaking in its day and still is enjoyable today. On-location shooting in Monument Valley (and Mexican Hat: note the hat rock formation in the background shots) is always spectacular. A nice shot is that of the troopers standing firm in line of battle with the Indians. "Captain Buffalo" is a moving western song about the soldiers. Lt. Cantrell explains to Mary Beecher (Constance Towers) the origin of the name "Buffalo soldiers." To stay warm in winter the black troops wore coats and hats made of Buffalo hides. As they thus appeared like buffaloes the Indians dubbed them "Buffalo soldiers." There is another origin (not mentioned in the movie): The name relates to African hair that looked to the Indians like the shaggy buffalo coat in winter. In the feature, quite a few Buffalo soldiers have speaking parts, and future Olympic gold medal winner Rafer Johnson plays an army corporal. Sgt. Skidmore (Juano Hernandez) has a funny line, "Trouble come double, sir." Rutledge has the best line in the movie when he tells Mary Beecher: "Lady, you don't know how hard I'm trying to stay alive."Billie Burke (Glenda the good witch, 1939) was at 76 years, as usual too old for her part as Cornelia, the wife of Col. Otis Wingate (53 year-old Willis Bouchey). Here she shows her real age as she is fluttered and genuinely shocked when a teen-aged girl rides her horse astride and not side-saddle (with legs close together), as some ladies did back in olden times. She is also none too pleased when white women speak to black men. She certainly played the giddy one. Postscript: Obviously after the period of the movie 65 years had to pass before four major events of the civil rights movement occurred: (1) integration of interstate commerce in 1946, (2) desegregation of the armed forces by Pres. Truman, 1948, (3) Brown vs. Topeka Board of education in 1954, and (4) the Montgomery bus strike (1955).

"Racist? Me? My best friends are black; Woody Strode and my servant who's lived with me for thirty years. I've even made a picture exalting the blacks! I'm not a racist! I consider the blacks as completely American!" - John FordSet in the late 1880s, John Ford's "Sergeant Rutledge" stars Woody Strode as a black sergeant in the United States Cavalry. Strode's character is wrongfully accused of raping and murdering a young woman, a charge which he attempts to overturn.Released in 1960, "Sergeant Rutledge" was one of several attempts by director John Ford to address a very specific accusation: that many of his previous westerns presented racist, whitewashed versions of the Old West (by 1870, approximately 290,000 African Americans lived in the sixteen territories comprising the West, approximately twelve percent of the population). In this regard, "Rutledge" finds Strode playing an archetypal "strong, righteous black man". With his chiselled body, sharp mind and proud, upright gait, Strode becomes a super-idealized incarnation of the already idealized Noble Negro. Ford then attempts to debunk the myth of the "black rapist" - a spectre which has hung over cinema since "The Birth of a Nation" - but as is often the case with Ford, such well meaning gestures are negated by the film itself; this is ultimately a picture which ignores the fact that it is about oppressed minorities (blacks) who were armed to slay oppressed minorities (Native American Indians and Mexican Revolutionaries), and one which has total faith in the dignity and morality of military service, an institution which our hero naively believes provides "freedom" and "self respect". Released during the rise of American Civil Rights movements, black audiences rightfully rejected "Rutledge"; you cannot reconcile black pride and black sexuality with the authoritarian, racist system of the white-controlled military. This situation is even more pronounced today, the US armed forces largely comprised of the poor and/or ethnic minorities. These are today's Buffalo Soldiers, shipped abroad to new frontiers to, like Rutledge, "tame savages" in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.Within his own life, Ford embodied similar contradictions. As the child of immigrants, he was the member of a persecuted racial and religious minority, a fact which led to him identifying with anyone who faced victimization. In the early 1950s, at a time when the film industry was being mauled by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which investigated Communist influence in the film industry, Ford would also speak out against the attempts of right-wing directors to take over the Directors Guild and enforce their own blacklisting policies. On the flip side, Ford also allied himself with the conservative Motion Picture Alliance for the Protection of American Ideals (MPAPAI), which attempted to eradicate left-wing movements within the industry. Such contradictory motions are common in Ford's later works.Ford Made several more flicks which overtly attempted to respond to accusations of racism ("Cheyenne Autumn", "Two Rode Together" etc). Ironically, these films tend to be terrible when stacked up against his racially dubious or outright racist pictures ("Drums Along the Mohawk", "The Prisoner of Shark Island", "Judge Priest", "The Sun Shines Bright", "Stagecoach", "Steamboard Round the Bend", his gun-fore-hire Colonialist adventures, his WW2 propaganda films etc). Ford also made a number of films about racial or class based persecution ("The Informer", "The Plough and the Stars", "Grapes of Wrath", "The Fugitive" etc), most of which are expressionistic and/or influenced by Murnau, a director whom Ford adored.Two films which best sum up the difficulties contemporary audiences face when reading Ford are "Wee Willie Winkie" and "Fort Apache", both starring Shirley Temple. In "Winkie", Temple plays an innocent girl who questions the roles of white adults in Colonial India. In "Apache", Temple plays a similar character, questioning the role of military officers in an American outpost which wages war on Native American Indians. At the end of both films, however, Temple's character drops her views and becomes a stoic, military-woman, adopting the classist, racist, Imperialist values of those around her. Ones ideological reading of these pictures, of course, depends on whether or not one believes Temple's changes are being posed as critique or a necessity, or whether or not Ford cares at all, one way or the other.5/10 – Many of Ford's films focused on men wrongfully accused of a crime ("Four Men and a Prayer", "The Prisoner of Shark Island", "The Hurricane", "The Sun Shines Bright", "Judge Priest" etc). Obvious and condescending, "Sergeant Rutledge" is one of his worst. Worth one viewing.

John Ford's grandson, Dan, wrote of "Sergeant Rutledge" that Pappy was really feeling his age on this one and I guess he's right. There is a scene near the beginning in which a cavalry officer, Jeffrey Hunter, meets the blond young Constance Towers. The scene takes place on a train at night. But Ford didn't bother to put the interior of the railroad car on rockers. The result is a static picture of two people talking on a stationary interior set.The same carelessness extends to the rest of the film. Many of the interiors were obviously shot in the studio with painted backdrops outside the window. The few images of Monument Valley, true Ford territory, are magnificent and stand out from the rest. The writers have given the defense counsel a big mistake in the dialog. Jeffrey Hunter argues that, so far, the evidence the court has is balanced but that "one iota of evidence can tip the scales either way." Now, even the most callow screenwriter knows that evidence does not come in "iotas." It invariably comes in "shreds."There is a problem with the casting as well. Willis Boucher is heading Woody Strode's court martial. He's always a reliable blowhard. And Jeffrey Hunter is a stalwart leading man. But it's arguable that Woody Strode himself can carry such a prominent part in a film. He's a football player, not a natural actor. He has one monumental statement and handles it well but the speech is just a bit too long, about one sentence too long. The rest of the acting is below par. Ford was at that point in his career where he was ready to pass out roles to old friends, but his old friends were disappearing. This is one instance in which more of the John Ford stock company would have been a welcome substitution for actors in important roles who just can't handle it. The suave and supercilious Judge Advocate, Carlton Young, is fine but Constance Towers isn't much of an actress. Jan Styne, as the son of the suttler, Fred Libby, has the capacity to act in a routine television sitcom, and evidently has been allowed to do so. As his father, Libby is a positive embarrassment, being slapped around in the witness chair until he confesses to the rape and murder of a young blond -- "I had to HAVE her! I had to HAVE her!" He slumps to the floor and pounds the seat of the chair, sobbing and overacting. Perry Mason would never have allowed this to happen.Yet there's something enjoyable about the movie. Not just that it was made by John Ford, but that it's a courtroom drama with enough outdoor action scenes to keep a viewer interested. There are a few plot holes but what's the difference? Ford is making up for all the butchery he's visited upon minorities in the United States. "Killed more Indians than Chivington and Custer combined," he said -- or something like it. I'm too lazy to look up the exact quote. It's a little confusing but at no point is it boring. Another observation. The cavalry officers all have trouser stripes of burnt orange, whereas the legal officers wear stripes of a kind of bright platinum. I much prefer the latter. They're really spiffy. And if I were to join the post-war cavalry I would make sure I was a lawyer so I could wear those brilliant trouser strips instead of the dull gold of the cavalry.I'm giving it six points but I'm being a little generous in doing so.