The Jayhawkers! (1959)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

There is a French touch in this western which is closer to a political fable than to the usual stuff.Besides,the family Parker meets is French ,which is very rare in the genre.Jeanne Dubois tells him so :"we came in America ,because we were in search of liberty";if the movie takes place at the end of the Civil War,then it was still )Napoleon (the Third , the nephew of Bonaparte)who was ruling the country (1848-1870);it was a dictatorship that led the country to war with Prussia / Germany (with disastrous consequences later in the twentieth century).Hence Jeanne's remark ,even though she does not hint at both emperors at all.On the other hand ,Luke Darcy admires Napoleon (the First),with his inflated ego;it's not a cardboard character though ;he is a true demagogue,like far-right wing leaders ,he promises lots of things (schools ,hospitals),he's perhaps convinced he works for the greater good of his future subjects ,for he has an empire in mind ;and yet he remains deaf to the father's plea .As for Parker's wife ,her fate remains ambiguous ;as is his relationship with his enemy who reminds him of his own brother.In spite of some implausibilities (the little girl survives the stampede),the story is not that simple .A note about Nicole Maurey ,who recently passed away:she began her career with a masterpiece ("Journal D'Un Curé De Campagne " aka "diary of a country priest" by Robert Bresson) ,then continued to work in her native country ("Action Immédiate" )and in the US ('secret of the incas" opposite Charlton Heston.);but trying to do too many things at once ,she never became a true star in both countries.Henry Silva ,who plays a supporting part in "the jayhawkers" ,enjoyed a career in Europa (mainly in Italy) in the seventies .

Plot-- An ex-renegade (Parker) agrees to infiltrate a renegade band in return for a pardon from the feds. Then too, he's got a personal grudge against the band's leader (Chandler) for victimizing his wife and their farm. Trouble is the leader is kind of a likable guy. So which way will the ex-renegade go.Somewhere inside all the turgid talk is a good story of conflict between Parker's emotions and his principles. Trouble is the studio (Paramount) appears more interested in playing up the three leads than in the story itself. Thus we get a ton of talky scenes with some combination of Parker, Chandler, and Aubert instead of action or suspense. So western fans may feel cheated in the action department. I suspect four scriptwriters working on the same screenplay have something to do with that. Then too, the direction (Frank) is pretty flat. In fact, the director's resume (IMDB) appears more at home with fluff than outdoor drama. It's noteworthy too that the locations never leave greater LA, so we're also short in the scenic department. That's especially unfortunate since the film needs some sweep to match the story's scale. After all, the script is playing with the disposition of an entire state, Kansas. On the other hand, Paramount did pop for an army of extras to fill out the mustering scenes.I winced at one point where Chandler says life is short, or words to that effect. Tragically, Chandler himself would die two years later as a result of medical malpractice. So his words here seem more than just a little prophetic. Too bad the menacing Henry Silva is largely wasted in a routine role. Some close-ups of his sinister sneer would have added needed dramatic impact. All in all, the movie's a turgid disappointment despite a capable cast, a good core conflict, and big screen VistaVision.

It takes place in Kansas a few years before the Civil War began in 1861, and it outlines the attempt of the nattily dressed Jeff Chandler to change Kansas from a territory to his own empire, town by town. The routine goes like this. Chandler sends his band of masked men into town dressed as "Redlegs" to hurrah the place and break windows and commit pillage and outrage the local gals. Then he and his men later ride into town as themselves, the "Jayhawkers", and promise to protect the good folk, who will have nothing more to fear from the Redlegs. When the Mafia do this, it's called extortion.Who were the Jayhawkers, you ask, and well you might. They were supposedly free-staters as opposed to the pro-slavery faction. The Redlegs were a violent splinter group of the Jayhawkers. But these are just names. In fact, Kansas was a mess. The war between slavery and freedom deteriorated into a series of bloody raids back and forth -- one of them led by John Brown. So it's not necessary to try to figure out who Chandler represented historically. He's a fiction. Besides, who wants to remember all those slang names -- Jayhawkers, Redlegs, Border Ruffians (eg., Jesse James), Carpetbaggers, and Copperheads? You can forget all of that. This is the story of a man whose reach exceeded his grasp.According to this tale, though, Chandler might have made it if it hadn't been for Fess Parker as the Army's undercover agent who finally undoes Chandler. Parker is the main character. It's too bad because his is a complex role. He has to change from hating Chandler, to admiring and protecting him, to betraying him. And he simply mopes his way through the part, not convincing for a second.Chandler's role is, if anything, even more complex, a little like Wolf Larson in "The Sea Wolf" but without the sadism. He's delicately brutal -- about others, about himself, and about life in general -- and not devoid of brotherly feelings towards the secret traitor in their midst. (If that's what those sentiments represent; and let's have no remarks about homoeroticism.) Chandler is very suave. He teaches Parker to read the classics. "Ya done taught me about fellers like that Frenchman Alexander." Chandler smiles condescendingly as if speaking to a kindergartener, "He was a Greek." (Well, almost; he was Macedonian.) Chandler drinks only wine, and only GOOD wine. You get the picture. When Jeff Chandler finally establishes his empire, his idea of governance is simple. There will be peace. I decide what "peace" means. Anybody who disobeys in the slightest will be summarily shot. He will unquestionably govern his empire from Chandler City, in Chandler County, in the Republic of Chandlerstan.Jeff Chandler handles this complicated and ambiguous role as best he can. It's easy to imagine lesser actors in the role. Fess Parker, for one. But Chandler always seems to carry a tentative, wounded quality around with him. His smiles don't seem real. And his proclamations sound earnest, passionate, but neither confident nor boastful. There's little of Little Caesar in his Little Napoleon.The photography and locations will suffice and the musical score has been lauded. Elmer Bernstein probably heard it before scoring "The Magnificent Seven."

This movie made me sick when I saw it on TV many years ago. Jeff Chandler's character is decent, a guy you don't want to see taken down? He says to Fess Parker's character, regarding the way he treated the man's dead (at his hands) wife, "To me, a good woman is like a good bottle of wine: once you've used it up, you throw the container away." He goes through women like kleenexes and disposes of them with less mercy. He took the man's wife, seduced her, then killed her when he got bored with her.This is decent?Fess Parker's character likes him?There is no reason for Fess Parker not to kill the disgusting creep on sight.But maybe the people who praise this movie also agree with that characterization of women.