They Died With Their Boots On: Raoul Walsh

I usually have a problem with Westerns that play fast and loose with historical accuracies. I don't mean the regular Hollywood romanticism and white-washing. I mean films that claim that Buffalo Bill saved Jesse James at the Alamo with Chief Crazy Horse. Well...maybe not that extreme...but that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I was ready and willing to despise Raoul Walsh's They Died with Their Boots On, a "historical re-telling" of the life of George Armstrong Custer. After all, the film portrays him as a man of honor who respects the Native Americans and only participated in the Battle of Little Bighorn because corrupt businessmen and politicians forced him. But despite all of this, I enjoyed They Died with Their Boots On. I found myself captivated by Walsh's cinematic language. Getting his start in the Silent Era, Walsh worked with many of cinema's greatest talents. He even worked as an assistant to D.W. Griffith. So Walsh's cinematic language heavily referenced the techniques of early Hollywood. As a result, the film was incredibly engaging. Yet it also managed to side-step the suffocating melodrama that plagued early Hollywood fare. Errol Flynn is so charismatic and charming as Custer that we forget about the actions of his real-life counter-part and cheer for him. For a film that seemed designed to infuriate me, They Died with Their Boots On was a terrific Western. Someday, I might even watch it again.

7/10