''Ulzana's Raid'' is a 1972 American
revisionist Western film starring
Burt Lancaster
Burton Stephen Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American actor. Initially known for playing tough characters with tender hearts, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year caree ...
,
Richard Jaeckel
Richard Jaeckel (born R. Hanley Jaeckel; October 10, 1926 – June 14, 1997) was an American actor of film and television. Jaeckel became a well-known character actor in his career, which spanned six decades. He received an Academy Award nomin ...
,
Bruce Davison
Bruce Allen Davison (born June 28, 1946) is an American actor who has appeared in more than 270 films, television and stage productions since his debut in 1968. His breakthrough role was as Willard Stiles in the 1971 cult horror film '' Willard' ...
, and
Joaquin Martinez. Filmed on location in
Arizona
Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
, it was directed by
Robert Aldrich
Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. An iconoclastic and maverick '' auteur'' working in many genres during the Golden Age of Hollywood, he directed main ...
based on a script by
Alan Sharp. It portrays a brutal raid by
Chiricahua Apaches against European settlers in 1880s
Arizona
Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
.
Plot
Following mistreatment by Indian agency authorities,
Ulzana breaks out of the
San Carlos Indian Reservation with a small
Chiricahua
Chiricahua ( ) is a band of Apache Native Americans.
Based in the Southern Plains and Southwestern United States, the Chiricahua historically shared a common area, language, customs, and intertwined family relations with their fellow Apaches. ...
war party. When news reaches
Fort Lowell, the commanding officer sends riders out to alert the local settlers, but both troopers are ambushed separately; one is dragged away, while the other kills the European woman he is escorting and then himself. The Apaches play catch with his liver. The woman's husband, who stayed behind to protect his farm, is captured and tortured to death. McIntosh, an aging
U.S. Army scout
Scout may refer to:
Youth movement
*Scout (Scouting), a child, usually 10–18 years of age, participating in the worldwide Scouting movement
** Scouts (The Scout Association), section for 10-14 year olds in the United Kingdom
** Scouts BSA, sect ...
, is ordered to bring in Ulzana. Joining him will be a few dozen soldiers led by an inexperienced
lieutenant
A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a Junior officer, junior commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations, as well as fire services, emergency medical services, Security agency, security services ...
, Garnett DeBuin, a veteran
Cavalry
Historically, cavalry (from the French word ''cavalerie'', itself derived from ''cheval'' meaning "horse") are groups of soldiers or warriors who Horses in warfare, fight mounted on horseback. Until the 20th century, cavalry were the most mob ...
sergeant
Sergeant (Sgt) is a Military rank, rank in use by the armed forces of many countries. It is also a police rank in some police services. The alternative spelling, ''serjeant'', is used in The Rifles and in other units that draw their heritage f ...
, and Ke-Ni-Tay, an
Apache scout. Ke-Ni-Tay knows Ulzana because their wives are sisters.
The cavalry troop soon discovers the brutal activities of the Apache war party. The soldiers know they are facing a merciless enemy with far better local skills. DeBuin is shocked by the cruelty and harshness he sees, because it conflicts strongly with his Christian morality and view of humanity. After failing to find Ulzana, McIntosh and Ke-Ni-Tay consider how to outwit their enemy. DeBuin remains cautious and mistrustful of Ke-Ni-Tay, though, because Ulzana did not let him join his war party.
Ulzana and his warriors decide to continue on foot to tire out the pursuing cavalry, while their horses are circuitously led back the other way. However, after Ke-Ni-Tay notices that the tracks are of unladen ponies, McIntosh leads an ambush that kills the horses and their two Apache escorts, one of whom was Ulzana's son. Despite angry protestations, DeBuin forbids his men from mutilating the dead boy.
The war party attack another farm, burning the homesteader to death and seizing two horses. McIntosh realizes that the remaining Apaches physically and psychologically need horses and will try to obtain them by raiding the troop. A woman at the burned-out farm, instead of being murdered following her gang rape, was left alive but injured so the cavalry will be forced to send her to the fort with an escort. By splitting the troop, Ulzana hopes to successfully attack the escort and seize its horses. McIntosh suggests a decoy plan to make Ulzana falsely believe that his tactics are successful.
Ulzana's warriors ambush the small escort detachment obtaining all of its horses and killing the sergeant and his soldiers before DeBuin can arrive with the rest of his force. McIntosh is left mortally wounded. Only the woman survives unharmed, though now apparently
crazed by her experiences. Ke-Ni-Tay scatters the captured horses just as bugle calls from the cavalry ineptly alert the Apaches to DeBuin's approach. Ulzana flees on foot as the remnants of his band are killed. Ke-Ni-Tay confronts him and shows him the Army bugle taken from the body of his son. Ulzana puts down his weapons and sings his death song before the Apache scout kills him. A corporal suggests that Ulzana, or at least his head, should be taken back to the fort. DeBuin, now hardened by what he has witnessed during the mission, sternly orders him to be buried. Ke-Ni-Tay insists on carrying out the task himself. The surviving troopers led by DeBuin pack up to leave, but McIntosh knows that he will not survive the journey back to the fort, so chooses to stay behind to die alone.
Cast
*
Burt Lancaster
Burton Stephen Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American actor. Initially known for playing tough characters with tender hearts, he went on to achieve success with more complex and challenging roles over a 45-year caree ...
as McIntosh
*
Bruce Davison
Bruce Allen Davison (born June 28, 1946) is an American actor who has appeared in more than 270 films, television and stage productions since his debut in 1968. His breakthrough role was as Willard Stiles in the 1971 cult horror film '' Willard' ...
as Lt. Garnett DeBuin
* as Ke-Ni-Tay (army scout)
*
Richard Jaeckel
Richard Jaeckel (born R. Hanley Jaeckel; October 10, 1926 – June 14, 1997) was an American actor of film and television. Jaeckel became a well-known character actor in his career, which spanned six decades. He received an Academy Award nomin ...
as Sergeant
*
Joaquin Martinez as Ulzana
*
Lloyd Bochner as Capt. Charles Gates
*
Karl Swenson as Willy Rukeyser (settler)
*
Douglass Watson as Maj. Cartwright (CO, Ft. Lowell)
* Dran Hamilton as Mrs. Riordan
*
John Pearce as Corporal
* Gladys Holland as Mrs. Rukeyser
* Margaret Fairchild as Mrs. Abbie Ginsford
*
Aimee Eccles as McIntosh's Indian woman
*
Richard Bull as Ginsford (settler)
* Otto Reichow as 'Dutch' Steegmeyer (Indian Agent, San Carlos Reservation)
*
George Aguilar as Indian Brave
*
Dean Smith
Dean Edwards Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015) was an American men's college basketball Coach (basketball), head coach. Called a "coaching legend" by the Basketball Hall of Fame, he coached for 36 years at the University of North C ...
as Horowitz
* Larry Randles as Mulkearn
*
Nick Cravat as Trooper
Production
Writing
The film is an original screenplay by
Alan Sharp, who said he was inspired by
John Ford
John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), better known as John Ford, was an American film director and producer. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and w ...
's 1956 Western ''
The Searchers
''The Searchers'' is a 1956 American epic Western film directed by John Ford and written by Frank S. Nugent, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May. It is set during the Texas–Indian wars, and stars John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War v ...
'', because he regarded it as "the best film I have ever seen".
Sharp later described ''Ulzana's Raid'' as:
Apart from being my sincere ''homage'' to Ford ..an attempt to express allegorically the malevolence of the world and the terror mortals feel in the face of it. We all have our own notions of what constitutes the ultimate in fear, from personal phobias to periods in history. ..Three historical landscapes that I shudder most to consider are the Third Reich
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
, Turkey during the First World War, and the American Southwest
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...
during the years 1860–86. ..In ''Ulzana's Raid'' I am not intent on presenting a reasoned analysis of the relationship between the aboriginie and the colonizer. The events described in the film are accurate in the sense they have factual equivalents, but the final consideration was to present an allegory in whose enlarged features we might perceive the lineaments of our own drama, caricatured, but not falsified. ..The Ulzana of the ''Ulzana's Raid'' is not the Chiricahua Apache of history, whose raid was more protracted and ruthless and daring than the one I had written about. He is the expression of my idea of the Apache as the spirit of the land, the manifestation of its hostility and harshness.
Lancaster later said in 1972 that in his entire career, the only "first screenplays" that he really liked were ''Birdman of Alcatraz'' and ''Ulzana's Raid''.
Aldrich later claimed, "From the time we started to the time we finished the picture, I'd say 50, 60 percent of it
he scriptwas changed. Alan Sharp, the writer, was very amenable and terribly helpful. And terribly prolific. He can write 25 pages a day. He couldn't agree more with my political viewpoint—so that was no problem. And fortunately, Lancaster and I felt pretty much the same about the picture. It was good that I had support from Sharp and Lancaster, because I don't have the highest regard for Carter DeHaven, the producer."
Casting
This was the first time Burt Lancaster and Robert Aldrich had worked together since ''
Vera Cruz'' (1954). Aldrich said Lancaster's character, John McIntosh, was named after
John McIntire, the actor who played the Indian scout
Al Sieber in the film ''
Apache
The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...
'' he directed in 1954. It was an "inside joke ... I'm not sure that Alan Sharp ever knew just why we did that."
Filming
The film was shot on location in the southeast of
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...
, at the
Coronado National Forest
The Coronado National Forest is a United States National Forest that includes an area of about 1.78 million acres (7,200 km2) spread throughout mountain ranges in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.
It is located in parts of ...
, and in
Nogales, as well as in the
Valley of Fire State Park,
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...
.
Versions
Two cuts of the film were made because Burt Lancaster helped to produce the movie. The American release was edited under the supervision of Aldrich, while the European version was overseen by Lancaster. Although the overall running times are similar, several differences are seen between the two cuts, including several complete scenes found in only one of the versions. An unauthorized version compiled by a German TV station in 1986 combined all scenes from both versions, with a runtime of 111 min.
Reception
Although it was not a commercial success, Aldrich said he was "very proud" of the film.
Critics such as
Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the ''Chicago Tribune'' who co-hosted a movie review television series alongside colleague Roger Ebert.
Siskel started writing for the '' ...
wrote that the film was one of the 10 best of 1972.
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who was the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. ...
of the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' also said it was one of the best films of the year.
Later reputation
Although the film is considered to be a
revisionist Western, it is not through the sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans that is so common in this genre; it is because of its allegorical message about America's conduct in the war in Vietnam at that time. American film critic and professor
Emanuel Levy has called ''Ulzana's Raid'' one of the best Westerns of the 1970s, saying it "is also one of the most underestimated pictures of vet
randirector Robert Aldrich, better known for his sci-fi and horror flicks, such as ''Kiss Me Deadly'' and ''What Ever Happened to Baby Jane''."
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American filmmaker, actor, and author. Quentin Tarantino filmography, His films are characterized by graphic violence, extended dialogue often featuring much profanity, and references to ...
called it "hands down Aldrich’s best film of the '70s, as well as being one of the greatest Westerns of the '70s. One of the things that makes the movie so remarkable is it isn’t just a Western; it combines the two genres that Aldrich was most known for, Westerns and
war film
War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about navy, naval, air force, air, or army, land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle s ...
s."
See also
* ''
Major Dundee'', a 1965 Western by
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel Peckinpah (; February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director and screenwriter. His 1969 Western epic '' The Wild Bunch'' received two Academy Award nominations and was ranked No. 80 on the American Film Instit ...
and starring
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor. He gained stardom for his leading man roles in numerous Cinema of the United States, Hollywood films including biblical epics, science-fiction f ...
and
Richard Harris
Richard St John Francis Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. Having studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he rose to prominence as an icon of the British New Wave. He received numerous a ...
* ''
The Stalking Moon'', a 1968 more conventional American Western concerning an elusive merciless Apache enemy
* ''
Soldier Blue'', a 1970 American revisionist Western
* ''
Ulzana (film)'' a 1974 East German
Western film
The Western is a film genre defined by the American Film Institute as films which are "set in the American West that mbodythe spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier." Generally set in the American frontier between the Calif ...
about Ulzana shot in
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
and
Uzbekistan
, image_flag = Flag of Uzbekistan.svg
, image_coat = Emblem of Uzbekistan.svg
, symbol_type = Emblem of Uzbekistan, Emblem
, national_anthem = "State Anthem of Uzbekistan, State Anthem of the Republ ...
References
Further reading
* Encyclopedia entry that discusses ''Ulzana's Raid'' and other westerns in the context of the then-current US-Vietnam war.
* An extended review of ''Ulzana's Raid'' in the context of Aldrich's career.
External links
*
*
*
*
{{Robert Aldrich
1972 films
1972 Western (genre) films
American Western (genre) films
Western (genre) cavalry films
Revisionist Western (genre) films
Apache Wars films
Films shot in Arizona
Films set in Arizona
Films set in the 1880s
Films scored by Frank De Vol
Films directed by Robert Aldrich
Universal Pictures films
1970s American films
1970s English-language films
San Carlos Apache Tribe
English-language Western (genre) films