indel

Overwrought, overblown, overrated, and marked by the usual Charlton Heston (I AM MOSES) performance. The chariot sequence gets A for effort, and must have been quite dangerous for the stunt men, but ultimately it's just a lot of noise sans dramatic tension. The slave galley sequence was 10 minutes of yawn.

The script is painfully lame, but there wasn't much to work with - the original book being second-rate. Some gorgeous sets, but sets alone do not a great movie make.

Seeing the movie again after 40 years has only confirmed my original opinion. OK for a Saturday afternoon if one is snowbound, but that's about it.

By far, the most fascinating aspect of this movie is the insight provided into the process of award selection by the film industry. This movie, like Titanic, is BIG, and sometimes sheer BIGNESS overwhelms critical taste,and sweeps everybody along with it.

A thousand years from now, when the top 100 list is compiled for contributors to Pop culture in the 20th century, John Ford's name will deservedly be there. But not because of this turkey.

The story is bizarrely interrupted by a lengthy James Stewart scene in the middle of the film that is not remotely connected to the main theme - right out of the Ed Wood school of movie-making. Can this be the same John Ford that gave us The Informer, My Darling Clementine, The Quiet Man, and all the others? Sadly, it is.

Ford's powers were waning. This movie is a perfect example of a top-notch cast ill-served by less than competent direction.

The real tragedy is that the awful reality of the Northern Cheyenne's relocation to a reservation, and their subsequent heroic resistance, is lost on the viewer. The film is essentially historically accurate, but demanded a much more able and sympathetic direction than Ford was capable of.

It might take ten or even twenty years, but this film will ultimately be ranked as one of the great classics of the 20th century. Like The Searchers before it, it will find its audience in future movie-goers (although that is little consolation to those who made it!).

Uniformly superb cast and direction, the film is loosely based on contemporary historical events occurring in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York's West Side. In a direct line from the Irish immigrant experience in the notorious Five Points slum in the early 19th century, through the Owney Madden gangster era of Prohibition, this film perhaps represents the "last hurrah" of a long tradition of Irish mobsters in New York City.

Add me to the list of those who just don't get it - why this film is so great. I concede Welles used innovative techniques, but technique alone cannot carry a movie. It is self-consciously important, never trusting its audience, and lacks that nuance so necessary to capture a viewer in any visual medium.

To work, a movie must produce an emotion in the viewer. This one seems to affect primarily those who are seriously interested in the craft of movie-making. For the rest of us, boredom is the word that comes to mind.