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ULZANA'S RAID (1972)
UNIVERSAL DVD (region 0)
d. Robert Aldrich; pr. Carter DeHaven; scr. Alan Sharp; ph. Joseph F. Biroc; m. Frank De Vol; ed. Michael Luciano; cast. Burt Lancaster, Bruce Davison, Jorge Luke, Richard Jaeckel, Joaquin Martinez, Lloyd Bochner, Karl Swenson, Margaret Fairchild (103 mins)
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Revisionist Westerns arose as the Genre Declined

Director Robert Aldrich initially treated the plight of the Native American Indian in his 1954 film Apache, with Burt Lancaster, at a time when depictions about Native Americans in terms other than villainy were rare. 

Some 18 years later, with such disparate critical and popular hits as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and The Dirty Dozen behind him, he returned to the subject, and again with Lancaster.  The intervening years, however, had seen many social upheavals.  Although America’s involvement in Vietnam was paramount amongst such forces of change, American film had been reluctant to directly address the War.  Nevertheless, there were efforts to re-shape other familiar genres into wryly disguised comments about Vietnam.  These Vietnam allegories were partially inaugurated by Aldrich’s brutally violent, harsh and uncompromising Western Ulzana’s Raid.  Indeed, it was the film’s evident statement about American cultural and military imperialism that attracted Lancaster to the project.  Although the film was not a hit, it is frequently considered one of the best American films of the 1970s and one of the more unsentimentally self-critical, Aldrich here having made his personal best work of a decade that would see him in something of a critical slump, despite his return to group dynamics in the excellent prison football drama The Longest Yard and his fine, late political thriller Twilight’s Last Gleaming.

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Synopsis (contains spoiler)

Ulzana’s Raid is a Western set in the midst of the US Indian Agency’s attempts to contain the Apache Indians by force and implicit coercion. 

Feeling compromised (emasculated?) and their power drained, Apache leader Ulzana (Joaquin Martinez) and several of his loyal braves leave the reservation, stealing several horses in order to go on a raiding party, intending to kill and/or rape any white settlers they find.  New Army officer Bruce Davison is assigned to track these renegades and is advised to follow the recommendations of his experienced scout (Burt Lancaster) and his Indian tracker (Jorge Luke).  Davison is a deeply religious man, a devout Christian who wants to understand the Apache but when confronted with evidence of their horrendous atrocities resorts to racism and seeks only to catch and kill them.  Accordingly, he even begins to resent the Indian tracker whose presence is nonetheless invaluable.  The tracker is aware of such resentment and associates primarily only with his friend Lancaster.  The pursuit continues, with each side trying to outsmart the other until Lancaster comes up with a bold plan.  However, the Indians also have a surprise tactic intended to divide the army force and expose their most vulnerable side.  When Lancaster finally sees an opportunity to bring the Indians out from their concealment, it is at great risk to the soldiers involved, maybe even needing the older man’s sacrifice.

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Re-envisioning the Western as Vietnam War Allegory

Despite its simple pursuit narrative, Ulzana’s Raid manages to be a remarkably complex assessment of the American experience in Vietnam as well as a cynical exploration of the failure of Christian morality. 

In these terms, the Indian raiding party represents an insurgent force, whose brutal treatment of “innocent” settlers arguably makes them rather terroristic and indeed their tactics are those of guerrilla soldiers.  The raid is, accordingly, also a revolt and protest against militarized colonization by Westerners and thus alludes to many incidences of insurgent terrorism against American interests.  Despite the Indians’ savagery, Aldrich is in no doubt about their treatment and their perceived humiliation as a precipitating factor behind their apparent savagery.  However, he does not validate their insurgency, just offers enough context to make the audience aware of the greater issues involved and cloud notions of any responsibility.  Also implied is that the soldiers, particularly Davison, are out of their depth in this war, facing an enemy that they can only understand as “other” and thus react to only in opposition; although Aldrich takes steps to show that the neat distinction Davison holds onto between civilized white Christianity and Apache savagery is not as clear cut as he maintains – indeed, Aldrich implies that Davison must cling to this illusion in order to feel justified.  The need for justification thus becomes the core of the movie.

Aldrich is at knowing lengths to present the notion of at worst a Godless world, at best the world of an indifferent God. 

Davison initially espouses a liberal position – that the Apache are misunderstood and that tolerance would solve all problems.  Through the course of the movie, Aldrich systematically strips this belief of any validity.  Hence, the Apache represent in their savagery the scourge of humanity, capable of breaking down Christian faith itself – the New Testament has no legitimacy here and Davison is loathe to admit this, retreating instead into the racism that would dehumanize his enemy and reinforce the moral superiority he needs to feel in his assigned task to kill the Apache.  He cannot comprehend the seemingly reasonless cruelty of his enemy and it is this confrontation with savagery that slowly erodes his Christian liberalism, allowing Aldrich to expose the suppressed tensions that he feels exist at its core and which Sam Peckinpah was similarly exploring (though with a violent Romanticism).  Thus, Davison is repeatedly contrasted to Luke, who in turn becomes a convenient scapegoat for Davison’s displaced rage.  Lancaster is hence something of a bridging figure between them, although it is Luke who remains the most complexly underplayed character – the “savage” who chooses to go against this path, whose pursuit of his own people is somehow purging him of the worst about his own past.

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Christian Iconography in a Rugged Landscape

The transfer is a competent 16:9 enhanced widescreen affair. 

It is taken from a rather worn source print and lacks real sharpness but is ultimately more than capable of handling the earthen colours and yellow browns so dear to the Western as a genre.  An opening baseball game proves a potent metaphor for American military strategy and indeed Aldrich frequently contrasts regimented military efforts with guerrilla tactics.  The sporting-warfare metaphor featured here recurs in Aldrich’s work and would develop most strongly into The Longest Yard.  There are some scenes of gory violence and especially graphic in this regard is the aftermath of an instance of particularly brutal cruelty, allying the Indians’ actions to the savagery in all human nature – the id feared and demonized by religion.  The Christian icon of the cross is referred to at least once to measure Davison’s faith as almost ridiculous and illusory in the light of what he must face.  In this hostile world Davison seems visually out of place, despite his position of authority.  The clear, hot sun and earthen colours combine with the progressively rocky outcrops to give the film a sense of an increasingly ragged landscape, physically and ethically; the psychological associations recalling the work of Anthony Mann.  Tellingly, the relationship and friendship between Lancaster and Luke is often unspoken, with their small gestures of acknowledgment given much weight.

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Silent Hostility and Natural Indifference

The sound transfer is efficient and clear in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo but with often unusual resonance even if functionality seems the dominant transfer intent here. 

Voices are well pronounced, with the increasing viciousness and confusion in Davison’s voice in particular making for a fine indication of his internal dilemma, especially when measured against the more balanced Lancaster and Luke.  Overall though, the transfer has a precise but hollow and centric sound as if minimally processed and enhanced for home theatre but rendered slightly unnatural in the process.  Nevertheless, the often quiet, reflective and dispiriting nature of the film is conveyed well and there seem subtly directional stereo effects with the horses on the trail – hoofs and assorted sounds featuring nicely in these instances.  The brutal outbursts of violence can be quite startling and gunfire is especially vivid in the final stages.  Nice use is made of the Indians, who remain virtually silent for much of the film as if talking through their action rather than words – the opposite of what Davison would intend.   Nature seems indifferent and the minimal score seems at once reflective and yet capable of dramatically underscoring Aldrich’s barbed irony.  Thus, an army bugle is used for devastating moral effect in one crucial scene, firmly establishing the non-existence or indifference of the benevolent Christian God.

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