The Alamo (1960) – DVD

**/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Frankie Avalon
screenplay by James Edward Grant
directed by John Wayne

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I freely admit that the prospect of a conservative historical epic directed by John Wayne initially sent a wave of panic rippling through my body. Having endured his offensive and tedious Vietnam opus The Green Berets, I was fearful of another impoverished mise-en-scène serving as the frame for Wayne's patented all-American bellicosity. (Unlike those crack commandoes, liberal critics can only stand so much.) So I was relieved to discover that The Alamo was at once more abstract and better-looking than The Green Berets and therefore more tolerable to sensitive lefty eyes–the film assumes that you're red-blooded enough to root for some American heroes, thus leaving the dubious reasons why unmentioned. Still, it lacks the articulateness to bring its jingoistic fervour to life, and it's sufficiently sluggish and monotonous to test the patience of all but the most uncritical super-patriots.

Let's round up the usual suspects. We've got your basic abandoned mission called the Alamo, now being used as a fort in the war for Texan independence. As it's jointly run by the army's Col. William Travis (Laurence Harvey) and the volunteer forces' Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark), the former ramrod straight and by the book and the latter a grizzled, hard-drinking wild man, tensions are naturally running high–and the situation gets even spicier when a band of fun-loving Tennessee volunteers arrive led by Davy Crockett (guess who). But amidst all the speechifying and withering looks, there's the little matter of the Mexican army, which is advancing in the hopes of taking down more crucial forces. With The Alamo lying smack between them, the fewer than 200 men already there must take on thousands of Mexican soldiers in the hopes of giving the main troops a head start on their mission–which will help the war effort but lead the Alamo forces to their doom, natch. Blood of patriots, anyone?

Let us leave for the moment the matter of the war's justification (a matter of some contention). The more pressing question is, does The Alamo sell the case for whatever side of the fence on which it's found itself? There's no denying that Wayne builds a stolidly respectful shrine to the myth of the Alamo, or that he believes in the mission to the extent that he can't be bothered to argue for its rightness. Aside from some linking of the volunteers' high spirits to the freedoms they're defending, the ideology is all implicit, giving us time to concentrate on a series of introductions, character frictions, and midnight raids. But this, somehow, works to undermine Wayne's cause. As we stagger from one expensive, blunt-witted episode to another, we lose all focus and become overloaded with the elements of the narrative and the production. Our minds wander from the mission–and without reminders of what we're supposed to be fighting for, we disengage from the film and start looking at our watches.

There are pluses, I don't deny this. The three leads couldn't be better cast, with Widmark especially imbuing his Bowie with a loose gravitas that suits the character. Too, the production surely isn't slapdash or cartoonishly exaggerated, though without a shred of a real worldview, it just sits there–it could be any other expensive epic, because it doesn't really have an idea of what it represents. The Alamo believes an abstract America that mouths pieties on autopilot, whether or not they make any sense or bring the story alive. This means that the film hangs heavily in space, constantly alerting you to an importance that it can't prove is there, something that first confuses us and ultimately sends us home unsatisfied. The Alamo is a celebration of freedom without understanding what freedom means, a problem for a political film of either wing.

THE DVD
Timed to coincide with Disney's recent historical epic of the same name, MGM's straight-ahead reissue of The Alamo's previous DVD incarnation looks good. The 2.35:1, 16×9-enhanced image is remarkably sharp and superbly saturated, and while there's brief occasional strobing, it's not serious enough to torpedo the presentation. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is also quite good, boasting excellent channel separation in the front mains and nicely-incorporated surround effects during the climactic siege. As for extras, we have 1992's "John Wayne's The Alamo" (41 mins.), a thorough if uncritical look at Wayne's obsession to bring his red-blooded vision to the screen. A surprising number of personnel are assembled, from extras to technicians to the actor/director's son, while priceless promotional footage (both film and B&W video) gets interspersed throughout. Even as you roll your eyes at the speakers' kid-gloves treatment (and their justification for a subservient black slave part), you have to admit that it's a fascinating record of old-time Hollywood reflecting on itself. Rounding out the platter: the film's trailer.

162 minutes; NR; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; MGM