Run of the Arrow (1957)

The first time I tried to see Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow (1957), I couldn't get past leading man Rod Steiger's wavering brogue as he (over) played an embittered Confederate soldier whose years of blood-letting left him hating the victors after the Civil War. Steiger was deeply impressive in certain roles playing men who were outsiders to the core, (On the Waterfront, Oklahoma, Dr. Zhivago, The Pawnbroker, The Sergeant), but I think I resist him in parts that ask the viewer to identify with him in the same way we do on a visceral level to movie stars, not just actors. In Run of the Arrow, he played a character who is an outsider by choice, not one whose isolation is simply due to a cruel trick of nature that has rendered him unloving and unforgiving. His pain and confusion are real psychological scars, but taken over the course of the film, his character never quite grasps his situation, and I found his lack of self-awareness poignant but chilling.  As Sam Fuller recounted in his memoirs, he resisted the studio head's choice of Gary Cooper for the Yankee-hating confederate, preferring the "sour-faced" Steiger because "my yarn's about a sore loser, not a gallant hero." The part was Steiger's first chance to play a leading role, and Fuller had convinced the RKO management that it had worked before, citing the triumph of Charles Laughton as Quasimodo in William Dieterle's 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame as an example of a character lead that worked beautifully.

Above: Rod Steiger as O'Meara, the Confederate soldier who fires the last shot of the Civil War at Union officer Ralph Meeker. 

Initially, I had begun watching this movie because Mr. Fuller's name on the credits as director made it intriguing to me. The filmmaker's 20th century war movies, The Steel Helmet (1951) and The Big Red One (1980) have considerable power, perhaps in part because the writer-director struggled throughout his life to come to terms with his own overwhelming experiences in war, an inescapable fact that infused all his work. Yet, despite my liking the picaresque Park Row (1952), about the newspaper business in the early years of the 20th century, most of Fuller's "civilian" movies, particularly his most famed films, Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964), have left me harboring a sneaking suspicion that the scripts were written entirely in caps in bright red ink. Subtlety, thy name is not Sam. Still, I know I'm a movie peasant, so I try to give most filmmakers several chances to make me see the light.  A second visit with Run of the Arrow (1957) was a bit more successful.




This time I heard this western movie in another movie before I saw the post-Civil War story on screen. I thought that I heard Angie Dickinson on the tube. Trotting back to see what was on the set, I eventually learned that it was the Spanish singer-actress Sara or Sarita Montiel, (playing an Indian maiden named Yellow Moccasin, complete with eyeliner and fifties-style foundation garments, as you can readily discern from the above poster). It seems that her accented voice was dubbed by the then almost unknown Angie D., whose distinctively breathy speech makes her almost instantly identifiable. (I figure Angie did this job around the time of the production of Fuller's China Gate).

Above: The lovely Sarita Monteil, at the time known as "The Spanish Brigitte Bardot," played the Sioux woman who befriended Rod Steiger's confused O'Meara. As a female mediator in Sam Fuller's Run of the Arrow (1957), she points out the differences between reality and clouded perceptions of the man she married in the story.  

Despite this incongruity, the idea of a Confederate turning his back on his world and adopting another culture as his own (up to a point) was intriguing to me. As the un-reconciled Confederate rebel explains bitterly, "In my heart, my nation is Sioux" and he claims that he won't have any trouble killing "Americans," which in his mind means Unionists. That "cri de coeur" spoken by Steiger's O'Meara is really the crux of the story, which at its best, is about the knotted-up emotions of an individual tormented by his past as well as the human tragedies attendant on Manifest Destiny. It doesn't all work, but Fuller's intensity gives the more thoughtful aspects of the story an unexpected, if messy verve.

Above: The hard-faced, very buff Charles Buchinsky played Chief of the Sioux, Blue Buffalo in Run of the Arrow (1957). 

I was fortunate enough to come upon this flick after Rod had won the respect of the Sioux in a run that no white man is supposed to have completed. Charles Buchinsky, aka Charlie Bronson played "Blue Buffalo," a blue-eyed Native American who accepted Rod into the tribe after the white man lived through the grueling "run of the arrow." The future international action star gave fifties' viewers almost as much to view of his marble-like form as his mama and wives in his scenes, which he enacted with customary bluntness of speech and grace of form, thanks to Max Factor Tan No. 3. Aside from Mr. Buchinsky's among the principal roles, several tribes were represented in the movie, including Sioux, Cheyenne and Apache who were reportedly recruited by the director on location trips through Utah and surrounding states.

This viewer could have lived without that, frankly, though his characterization of this warrior is considerably more convincing than that of Jay C. Flippen. I normally adore Flippen and all his shambling, scene-stealing warmth, but as a Sioux Indian he never quite lost the look of a hoofer doing vaudeville turn during a sparsely attended (he hoped) matinee. The veteran actor played "Walking Coyote," an Army scout and Native American who befriends the wandering rebel, teaching him the ways of his people until things go awry.

Above: Rod Steiger struggles manfully to share a scene with Jay C. Flippen in Run of the Arrow (1957). 

This beautifully photographed movie, captured by Ford cinematographer Joseph Biroc may have been a bit uneven dramatically, but was visually stunning in every frame. Fuller's capacity for showing how people really behave despite their political and ethical beliefs has grown on me over time. The best scenes were those between Cavalry Officer Brian Keith and Rod Steiger, especially when the two mumbled about discussed the contradictions within Steiger's choices and beliefs. Like Blue Buffalo among the Sioux, Keith's Captain Clark has a fundamentally decent and pragmatic approach to life, which he tries to impart to Steiger's O'Meara after he becomes a scout for the troops upon the signing of a peace treaty between the Sioux and the United States. 

Above: O'Meara (Rod Steiger) & Capt. Clark (Brian Keith) discuss the contradictions in the Southern cause and race relations in Run of the Arrow (1957). 

The dichotomy between his emotional beliefs and core identity had also come up earlier when Rod told the Sioux he had no problem killing white men, but that the tribe should not expect him to give up being a Christian (perhaps The Sermon on the Mount didn't come up during Mass in Rod the Irishman's experience back home). As Rod explains it, "God is the God of Liberty" in all wars--even the Sioux's efforts to keep from being wiped out by the invasion Westward. At one point in a quiet scene with Keith, Rod said that he believed that the Civil War was about "preserving civilization" in the South, even though he said he didn't have a clue about the KKK, the human and economic cost of slavery or any of those high falutin' geopolitical details.

Above: Ralph Meeker, (smoking a stogie like Sam Fuller) played a caricature of a Cavalry officer in Run of the Arrow (1957) whose character is a catalyst for a life-changing act by Rod Steiger's O'Meara. 

I must admit that I almost lost interest in the film once Ralph "Laughing Boy" Meeker arrived on the scene as the ill-fated Keith's second-in-command. Mr. Meeker, who only occasionally played recognizable men, enacted his part with his usual load of bile as the film became increasingly violent (and realistic). The conclusion, which I won't spoil for anyone, has a real poignancy and makes a good point about our own identities and loyalties, but I don't think I will try to see this again soon--even though I am now steeling myself for a recording of Verboten! (1959), an even more obscure Sam Fuller which was also shown  on TCM recently. More about that one later...once I've been thoroughly Fullerized.

Sources:
Fuller, Samuel, A Third Face: My Tale of  Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking, Hal Leonard Pub., 2004.
Peary, Gerald, ed., Samuel Fuller: Interviews, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2012.