Court’s In Session: Reviewing John Ford’s ‘Sergeant Rutledge’
by Rachel Bellwoar
Released the same year as Harper Lee‘s book but two years before To Kill A Mockingbird became a motion picture, John Ford‘s Sergeant Rutledge is about a Black sergeant (Woody Strode‘s Brax Rutledge) who is accused of raping and murdering a young white girl. Jeffrey Hunter (Brainstorm) plays the white lawyer who defends him.
In a short audio interview included on Warner Archive’s disc, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz is joined by author Donald Bogle to discuss the movie, which was the first Hollywood western to star a Black actor. Now, cavalry westerns are a thing, but this is much more of a trial movie than anything to do with cowboys. It was actually in one of Bogle’s books (Hollywood Black) that I remember first reading about Sergeant Rutledge. On a side note, no matter how good the content, audio interviews can be at a disadvantage for being audio-only, but this one has been packaged nicely with some graphics and images from the movie to keep it visually interesting but not distracting. It would’ve been great if Mankiewicz and Bogle could’ve been commissioned to record a whole commentary. Bogle puts Sergeant Rutledge in context with other Ford films in terms of Black representation. He and Mankiewitz also talk about the limits of that representation and the choice to make the prosecutor (Carleton Young) the one true out-and-out racist in this movie.
Sergeant Rutledge is very much a benchmark film, where it’s possible to both admire the ways it moved the needle forward and be frustrated with some of the ways it falls short. The film begins with Hunter’s Lt. Cantrell arriving late to the courtroom. In a throwaway line I found amusing (because how many times in movies do you see people running late and getting dressed in the back of a taxi or car), he complains about having to get dressed in a jostling buggy. During the opening titles, a song called “Captain Buffalo” plays, and it sounds like your typical military song. Not so typical, though, as it turns out the lyrics are referring to the Black troops who served in the US Army and were sometimes called Buffalo soldiers (the song was written for the movie, though, so not historical).
Rutledge’s concerns about how the accusations against him are going to impact and be used against the other men of the 9th Cavalry are very real, and I appreciated that the film does include some scenes where it’s just Strode and other Black members of the cast getting to speak openly with each other. Rutledge’s second in command is played by the brilliant Juano Hernandez (Intruder in the Dust). Of course, if this film is progressive in its portrayal of the real role Black soldiers played in the US military and the racism they faced, it falls right in line with other Westerns in its nasty portrayal of Indigenous people (in this case the Apache).
Sometimes trailers aren’t important, but seeing how this film was marketed is extremely enlightening as well. Instead of acknowledging the gravity of the situation and treating it seriously, the decision not to include any clips from the movie but instead keep the trailer text-based is suspicious. With a focus on Ford and using quotes from his frequent collaborators like John Wayne (that I’m sure are actual quotes they said and not PR created), the trailer makes it clear their plan was to use Strode’s casting and delayed appearance in the movie for shock purposes, which is wrong. It also suggests that the studio thought audiences would need to be tricked into seeing a movie with a Black lead, and maybe there’s some truth in that, but that doesn’t make it less shitty. [I could’t find this text trailer on YouTube but have included a different one below]
Some of the acting in this movie is over the top (not that a judge’s wife like the one Billy Burke plays would be subtle). At the same time, I did admire some of Ford’s dramatic, theatrical flourishes with regards to lighting and not trying for realism with his transitions from the courtroom into flashbacks.
Warner Archive’s Blu-ray comes with two cartoons — one featuring Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner (“Hopalong Casualty”) and the other featuring Speedy Gonzales (“West of the Pesos”).
Sergeant Rutledge is on sale now from Warner Archive and can be purchased from Movie Zyng. Warner Archive provided me with a free copy of the Blu-Ray I reviewed in this article. The opinions I share are my own.
