The Man from the Alamo (1953)

The Man from the Alamo is a 1953 Budd Boetticher western. This was three years before Boetticher teamed up with Randolph Scott for the seven westerns on which the director’s reputation now mostly rests.

It is 1836 and the siege of The Alamo provides the background. With the fort clearly doomed Colonel Travis gives his men the choice. They can stay and fight or they can leave. One man chooses to leave. His name is John Stroud (Glenn Ford).

Stroud had what he considered to be compelling reasons for his choice but now he’s branded as a coward. He narrowly escapes lynching. He joins up with a guerrilla force fighting on the Mexican side but he has his reasons for doing so. Stroud’s problem is that he has good reasons for everything he does but all his actions can be, and are, misunderstood.

The guerrilla force commanded by Jess Wade (Victor Jory) is nothing more than a gang of bandits and cut-throats. Stroud despises them but he has his reasons for joining them. He wants to find the man who murdered his wife and child while he was fighting at the Alamo.

First he needs to break out of gaol. Which proves to be surprisingly easy.

All the women, children and old men of the town are being evacuated in a wagon train. That wagon train will play a pivotal rôle in Stroud’s quest. Wade’s gang intend to rob it, believing that the gold from the town’s bank is in one of the wagons. It’s not likely that Wade’s guerrillas will leave many of the women and children alive.

If the two major themes of westerns are revenge and redemption then this movie has a hero who is seeking both. Glenn Ford was a fine choice for the lead rôle. He wasn’t a showy Oscar-bait actor but he had a knack for conveying intensity and internalised suffering, without any of the histrionics that became increasingly common in the 50s as Method acting became all the rage.

It’s a nicely judged performance. Stroud has to be bitter without being an obnoxious misanthrope and he has to be somewhat tortured, but not overly so. Stroud is reasonably comfortable in his mind that his actions at the Alamo were justified and that he’s no coward but he has a few niggling doubts. Ford gets it just right.

Which brings us to another theme of this movie - the conflict between loyalty to a nation and personal loyalties. Stroud had to choose between loyalty to Texas and loyalty to his family.

Later there will be another conflict, between loyalty to a nation and loyalty to one’s own local community. Boetticher doesn’t labour the point but the movie on the whole comes down on the side of personal loyalty. What’s the point in being loyal to a nation if it means sacrificing your own family?

It’s also interesting that this is a movie at least peripherally about the Alamo but the movie’s bad guys are not Mexicans. They’re Americans. Wade’s gang of thieves and murderers are Americans.

And the one person left for whom Stroud really cares is a little Mexican boy whose father was killed by Wade’s men. The boy, Carlos, has more or less adopted Stroud as a substitute father. This is a movie that keeps raising interesting questions about loyalty. It’s also a movie that treats right and wrong and good and evil as things that get complicated. It’s a mistake to jump to conclusions about a man’s actions and it’s a mistake to rush to judgment on a man or on a group of people.

Beth Anders (Julie Adams) also discovers how complicated like can get. She believes Stroud is a coward but when he needs help she offers that help. Whatever he’s done he’s a man and he’s suffering. And she starts to consider the possibility that maybe he’s telling the truth about his actions.

This is an intelligent grown-up western, which of course is what you expect from Budd Boetticher. It’s also an exciting action-packed movie with large-scale action sequences which Boetticher handles expertly. This really is a fine western and it’s highly recommended.

The Australian Umbrella DVD release (in their marvellous Six Shooter Classics series) is barebones but offers a nice transfer. The movie was shot in the 1.37:1 ratio in Technicolor.

I’ve reviewed other Budd Boetticher westerns - The Tall T (1956), Ride Lonesome (1959), 7 Men From Now (1956) and Comanche Station (1960). All of them very much worth seeing.