Shenandoah (1965)
The beginning of Shenandoah has some laughs and silliness in it; savor those moments. By the end of the movie you’ll be crying. This is a two or three handkerchief movie with a career-best performance from James Stewart. Yes, he was iconic as George Bailey, but this movie combines all his decades of experience and makes you weep for his tragic life. And yet Lee Marvin won the Academy Award for Best Actor of 1965 – oh, the Oscars. . .
Jimmy plays the patriarch of a family of seven children. His youngest (Phillip Alford from To Kill a Mockingbird) is sixteen, and the older adults are itching to volunteer for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Jimmy stays firm and refuses to let them. It’s not their war, it’s not their business, and they can do far more for their country by farming their land and maintaining their animals and crops. Phillip gets captured by Union soldiers, even though he’s only wearing a Confederate cap for fun, and finally Jimmy admits that the war has finally involved them. Together, the family heads out to find their youngest member.
In what might be George Kennedy’s best performance, he plays a war-weary commanding officer whose troops are getting slaughtered. When James Stewart comes to him and asks the whereabouts of the POWs, he gives a sorrowful accounting of the killed and injured. There’s no way to sift through all the captured soldier en route to other camps to find one sixteen year old kid. Still, Jimmy presses on.
You’ve been warned, folks. You’re going to cry. James Stewart just breaks your heart. His performance in this movie makes you forgive all the lousy movie he made in the early 1950s. Who cares about Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, and The Man from Laramie? No one, because there’s Shenandoah.
Want to watch it? Click here to see it on ok.ru and thanks "Juhi Thaker" for posting!
More James Stewart movies here!
Jimmy plays the patriarch of a family of seven children. His youngest (Phillip Alford from To Kill a Mockingbird) is sixteen, and the older adults are itching to volunteer for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Jimmy stays firm and refuses to let them. It’s not their war, it’s not their business, and they can do far more for their country by farming their land and maintaining their animals and crops. Phillip gets captured by Union soldiers, even though he’s only wearing a Confederate cap for fun, and finally Jimmy admits that the war has finally involved them. Together, the family heads out to find their youngest member.
In what might be George Kennedy’s best performance, he plays a war-weary commanding officer whose troops are getting slaughtered. When James Stewart comes to him and asks the whereabouts of the POWs, he gives a sorrowful accounting of the killed and injured. There’s no way to sift through all the captured soldier en route to other camps to find one sixteen year old kid. Still, Jimmy presses on.
You’ve been warned, folks. You’re going to cry. James Stewart just breaks your heart. His performance in this movie makes you forgive all the lousy movie he made in the early 1950s. Who cares about Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, and The Man from Laramie? No one, because there’s Shenandoah.
Want to watch it? Click here to see it on ok.ru and thanks "Juhi Thaker" for posting!
More James Stewart movies here!