The Plainsman (1937)

A Cecil B. DeMille "historical" epic, "detailing" the lives of Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Custer and Calamity Jane. This falls firmly into the category of "pretty entertaining as light entertainment, but not a lot of substance". Wild Bill returns to the west after fighting in the civil war, meets his old friend Buffalo Bill who's recently got married and agreed to quit his western heroing (like that's going to happen), meets Calamity Jane, with whom he has a love-hate relationship, fights off an Indian uprising, finds out who's selling rifles to the Indians, accidentally becomes wanted by the army when he shoots some corrupt soldiers, moves to Deadwood, catches the people selling rifles to the Indians, gets shot while holding his famous hand of aces and eights. I think that just about covers it.

Clearly not particularly historically accurate, the big issue with the film is that none of the characters ever seem to have any more motivation or characterisation beyond "a man's got to do...", which makes the whole thing decently mounted action but ultimately slightly hollow. Gary Cooper is likeable enough as Wild Bill, and largely carries the thing. At one point during the stagecoach ride I was sure Calamity Jane was about to burst into song, but I fear that's just because I was once forced to watch a musical on the subject.

Some bits now seem quite dated, which is slightly unsurprising for a 1937 film. Particularly the bits involving "Manifest Destiny", where everyone is quite confident that killing Indians to allow the "white man" to settle is absolutely the right thing to do. There's a slightly confusing bit where the Indian chief complains that none of the treaties he signs are honoured, but nothing further is ever made of it: killing the chief and his people is still the right thing to do broken treaties or not. Later ('50s) films would probably have explored that slightly more—perhaps blaming corrupt low-level government officials—while still going for the massacre Indians ending that everyone was really looking for.

The UK DVD is good enough, given the age of the source material.

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