In 1969 Terrence Steven McQueen was at the peak of his stardom when he began the small, nostalgic movie based on the unusually sunny last novel by William Faulkner, The Reivers.* He had been on a roll as the star of "The Cincinnati Kid" (1965), "Nevada Smith" and "The Sand Pebbles" (1966), "The Thomas Crown Affair" and "Bullit" (1968). Somehow this Hoosier had become the definition of 1960s "cool" for many moviegoers. McQueen's rebel character in "The Great Escape" (1963) had made him a big star, and his later 1960 movies mostly involved saying little, suffering attacks stoically, and sometimes grinning. Singing "Camptown Races" (as he does in "The Reivers," was not something I can imagine his characters in any of those movies doing.

The camera loved him, as the cliche goes. One of the interests of the long-unavailable "Reivers" is that its star/producer (Mr. McQueen) doesn't effortlessly command the viewer's attention. Boon Hogganbeck is a typical aged but not grown-up American adolescent (he does not even attempt a Southern accent), an unreliable but charming handyman employed by "Boss Priest" (Will Greer in a less saccharine turn as the wise elder than on "The Waltons") Jefferson, Mississippi during the hot summer of 1905. Boon is not really idealized by the red-haired eleven-year-old Lucius (Mitch Vogel), though he is fascinated by him and goes along with him when Boon wants to drive the Boss's new 18-horesepower bright yellow Winton Flyer (autmobile) to Memphis while "Boss" is gone for four days to a funeral. Initially stowing away, and then stealing most of the scenes is Lucius's black second cousin once removed, Ned (Rupert Crosse, who was 6'5"--nine inches taller than McQueen-- and not easily folded-up and hidden).

McQueen wants to visit a prostitute, Corrie (Sharon Farrell) in Memphis. This is the primary erotic relationship within the movie, though for romantic devotion Boone is considerably surpassed by Lucius. Sharon says that many men have fought over her, but that Lucius is the first who has ever fought for her. Boone's summary is wryer: "Eleven-years-old and already cut up in a who rehouse brawl!"

My dim memories of Faulkner's rather Disneyeque (at least Disneyesque for Faulkner!) last novel is that it was more of a road novel than the movie is. The Winton Flyer does bounce across the idyllically shot countryside and get stuck in the mud with slapstick results, and the Memphis bordello is the hinge of Lucius growing up on his rampage. Close to half the movie involves a horse race after Ned trades Boss's car for a low-energy horse to race for the prize of... the yellow Winton Flyer. Ned has great confidence in his ability to make any horse a winner and in Lucius as a jockey (even with only one good hand after the who rehouse brawl). The horse is a major challenge, lacking any interest in running, but Ned is not one to give up. This is the part of the movie that is most Disneyesque (except for the "ladies of the night" decked out for watching the race), followed by the "Grandfather Knows Best" finale. And the sentimentallized patronizing race relations, particularly "Uncle Possum," played by Juano Hernandez, who had starred in an earlier Hollywood adaptation of a Faulkner novel centered on a young white boy and a stoic black survivor, Intruder in the Dust.

The Copland-evoking score by John Williams received an Oscar nomation (Crosse also was recognized with one).

The DVD has no extras at all, but delivers very good audio and visual transfers of a charming and often very funny movie in which a boy begins to see that the world is a dangerous and complex place with more than a little nastiness (Michael Constantine's bordello owner, and Clifton James's heavy-sweating, vicious sheriff).

The movie looks very good and has sharp (perhaps too sharp) sound transfer. It has a number of very good (Crosse, Greer, Vogel) and fairly good (McQueen, Farrell) performances in it. and unnecessary solemn ersatz-wisdom in narraation intoned by Burgess Meredith (supposedly Lucius recollecting events 60+ years later.) The movie (the DVD is rated PG-13) is genial, a bit bawdy, and in many ways seems a successor, set in the early 20th century, of Huckleberry Finn, the Great American Novel in which a less sheltered white Southern boy learns a thing or two about the follies and outright evils of the adult world. A large dollop of "National Velvet" is mixed into the brew, too.

* "Reiver" is a Scottish term for thief, with a connotation of rascally.

Mark Rydell directed some other Oscar-nominated (and -winning) performances in "The Rose," "Cinderella Libery," "The River," and "On Golden Pond," but even if I had to watched it again last week, I'd have remembered him as the bantam mobster Terry Augustine who has his goons (including a non-speaking Arnold Schwarzanegger) strip to their underwear in a confrontation with Elliot Gould's Philip Marlowe over stolen money in Robert Altman's take on hard-boiled detectives in The Long Goodbye. The first movie Rydell directed after "The Reivers" was "The Cowboys" in which boys are turned into men in a cattle drive by John Wayne. The first feature film (after much television work) that Rydell directed was a very good adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novella The Fox (which got Rydell and Anne Heywood Gold Globe nominations).

Other movies starring Steve McQueen I've reviewed:
The Honeymoon Machine (1961) ***
Solider in the Rain (1963) ****
Tom Horn (1980) ***


© 2007, Stephen O. Murray



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older