| Sergeant Rutledge | |
|---|---|
 One sheet theater poster (1960) | |
| Directed by | John Ford |
| Written by | James Warner Bellah Willis Goldbeck |
| Produced by | Willis Goldbeck Patrick Ford |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Bert Glennon |
| Edited by | Jack Murray |
| Music by | Howard Jackson |
Production company | John Ford Productions |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 111 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Sergeant Rutledge is a 1960 American Technicolor Western film directed by John Ford and starring Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Towers, Woody Strode and Billie Burke.[1] The title was also used for the novelization published in the same year.[2] Six decades later, the film continues to attract attention because it was one of the first mainstream films in the U.S. to treat racism frankly and to give a starring role to an African-American actor.[3] In 2017, film critic Richard Brody observed that "The greatest American political filmmaker, John Ford, relentlessly dramatized, in his Westerns, the mental and historical distortions arising from the country’s violent origins—including its legacy of racism, which he confronted throughout his career, nowhere more radically than in Sergeant Rutledge."[4]
The film starred Strode as Sergeant Rutledge, a Black first sergeant in a colored regiment of the United States Cavalry, known as "Buffalo Soldiers". At a U.S. Army fort in the early 1880s, he is being tried by a court-martial for the rape and murder of a white girl as well as for the murder of the girl's father, who was the commanding officer of the fort. The story of these events is recounted through several flashbacks.
- ^ Harrison's Reports film review; April 16, 1960; page 64.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Bellahwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Manchel, Frank (1997). "Losing and finding John Ford's 'Sergeant Rutledge' (1960)". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 17 (2): 245–259. doi:10.1080/01439689700260711.
Ford's message and his means of delivering it create problems. But his agenda and its relevance to film history are significant. The film itself may not provide the most memorable moments in the director's career, but it is an important contribution to our understanding of race in the 1960s.
- ^ Brody, Richard (August 1, 2017). "The Front Row: 'Sergeant Rutledge'". The New Yorker.