The black sergeant

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Movie
German title The black sergeant / one foot in hell
Original title Sergeant Rutledge
Sergeant Rutledge image.jpg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1960
length 111 minutes
Rod
Director John Ford
script James Warner Bellah ,
Willis Goldbeck
production Patrick Ford ,
Willis Goldbeck for
Warner Bros.
music Howard Jackson
camera Bert Glennon
cut Jack Murray
occupation

The black sergeant (Alternative title: With one foot in hell ; Original title: Sergeant Rutledge ) is an American Western - courtroom drama directed by John Ford in 1960. It is based on the short story Shadow of the Noose of John and Ward Hawkins from 1955.

action

Summer 1881 : Young Lucy Dabney and her father, Major Dabney, have been murdered. The suspect is an African American sergeant named Braxton Rutledge, who had previously served in the army for six years and enjoyed a good reputation. Rutledge's superior Lt. Tom Cantrell arrives at the American cavalry camp where the trial is to take place in order to defend his soldier. The trial is considered explosive, especially since Lucy was not only brutally murdered, but also beaten and raped. Court onlookers would like to lynch Rutledge right away. The court, headed by Colonel Fosgate, begins the hearing where Prosecutor Captain Shattuck first calls a number of witnesses. The witnesses are interrogated and the events of the day of the murder are reported in flashbacks . Rutledge defends himself that he has found Lucy dead. It was then, of all times, that Major Dabney came into the room, mistook Rutledge for the murderer, and shot him. He then shot the major in self-defense .

Rutledge fled first but was caught and arrested for the alleged murder of the Dabneys. When Rutledge was able to flee again, he returned to the army to warn them of the attack by an Apache tribe . Rutledge fought heroically, but was arrested again on suspicion of murder after the confrontation with the Indians. While Cantrell sees this as an act of bravery by Rutledge, Prosecutor Shattuck sees the alleged heroism only as an attempt by Rutledge to get the court's pity at the trial. Cantrell tries to prove Rutledge's innocence through various pieces of evidence. Instead, the defense attorney believes that another, now dead, young man named Chris Hubble is the perpetrator. Chris' father takes the stand and declares that his dead son committed the murder. It turns out, however, that the jacket that the perpetrator was wearing was too small for Chris. Chris' father can be identified as the real murderer of Lucy in the end. After his release, Sergeant Rutledge proudly leads his soldiers again.

background

  • As he has done many times before, John Ford also shot The Black Sergeant in Monument Valley , which was the setting for many Ford westerns.
  • In her last role as the judge's wife, Mrs. Fosgate, 75-year-old actress Billie Burke plays . After this film, she withdrew into private life.
  • The film's theme song is titled Captain Buffalo and was written by Mack David and Jeffrey Livingston .
  • The film premiered in New York City on May 25, 1960, and three days later it appeared on national screens. The film was released in Germany in January 1961.

synchronization

In the German dubbed version Paul Klinger speaks to Sgt. Braxton Rutledge ( Woody Strode ), while Colonel Otis Fosgate ( Willis Bouchey ) gets his voice from Klaus W. Krause .

reception

The film has received fundamentally good reviews to this day and is considered the first major Hollywood western to feature an African American as a hero. The lexicon of the international film was convinced: "John Ford deals with this contribution to the race question in the context of a cleverly designed, visually perfectly staged Western, whereby the optical brilliance is never used as an end in itself, but always beneficial to the story."

The Austrian Film Museum wrote: “At the same time as the US civil rights movement broke out , Ford presented Sergeant Rutledge, his first Afro-American titular hero, who was turned into a projection screen for racist ideas by whites (including Mae Marsh , once the victim of a black attacker in the most notorious scene of The Birth of a Nation ). An astonishing Western also in the form: In addition to the unusual courtroom thriller structure, there is John Ford's brilliantly expressive use of color, which develops a high emotional effect here. Another film about the fruits of anger . "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IMDB Release Info
  2. ↑ The black sergeant in the German synchronous file
  3. ↑ "The Black Sergeant" at Rotten Tomatoes
  4. ↑ "The Black Sergeant" at Two Thousand and One
  5. ↑ Austrian Film Museum ( Memento from May 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )