Cinematic adventures of a (temporary) bachelor

The wife is out of town for a few days, so I loaded up the Netflix queue with things I knew she wouldn’t want to watch.

Last night’s offering was Shenandoah, a 1965 Jimmy Stewart vehicle in which Stewart plays Charlie Anderson, a farmer and widower living on his Viriginia farm with his seven children (and one daughter in law) during the last stages of the Civil War. Anderson steadfastly refuses to take sides in the war, and the dramatic tension comes from his efforts to protect his family caught between the two clashing armies from the chaos that war unleashes.

The synopses of the movie almost invariably describe Anderson as a “pacifist” becuase of his refusal to take up arms on behalf of the Confederacy or the Union. But that doesn’t seem quite right, since Anderson and his boys aren’t afraid to mix it up when the situation calls for it, for instance in beating the tar out of some federal purchasing agents who’ve come to confiscate some of their horses for the Union cavalry.

Rather, what Anderson seems to be is essentially an anarchist who refuses to fight on behalf of any government. We see this clearly in one exchange between Anderson and a Confederate officer who’s come to recruit Anderson’s six boys for the army.

Officer: Virginia needs all her sons Mr. Anderson.

Anderson: That might be so, Johnson, but these are my sons. They don’t belong to the state. When they were babies I never saw the state comin’ around here with a spare tit! We never asked anything of the state and never expected anything. We do our own living, and thanks to no man for the right.

The anti-slavery Anderson isn’t about to send his boys to fight for a cause he doesn’t believe in. But he’s also not going to be bossed around by Yankees coming in to confiscate his property and kill his countrymen (and who end up taking his youngest son prisoner when the boy is mistaken for a “Johnny Reb”). For Anderson loyalty to his family trumps whatever loyalty he may have to the state, whether it be Virginia, the Confederacy, or the Union.

Stewart is in fine form here, and, in fact, my one criticism of the film would be that most of the other actors (which include Katherine Ross from The Graduate in an early role as well as Glenn Corbett from Route 66) look positively mediocre in comparison.

Definitely a melodramatic weepie, but overall a good flick with a stellar performance by the great Stewart.