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Other Revolutionary War films |
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Revolutiion - Al Pacino in Revolution Patriot - Mel Gibson is The Patriot Crossing - Howard Fast's The Crossing RPPS Cultural Services - The Revolution on screen
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Fullosia Press -
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| RPPS Mission As part of its mission to preserve American culture THE RPPS promotes films which present American Independence as a necessary good. "The sun never shone so brightly on an undertaking such as the one we have begun."
in Howards of Virginia now on DVD 00043396605329:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.
Available on DVD At Barnes & Noble.com.
Recommended For Futher Reading  Unvanquished
The Best traditional music of US/UK THE CONTEMPLATOR |
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Howards of Virginia
Cast
Cast:
Cary Grant .... Matt Howard
Martha Scott .... Jane Peyton Howard
Cedric Hardwicke .... Fleetwood Peyton
Alan Marshal .... Roger Peyton
Richard Carlson .... Thomas Jefferson
Paul Kelly (I) .... Captain Jabez Allen
Irving Bacon .... Tom Norton
Elisabeth Risdon .... Aunt Clarissa
Anne Revere .... Mrs. Betsy Norton
Richard Alden .... James Howard at 16
Phil Taylor .... Peyton Howard at 18
Rita Quigley .... Mary Howard at Age 17
Libby Taylor .... Dicey
Richard Gaines .... Patrick Henry
George Houston .... George Washington
Revolution in the Cinema
Revolutionary War films face uphill battle in Hollywood. While "The Patriot" (2000) held off its enemies both Red Coats and critics at the box office, the Revolutionary War genre hasn't taken Hollywood by storm. In the push for American independence, "Revolution" with Al Pacino spent millions in imaginatively re-creating the template of the original without filling empty theatre seats.
A great irony infects American war movies. World War II comes to life in syrupy melodrama; the Civil War, in surreal nostalgia. DW Griffiths entitled his silent epic about the Civil War and reconstruction "Birth of a Nation" as if the new nation had been created by the peace of 1865 instead of the Revolution which began 90 years ealier in 1775. Only the Spanish-American War and Philipeano Insurrection claim fewer laurels in movie titles.
Where overshadowed by the Second World War and the internecine War Between the States, the Revolutionary War has decayed into an impenetrable myth, a fog reaching from the Boston Commons across the Delaware River to Independence Hall, through the House of Burgess and down into the Carolina swamps.
The names of the battles are almost all lost: Brooklyn, White Plains, Fort Clinton, Camden, Cowpens. Most battle sites are unpreserved; some lay under modern cities.
The dramatic personae George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and even Betsy Ross have been ensconced in stone and converted into unfeeling icons draped in powdered wigs and incapable of being brought to life on the screen.
Hundred-million-dollar productions with Revolutionary War movies have only met with occasional successes such as the 1940 film "The Howards of Virginia."
REBELS AND RED COATS: THE REVOLUTION IN THE CINEMA
The Howards Fight A Personal War
The Howards face a bigger problem. The Revolution has come. Mat Howard an up and coming surveyor is for the Patriots; his wife wants to preserve the monarchy.
Disappointment over the first child's condition boils over into political differences over America's future.
Matt enters politics on the Independence side. War breaks out.
Matt's is now as thick in the cause of Independence as Jane is as entrenched as her brother in
aristocratic pretensions and allegiance to The Crown.
Matt joins the colonial forces in the fight for freedom against England, and Jane and Matt are placed at odds. Love finds conflict with political beliefs. In the drawn out war eventually the sons, even Peyton II (Richard Alden .... James Howard at 16
Phil Taylor .... Peyton Howard at 18), side with the father.
This is a very crucial juncture in American history little understood by most. The Revolution was the country's most troublesome event. More so than in the war between brothers, the Civil War, fathers fought sons; husbands and wives found themselves in conflict over loyalty to the old or the new. Conflict reached from the legislatures to the salons to the front yard; it infected everything from parlor to bedroom.
Few films other than "Howards" have attempted such personal insight into the tumultuous birth of Revolutionary America.
The Dilemma:
What if you favored The Mets and Your Spouse favored the Dodgers? Would that cause more than a few snickers?
Plot:
Meet Matt Howard (Cary Grant), a friend of Thomas Jefferson. Matt goes to work for Fleetwood Peyton, a club footed miser with pretensions to the high society of the old Dominion. Matt falls in love with Fleetwood's sister Jane Peyton. Though very devoted to her brother, Jane marries Matt over Peyton's objections. The first son is born with a clubbed foot and named Peyton after his uncle.
Other Revolutionary War films
"Drums Along the Mohawk," (1939) starring Henry Fonda is based on Walter D. Edmonds' acclaimed novel which does speak to the issue of conflicting allegiances but in the movie version the Tory comes off as a stodgy crone who is alternately ignored and tolerated by her Rebel neighbors until she ultimately decides to join them in defense of Fort Stanwix.
Yet despite reluctance to have its story told, the Revolution is capable of generating many interesting yarns, like the camp followers and prostitutes who manned canon at Monmouth when men succumbed to heat prostration or the spy network on Long Island which would challenge a Cold War espionage thriller for sex and violence.
Perhaps the message is that the icons choose not to speak.
Only "The Patriot" shows as clearly how Revolution and politics divided friend and neighbors as war approached with grim foreboding. As in "Patriot," Howard's conflict looms in foreground, a war more personal and direct than a World War II melodrama.
| RPPS CULTURAL SERVICES | Revolution on screen |
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