Les compagnons de la gloire

A number of people believe that if Sam Peckinpah had directed "The Glory Guys" it might have been a masterpiece. Instead we get a Peckinpah screenplay with the directing duties handed to the little known Arnold Laven and yet as it stands this is one of the finest of all Cavalry pictures even if not too many people have seen it. It's magnificently shot in widescreen by the great James Wong Howe though it's indifferently acted. None of the leads, (Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell, Senta Berger), have much charisma though it's always good to see James Caan, (with a dreadful Oirish accent) but there are sequences here as good as anything Ford or Peckinpah might have given us, be it a bar-room brawl, an Indian massacre or a beautifully sustained scene on a parade ground. Peckinpah was the original director but was replaced by Laven and by 1965 the Western was no longer as popular as it had been a decade or so earlier. This one is ripe for rediscovery.