Film Friday: They Came To Cordura (1959)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about cynicism and how the age of cynicism began at least as early as 1960 rather than after Vietnam and Watergate. They Came To Cordura adds a great deal of support to that argument. This film stars Gary Cooper as Major Thomas Thorn and it makes Platoon look like an Army recruitment film.

Gary Cooper makes me uneasy. I know he was a staunch Republican. I also know he testified against the communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a friendly witness. But when I see his films, something always “feels” wrong at a fundamental level. Indeed, his most famous role, that of Marshal Will Kane in High Noon, was written by communist Carl Foreman as an attack on the American people in light of the HUAAC. Foreman wrote Will Kane as a cynical takedown of heroism. He is a once-great man, who fights because he is now too afraid to run away. And the fact he won’t run away exposes the townsfolk as selfish, cynical cowards who don’t care about right and wrong. The message was clear: don’t be a hero, it’s not worth it and the American people don’t deserve you.

In fact, this meaning was so clear to John Wayne that he called the film “the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” and he and Howard Hawks produced Rio Bravo as a direct response. Said Hawks, “I made Rio Bravo because I didn’t like High Noon. Neither did Duke. I didn’t think a good town marshal was going to run around town like a chicken... asking everyone to help. And who saves him? His Quaker wife. That isn’t my idea of a good Western.”

Admittedly, the interpretation of High Noon has changed over time and people now see it more as an ode to the individual standing alone against great odds to do the right thing. So if that was the only time I questioned Cooper, it would be easy to dismiss my nagging feelings. But then you run into a film like Cordura – one of three films produced by Cooper’s own company.

Cordura is the story of Major Thomas Thorn (Cooper) of the United States Cavalry. The year is 1916 and the cavalry is fighting Mexican bandit Pancho Villa. As the story opens, the cavalry charges a ranch occupied by Villa’s troops. The charge is reckless and results in a lot of dead American soldiers, but Villa is routed because of the brave acts of four soldiers. These soldiers are observed by Cooper, who decides to put them up for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Cooper is then assigned to return with those four soldiers and a female prisoner to the Texas town of Cordura. Things go wrong along the way and the other soldiers turn on Cooper. That’s the basic plot and it doesn’t sound so bad, but just wait for the details.

Right out of the gates, we learn that Cooper is a coward. In a prior attack, he hid in a ditch. No one denies this and this isn’t some mistake you discover later in the film which redeems Cooper. Further, Cooper’s commander Col. Rogers knew about the cowardice and did nothing about it. Why? Because Rogers knew Cooper’s father and wanted to protect the father’s reputation. Further, Rogers knew it would come in handy because Rogers, who is 63, thought he could hold this over Cooper’s head so Cooper would recommend him for the Congressional Medal of Honor, which would get Rogers promoted to General. In fact, when Cooper refuses to put Rogers up for the medal, Rogers becomes irate, threatens Cooper and sends him away with the other soldiers as punishment.

Notice right away that the message here is that the U.S. Army, and by extension American society, is sick. Its leaders are cowards and opportunists. They ignore their duty to help friends, they hold each other to a lower standard than they do average people, and they turn on each other when they won’t return a favor. This will be reinforced by the other officer, Lt. Fowler, who also turns on Cooper when he won’t do a favor for Fowler. Fowler even tells Cooper, “an officer’s duty is to protect his own kind,” but he won’t help Cooper.

Adding to the negative critique, Cooper blasts the attack itself as disorganized and pure luck. He says the soldiers chased into the attack “like a gang of Don Quixotes” (meaning crazy, delusional and recklessly). He blasts the commanders for not having a plan and acting without intelligence or knowledge of the terrain, and he notes that if Villa had automatic weapons the cavalry would have lost. Essentially, the U.S. Army gets lucky.

As the journey begins, they take Adelaide Geary (Rita Hayworth) with them. She’s an American who has been helping Villa. At first, the film makes it clear that Rogers only arrests her because he’s angry with her. And when she demands to know what she’s charged with, Cooper tells her but she instantly proves how she can’t be charged under the law he cites. He doesn’t care. The implication is that the Army sees itself above the law and will fit the law to its needs. Then, as the story progresses, she proves to be smarter than all the soldiers about military matters. Meanwhile, we learn that Cooper is obsessed with finding out why these four men did such heroic acts. What he discovers is another kick in the teeth: these heroic men acted out of fear, ambition and racism. In effect, the film says that those are the things that drive bravery. Then it gets ugly.

Almost from the first step of the journey, the men snipe at each other and at Cooper. Once they learn that they are to receive the highest award the nation can give, three of the four want Cooper to take them off the list. Why? Because one is wanted for murder and doesn’t want to get spotted. One doesn’t want to help the Army; he wants a transfer away from combat to “let the young ones do the fighting.” Fowler thinks it will ruin his career to standout too early – he thinks it will make him a target for “jealous superiors.” Also, the one who does want the award only wants it because it means an extra $2 a month. Notice that these men are cynically held up as the example of heroes in the military, yet none of them are worthy - they are cutthroats, liars, cowards, opportunists and malingerers (we’re even told, “The Army don’t ask no questions,” when it recruits). And “held up” is the right way to say it because Cooper makes a point that, no matter how rotten these men really are, they need to be given these awards because the Army needs heroes to show everyone else “how to act.” Think about the cynicism here. The writer basically claims that the Army uses the fraud of phony heroism to inspire its soldiers, even when it knows the kind of rotten people it is propping up as heroes. Then it gets worse again.

No sooner do the troops start to rebel about being made heroes against their will than they decide to rape Hayworth. This forces Cooper to disarm them and he essentially takes them to Cordura as prisoners. As they walk (they lose their horses to the Mexicans), they keep wanting to quit and lie down and die. They keep attacking Cooper. They try to blackmail him and threaten him. They become increasingly murderous. Only Cooper’s gun keeps them going. One of the men even becomes ill with typhoid and Cooper must force them to carry the man - the others want to abandon him. This, by the way, is only a two-day walk.

Finally, as they near Cordura, Hayworth falls for Cooper and she declares him to be a great man. At that point, the film treats her as redeemed. Only, her version of redemption doesn’t involve renouncing her prior treacherous aid of the Mexican raiders; it just involves liking Cooper. And the reason she likes him is the “moral courage” he shows in being determined to get these men the Medal of Honor despite all they have done. That is twisted nonsense, that the coward is the hero because he blindly follows his orders, no matter how wrong. Adding insult to insult, she then has sex with one of the soldiers to distract him to help Cooper. Essentially, this representation of American womanhood is portrayed as someone with easily shifting loyalties who doesn’t think twice about using her body to get what she needs. She’s also a major alcoholic.

Films like this make me wonder about Cooper. This film characterizes the military, American heroes, and all aspects of American society as rotten to the extreme with no redeeming values. Our people are savages, held in check only by the guns of our leaders who are cynical hypocrites. There is no redemption. There is no moment where these rotten soldiers show they are better than they have behaved to that point. They don’t even help Cooper when they realize they are near Cordura after they tried to let him die. Cooper is never redeemed either. There is no moment where he shows that he can be a better man. He just does his nonsensical job like an obsessed bureaucrat or automaton. The closest we get to redemption is when the soldiers act surprised to see that Cooper wrote some nice things about them in his diary (which of course they should already know). Then Cooper writes, “Judge not lest ye be judged,” as if that makes it all better. So don’t judge the cowardly rapists or the guy who wants to turn them into false heroes because you’re probably just as bad? Do you see the cynicism? I don’t know how Cooper could have looked at this script and not seen all of this?

This is the kind of film I was talking about when I spoke of cynicism. If I described this film to you without the name of the actor or the year, I doubt anyone would have guessed this film was made in 1959. This is the sort of thing you expect from an Iraq film or a Vietnam film. Yet, here it is... with Cooper’s name on it.