The Long Duel

Watching The Long Duel put me in mind of the story of Joaquin Murietta from early American California days. At least it seemed that way to me as this story of the Himalayan frontier of India plays a lot like an American western.

Harry Andrews as the John Bull commander of a Himalayan outpost in the British Raj arrests an entire tribe for some specious allegations of poaching. Yul Brynner as tribal chief is among the arrested, but they break out with one fatality.

After that Brynner and the able members of the tribe become brigands and popular heroes in India where the Congress Party is getting most demanding for India's independence post World War I. The provincial governor Laurence Naismith is acutely aware that Brynner and his tribe are becoming popular heroes. Possibly this story is post the Amritsar Massacre which galvanized the move toward independence.

The solution they come up with is to give Andrews a co-commander in Trevor Howard. Howard before his army service was an anthropologist and has studied Indian culture. He's also suspected of the unpardonable sin of 'going native'. But he may be the answer to the Raj's Brynner problem.

Brynner borrows a lot here from his earlier work in Taras Bulba playing the tribal chief. Howard cuts a sympathetic figure as a most unmilitary officer showing his range. A Captain Bligh he is not. He even gets a love interest in Charlotte Rampling playing Andrews's daughter.

I thought the climax was a bit on the unreal side involving both Brynner's son and Howard. More I will not say.

The Long Duel is an interesting saga of those last days of the British Raj though it plays like a western with real Indians.