Shenandoah (1965)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

one of my absolute favorites!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

After reading, on Kindle, Jimmy Stewart's bio, I ran out & got a few movie titles on DVD, some of which I saw in their early release so many years ago. Shenandoah offers Jimmy as firm, but kind Patriarch, Charlie, to a large, grown family in 'neutral' Virginia. The story begins just before a historical Civil War battle in 1864. He resists pressure to see his boys conscripted by the Confederate side, and physically fights Rebel agents who attempt to 'acquire' his horses.Pressure begins to mount, however, and the youngest lad (gruffly called 'boy') is arrested by Union Soldiers, forcing Charlie & family to mount up & find the 16-year old amongst thousands of P.O.W.s being shipped North to internment camps. There are some great battle scenes, all with the same sobering theme: the war is lost. Young lives are being ruined for nothing other than the unwillingness of the South to quit. Tragedy befalls, and Charlie loses some family members. There is a positive turn at the end, however.I saw similarities between Shenandoah and Gone With the Wind. The Civil war brings unhappy consequences, esp. to the South, and there are villains on both sides. Is Shenandoah an anti-war film? No more so than Gone with the Wind. It is, perhaps, anti-Civil war, in that peaceful, productive folks like Jimmy's family would not be left alone to pursue their own livelihood, which, Charlie points out, his family cultivated with hard work and no handouts from the Authorities.I was surprised to note that this was released in 1965, same year as 'Flight of the Phoenix', making that a good year for Stewart. However, Shenandoah strikes me as more suited to the era of Westerns made 10 years earlier. I liked it, but rate it 8/10 (I rated Winchester 73 a 9).

This movie had every emotion in it. It has everything. I will put it in my top 5 movies. It has slipped past four of my all-time favorites, Casablanca, Shane, The Searchers, and is bigger than Gone With The Wind. It has strength of character, it has humor, it has honor, and it has deep sadness. It will play the harp of your soul and will leave not a note untouched........and it has, in the end, ........faith...to go on. It is undefeated.

Poor Ji-Ji-Ji-Jimmy Stewart. He can't talk to his dead wife's grave for two minutes without being interrupted by his creepy daughter.Thar's war in them thar hills... the Civil War, and Stewart and his clan are being pressured by city-bred rebel officers who want Stewart's eight strapping sons to join up for the cause, that is, if they've finished slopping the hogs and bailing the hay and other farm stuff like that.Meanwhile Doug McClure wants to hose the aforementioned 'creepy daughter' (Rosemary Forsythe), but he's called off to battle right before the honeymoon. Dang, all that courtin', and he don't even get a taste of the creepy pie.Melodramatic, but passable family drama with a good performance by Jimmy Best as a confederate soldier.

Shenandoah is directed by Andrew V. McLaglen and written by James Lee Barrett. It stars James Stewart, Patrick Wayne, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Rosemary Forsyth, Phillip Alford and Katharine Ross. Music is by Frank Skinner and Technicolor photography is by William H. Clothier.As the American Civil War rages, a Virginian patriarch keeps his large farming family in the act of isolationism. But will the war leave them alone? A superbly acted and written Civil War Oater, Shenandoah is moving and poignant without over doing the anti-war message. First half of the pic lets us into the lives of the Anderson family, their beliefs, their loves and losses, and decisions that will shape their futures. Circumstances will of course come knocking at the door, which shifts the film into darker territory, where it is here that McLaglen and his team brilliantly show the emotional and physical hardships of the war between the North and the South. Story and the characters are consistently compelling, all while the locations envelope the dramatics with a beauty that is realised by the legendary Clothier. And then there is Stewart, a class act and the axis, the fulcrum of everything that is great about the pic, his character brought vividly - and crucially believably - to life, one of the best father portrayals in classic film. Battles rage, of the war, the heart and of the mind in one of the 1960s best American Oaters. 9/10