Tom Berenger as General James Longstreet
in "Gettysburg (1993)
In "Gettysburg", Tom Berenger plays Confederate General James Longstreet with an air of sardonic fatalism, a great bushy beard and an almost ever-present cigar. (Longstreet occasionally smokes a pipe.) As Robert E. Lee's second-in-command, it's Longstreet's job to provide his commander with unfiltered advice, which he does. Longstreet warns Lee against fighting at Gettysburg, and predicts (accurately) that the Confederate attack into the center of the Union line on the third day of the battle will be a disaster. Lee doesn't listen.
There's this little thing that Longstreet does in the movie that you start to notice when he does it more than once. After meeting with Lee, or one of the other commanding officers, Longstreet salutes, with a cigar clasped in the fingers of his saluting hand. I don't know what saluting protocol was in the Confederate army back then, and as any veteran knows, generals generally can do what they want to, but I'm pretty sure a cigar salute is not in most handbooks on military regulations. I'd guess that salute was improvised. There's just enough subliminal mischief in Berenger's performance to suggest he might do something like that, just to see if he can get away with it. And, you know, he's playing a general, so why not?
