THE BLUE AND THE GRAY (1982) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Andrew V. McLaglen
Stacy Keach, John Hammond, Gregory Peck
Sterling Hayden, Diane Baker, Colleen Dewhurst,
Rip Torn, Rory Calhoun, Geraldine Page,
Lloyd Bridges, Kathleen Beller, Warren Oates,
Paul Winfield, John Vernon, Robert Vaughn
Watching this six-hour miniseries is like reading one of those big 19th-century novels in which characters connect and then reconnect over a vast expanse of time and geography. It follows the Civil War adventures of a Virginia farm boy whose talent for drawing lands him a job with a Gettysburg newspaper on the eve of the conflict. Encouraged by Abraham Lincoln to cover the war as an artist/correspondent, he turns up at every key battle and event from Bull Run to Appomattox, recording it all with his pencil and sketchbook. John Hammond, who plays the artist, could be Eddie Redmayne's twin brother. Stacy Keach is both jaunty and commanding as a dashing Union spy. Sterling Hayden, in his last screen appearance, plays John Brown. Rory Calhoun plays Meade. Rip Torn plays Grant. Gregory Peck, whose stoic demeanor was sometimes called Lincolnesque, plays Lincoln. Director Andrew McLaglen got his start as an assistant to John Ford, and went on to make a lot of mostly ordinary movies. Here, he shows what he could do on a large canvas with a decent script. The scale is epic, but the storytelling is intimate, and the second-unit work is first rate.
