In the spring of 1969, John Frankenheimer, a director known for technical and artistic innovation, a mastery of action sequences, and an enduring interest in stories of self-transformation through extreme pressure, and a first-rate cast and crew, carrying a script by Dalton Trumbo, arrived in Afghanistan to begin shooting a 31/2 hour epic called, The Horsemen.
Due to studio resistance, the epic film envisioned by Frankenheimer was not to be. Instead, a 2-hour version was created and opened in U.S. cinemas in June of 1971. The Horsemen generated little interest in America and it was rapidly pushed out for more reliable summertime movies. It was better received overseas, winning a Triomphe award for best director in France.
The movie is based on the book, Les Cavaliers, by Joseph Kessel, published in 1967. It was a bestseller in France. Columbia bought the movie rights for $150,000 – real money in the late 1960s.
Jack Palance and Omar Sharif have the primary roles, with Palance playing Sharif’s father and a tribal chief. Leigh Taylor-Young, an emerging star, has an important role that reflects the position of women in Afghan society.
The Horsemen is now available on Amazon Prime Video. It is gorgeous visually. It was shot on real analog film by masters of their craft. Claude Renoir is credited as the cinematographer, but some Afghan footage was reputedly shot by James Wong Howe. Although the credits state that the movie was shot with Panavision cameras, there is some evidence that Super Panavision was used.
The film opens with breathtaking aerial views of the Afghan landscape. Soon after the camera wanders the streets filming the unscripted activities of real people living real life. It seems the Afghan people would bet on anything. We are treated to a fight to the death between two camels with heavy wagering by the surrounding crowd. The actors and the story are seamlessly integrated with the action on the street.
The entire film is an exercise in filmmaking mastery. It was a favorite of John Frankenheimer. His intent was to bring together his strengths in a single film. He had one group of films known for their action – like The Manchurian Candidate – and another group known for their intimacy – like The Birdman of Alcatraz.
In that way, The Horsemen succeeds. The action sequences make the big screen spectacle we’ve come to expect from Hollywood, but the story deepens from there.
Human flaws and virtues, and the possibility, but not the certainty, of transformation, are at the heart of the story. These are powerfully revealed by the performances of Palance, Sharif, and Taylor-Young.
Spectacle and intimacy in one film: The Horsemen.
The Horsemen plot revolves around a brutal game that is of great importance in Afghan society – buzkashi. This game involves men on horseback and the headless carcass of a calf. To win, the carcass must be carried past a goal.
By the way, a headless calf carcass is an awkward, heavy thing. Hard to handle standing still, much less while riding a horse as other riders are doing their best to take the carcass, dismount you, and generally harass you with extreme prejudice.
The game sometimes lasts weeks. They beat one another and their horses mercilessly. Buzkashi often produces severe injuries and even death.
Because of its uniqueness and the bloody primitive nature of it, buzkashi was one of the few things that people might know about Afghanistan.
Jack Palance’s character had been a legendary player in his youth. Sharif’s character, his son, desperately desires to demonstrate his own prowess by winning the game at the center of the story.
I won’t spoil it, but I’ll say that the outcome of the game is what drives the rest of the story.
Omar Sharif’s horsemanship is truly impressive. He does most of the riding himself. As a viewer should, you get caught up in watching the game and its turns, its ups and downs. Yet even being emotionally invested in the action, it’s hard not to be impressed by the obvious challenges of filming.
The result on screen conveys the speed, challenge, merciless brutality, and incredible skill of the riders and their mounts. It is an impressive demonstration of action sequence mastery.
John Frankenheimer complained of the difficulties of filming in Afghanistan: the heat, the lack of infrastructure, the threat of military action, and the language barrier. The crew organized a raffle for a car to attract 5,000 extras for a scene. 300,000 showed up. The army had to be summoned to dispel the crowd.
The Afghanistan shoot lasted only a few months. Production of The Horsemen paused for work on other projects. Production resumed later in Spain.
The Afghan footage in The Horsemen is very likely the highest quality film shot in the country before the Soviets invaded just ten years later. Much of the film could have been shot 500 years in the past. Early in the film there’s a single shot of Palance’s character looking up in the sky at a jet. It’s enough to suggest that the traditional tribal life in Afghanistan – which is medieval in many respects - is coming up against contemporary reality.
For viewers today, The Horseman offers a full-color, high fidelity window into a way of life that had existed for many generations. For that reason alone, the film has historic value.
It also tells an engaging human story with universal relevance in an exotic and unfamiliar world where family honor is the highest value.
I would love to see the 31/2 hour epic John Frankenheimer wanted to make. Alas, that is not to be.
But I’m grateful for The Horsemen he did create and that you can watch today, as crisp and bright as it was in 1971, on Amazon Prime Video.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0B6SD49HL/ref=atv_hm_D4dtpS_1_55
https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/54301
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horsemen_(1971_film)