With the recent Criterion Collection release ofSidney Poitier’s brilliant WesternBuck and the Preacher, as well as the recent passing of Poitier’s co-starHarry Belafonte, it is essential to acknowledge the film’s revolutionary revision of both the Western genre and the ’70s Blaxploitation cycle. Centered on a tumultuous wagon train trip led by the titular duo,Buck and the Preacherinterweaves a post-Civil War history of the “Exodusters” movement from the South to the West after the abolition of slavery within a tightly structured Western adventure story.
Through the film’s portrayal of camaraderie between the central group of Black migrants and the Native American communities along the trail, Poitier pivots the Western away from a storytelling space of “Manifest Destiny” fantasies by highlighting the systemic occurrence of racial oppression in the Reconstruction-era West. Furthermore,Buck and the Preacher’s reversal of screen-centric stereotypes that pervaded Blaxploitation cinema around the same time elevates Poitier’s film as a triumphant celebration of Black culture and history, both in front of and behind the camera. Above all else, the towering central performances by Poitier as Buck and HarryBelafonte as the Preacher solidify the specific revisionist bent ofBuck and the Preacher, highlighting its unique and influential place in the lineage of American Westerns.
‘Buck and the Preacher’ Explores the Past and the Present
From the ecstatic trills of jazz legendBenny Carter’s mouth harp over the introduction of the traveling community to the freeze-frame final shot of the titular characters andRuby Dee’s Ruth riding toward the sunset,Buck and the Preacherimmediately positions itself as a foil to the disillusioned buddy Westerns of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Fusing the communal anxiety ofThe Wild Bunchwith the blithe humor and outlaw recklessness ofButch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Poitier imbues his Reconstruction-era wagon train Western with a sense of New Hollywood gusto without sacrificing the historical impact of his post-emancipation narrative. While Poitier’s peers viewed genre as a method for wrestling with contemporaneous social issues and political disenfranchisement,Buck and the Preachersimultaneously wrestles with the painful past faced by Black communities on their journeys from the southern United States and comments on the persistence of systemic racism in the post-Civil Rights era. By boldly balancing historical responsibility with modern social critique, Poitier establishes his Western masterpiece as both a time capsule and timeless adventure, flowing effortlessly between the genre’s entertaining shootouts and robberies and the prescient commentary of subverting racist systems by all means necessary.
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In fact, one of the most compelling thematic threads throughoutBuck and the Preacheris the poetic use of action antics to embody the political revolution at the heart of the film. From the tragic ambush of the wagon train’s camp by a posse of white raiders to the central sequence of an elegantly executed bank robbery by the titular duo, Poitier deftly pivots narrative control on a pendulum throughout the film, which effectively sustains suspense and affectively investigates the historical struggle that “Exodusters” faced on the path to postwar freedom. In conjunction with the poetic use of action throughout the westward journey, Poitier boldly eschews dialog in several of the most pivotal sequences including the aforementioned bank robbery and much of the bravura finale, focusing attention on the atmospheric drones of Carter’s musical score. Rather than filling the film’s soundscape with the machismo-driven mutterings that defined the Western careers ofJohn WayneandClint Eastwood, Poitier places the physical prowess and quick-acting intellect above the genre’s typical masculine posturing. By revising both the racial politics and patriarchal performativity of the Western genre through an alternative use of action,Buck and the Preacherbrilliantly transcends the trappings that render many Western classics as problematic relics.
Sidney Poitier’s Exploration of Blaxploitation
Beyond Poitier’s re-politicization of the Western as a post-Civil Rights era text,Buck and the Preacherequally dismantles the stereotypical shortcomings that pervaded many of the Blaxploitation hits of the same decade. Even asBuck and the Preacherengages a similarRobin Hood-style “eat the rich” narrative as films likeSuper Flyand especiallyCotton Comes to Harlem, Poitier’s situation of the characters within a post-Civil War setting distances the figures from more contemporary stereotypes often imposed upon black protagonists. By rendering Poitier’s Buck as a stoic and steadfast classical Western hero and Belafonte’s Preacher as a complicated and cunning con artist yearning for retribution, Poitier and his screenwriterErnest Kinoytap into a deep well of Western archetypes to demythologize the whitewash West rather than applying negative stereotypes within a period setting. Furthermore, Poitier emotionally anchors the film to Ruby Dee’s Ruth through her essential role in leading the wagon train and strength in confronting Buck’s vulnerabilities along the way. By elevating Ruth’s strength and determination alongside the titular heroes, Poitier promotes an unprecedented representation of Black femininity seamlessly within his postwar Western.
‘Buck and the Preacher’ as a Revisionist Western
Ultimately,Buck and the Preacherfunctions as a vision of racial and cultural unity, culminating in the triumphant destruction of the plantation-owning raiders by the protagonists’ band of Black fighters and Native American warriors. By depicting the groups of people who are typically oppressed in Western cinema as the subversive victors over the traditional heroes of the genre, Poitier upends notions of the American West as a racially and culturally homogenous space. Rather than concluding on a wide shot witnessing the heroes riding away into the sunset,Buck and the Preacherreverses the camera to look up towards the titular duo as they ride towards the audience, implying that the journey towards racial equity and decolonizing American storytelling continues.
Although the conclusion ofBuck and the Preachermaintains its power as an essential statement of Black heroism as well as positive racial and historical representation in the present day, it is necessary to acknowledge the immediate influence Poitier’s film imparted upon Black filmmaking in the 1970s. Two years after the film’s release,Gordon Parks Jr.offered two similar exercises in subversive genre storytelling, the 1910s-set Western filmThomasine and Bushrodand the buddy-centric political conspiracy thrillerThree the Hard Way. Drawing generically, tonally, and even aesthetically fromBuck and the Preacher, both films served as further stepping stones in the push for revisionist genre films from Black filmmakers, gesturing towards the sociocultural power and cinematic prowess of Poitier’s Western opus.
