The rediscovery of black American cinema continues with the rerelease of Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut from 1972: a terrifically enjoyable western adventure bromance, packed with brio and breezy, unreflective energy and tilted to the lighter end of the tonal spectrum. This (along with cultural ghettoisation) has perhaps meant that it hasn’t previously been considered a serious classic. But the time may well come when Buck and the Preacher are spoken of in the same breath as Butch and Sundance.
Sidney Poitier is Buck: a frontiersman who after the civil war makes a living as a wagonmaster for black people from Louisiana who want to head out west and farm the unclaimed territories, dreaming of the promised lands of Kansas and Colorado, with their great soil and climate. His job is to conduct the wagon train and parley with the Native American tribes to allow them peaceful passage. Buck’s tough, capable girlfriend Ruth is played by the formidable Ruby Dee. But the settlers are harassed by a sinister white posse led by Deshay, in tatty Confederate garb, played by exploitation veteran Cameron Mitchell. Deshay’s men are theoretically “labour recruiters” from Louisiana, here to persuade the pioneers to abandon their plans and return home to pick cotton. In fact, he is running a psychopathic hate campaign, intending merely to murder and rob the settlers, confident of never being caught and (perhaps) intending to publicise his victims’ unpunished fate as a deterrent to those black people back in Louisiana also thinking of leaving.
