“This is a world in complete turmoil — a civilization falling to pieces — and one seldom so strongly presented in Civil War films. And yet, in the end, there is a regeneration of southern family and community.”

In 1961 the Library of Congress published a filmography of nearly nine hundred motion pictures produced since 1897 and set during the Civil War. It is not surprising that they overwhelmingly fall within “traditional” storylines, with Gone With the Wind (1939) being the most familiar and extreme example. Any other approaches to the subject were far more akin to westerns in blue and gray—with Dark Command (1940), set in Bleeding, Kansas, or Virginia City (1949) being prime examples. And at best most were second tier “B” pictures.