7 / 10
The Raid is a small Twentieth Century Fox production about a Civil War incident most Americans have never heard of.
Hugo Fregonese directed it. Van Heflin plays Major Neal Benton, a Confederate officer who has escaped from a Union prison camp at Plattsburgh and is plotting a raid on St. Albans, Vermont with five fellow escapees. Anne Bancroft plays Katy Bishop, the Vermont widow Benton boards with while preparing the raid. Lee Marvin plays Lieutenant Robinson. Richard Boone plays a Union captain on Benton’s trail.
The historical event is real. On October 19, 1864, twenty-one Confederate soldiers operating out of Canada conducted the northernmost ground action of the American Civil War, robbing three banks in St. Albans of approximately two hundred thousand dollars and killing one civilian. The film compresses the incident and gives it a six-man raiding party instead of twenty-one, but the basic shape is accurate.
Small, sturdy pictures like this are what I miss most about fifties studio filmmaking. It’s quiet and patient, and Van Heflin gives it more weight than a modest Fox production has any right to. The finale lets it down, but I’m more invested in a Confederate raider helping a boy with his arithmetic than I am in most modern war films.
The Setup
Benton arrives in St. Albans posing as a Canadian businessman scouting investment opportunities. He boards with Katy Bishop, a Union widow with a young son. He scouts the town’s banks, telegraph office, and federal cavalry detachment. He sends signals to his men still in Canada. He prepares the raid.
The first half is the espionage half, and it’s my favorite part.
Benton has to keep his cover while the town treats him with Vermont hospitality. He attends church, helps Katy’s son with arithmetic and has dinner with the local minister. The film does a good job of showing a man whose mission forces him into real attachments he intends to betray, and I find those scenes far more gripping than anything with a gun in it.
For Writers
An undercover protagonist creates immediate dramatic engine. The audience knows what Benton is planning. The townspeople don’t. Every scene generates tension because the audience is waiting for the moment when his cover slips or the raid occurs. The lesson is that dramatic irony, where the audience knows something the other characters don’t, is among the most reliable tools a writer has. Use it deliberately. The reader holds the secret along with the protagonist. They become accomplices.
The Bishop Subplot
Katy Bishop’s husband died in the Union army. Her son thinks of Benton as a father figure within weeks. Benton, who has been planning to torch the town, finds himself unable to commit fully to the destruction he came to cause. The romantic subplot is handled with restraint. The film doesn’t pretend Benton is suddenly going to abandon the mission for the widow. He completes the raid. He chooses what to burn and what to spare.
The pet horse he gave to her son survives because he tells his men not to torch that particular barn.
The choice is small enough that the audience can believe a hardened Confederate raider would make it without abandoning his cause. The film is honest about what Benton is willing to compromise on and what he’s not. That spared barn is my favorite touch in the film. It’s a small mercy, and I believe completely that the man who’d grant it would still ride off with the money.
For Writers
A character with conflicting loyalties doesn’t have to choose one over the other for the entire arc. Real people compromise selectively. They preserve what they can. They give up what they have to. Benton burns the town and saves one barn. The lesson is that internal conflict in a character works best when the character makes specific, partial choices that protect the things they can’t bear to lose while accepting the cost of the things they can. Total commitment in either direction is rarely how moral conflict resolves.
The Raid Itself
The raid sequence is the climax and the weakest part of the film.
The historical raid involved bank robberies, attempted arson, and one civilian death. The film compresses this into a tight ten minutes of action. The bank robberies are staged competently. The chase out of town toward the Canadian border is functional. The actual incident in St. Albans was more chaotic and more bloodless than the film makes it look.
Van Heflin carries the climax through the strength of the earlier characterization. The audience cares about whether the raid succeeds because the audience cares about Benton. The action itself is ordinary. The character work is what holds. I wish the raid itself were better. Ten minutes of competent bank robbing and a functional chase feel thin after an hour of such careful build-up, and I’d have traded some of the setup for a climax with the real chaos of what happened in St. Albans.
For Writers
A weak climax is acceptable if the build-up has done its work. The Raid’s climax is competent without being exceptional. The film holds together because the previous hour established Benton as someone the audience invested in. The lesson is that character development carries climaxes that action alone cannot. If the action of your climax isn’t your strongest material, make sure the character work leading into it is.
Craft Note
Hugo Fregonese directed. Sydney Boehm wrote, adapted from Herbert Ravenel Sass’s 1937 article in The Saturday Evening Post about the St. Albans Raid. Van Heflin as Major Neal Benton. Anne Bancroft as Katy Bishop. Lee Marvin as Lieutenant Robinson. Richard Boone as Captain Foster. Tommy Rettig as Larry Bishop. Released August 1954. Modest Twentieth Century Fox production. Filmed largely in California standing in for Vermont.
Does The Raid still hold up?
7/10. It’s a small, well-made Civil War espionage film with a strong character study at the center, and Van Heflin is excellent in it. The little-known raid makes a fresh setting. I enjoy every minute Heflin spends lying to that town, and the flat action climax is the only thing holding it at a 7. If you’ve worked through the major Civil War films, this is the one I’d hand you next.
