Word: cats
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...Cat Dancing is content merely to outline its characters' pasts, vainly attempting to maintain interest by keeping Reynolds' history a secret through much of the film. His gruff caricature of the efficient badman does not reveal a man who has thought out the world and rejected it, but merely a man who has not thought...
...aside from his lack of emotion, Reynolds treats her in much the same way as her husband did. He transforms a rebellious, well-bred lady who doesn't know how to make a cup of coffee into a worshipful companion who scrubs his table and cooks his food. In Cat Dancing's frontier-era West, where women were more scarce than Radcliffe women in Mather House, Reynolds' passionless sexism passes for real humanity...
...lesson here is treat 'em rough, and they'll come around. Miles leaves civilized territory, but Reynolds makes sure that society catches up with her. Director Sarafian strives for a Peckinpah-like authenticity in Cat Dancing's violent scenes, mixing in plenty of bullet holes and fresh blood. Although most victims die visibly, his effort is a failure. Windows are predictably smashed by fighting bodies, and Reynolds is allowed to wipe out a band of six Indians without suffering a wound. He runs out of bullets after the fifth victim, but manages to do in the last red man with...
...movie makes a misguided stab at social consciousness. Reynolds, as a man who has lived with and married Indians, is set against the rampant anti-Indian feeling on the frontier. But Cat Dancing's Indians appear as marauders or fools. "The cigar was one of the white man's good ideas," grins a supposedly sagelike Indian chief. The chief's son, a member of Reynolds' gang, is killed defending Miles from a band of thieving Indians. Reynolds attempts to sum up the problems of the 19th Century American Indian in a one-sentence eulogy: "He wanted to be a leader...
...Cat Dancing has two bright points, which only appear infrequently. One is Lee J. Cobb, who plays the Wells Fargo man in charge of the pursuing posse. Cobb is refreshingly authentic in his role, and his easygoing pragmatism seems to put the film in proper perspective. "A woman once left me," Cobb advises Miles' jealous husband. "I mailed her a suitcase." Cat Dancing's other strong point, its fine theme music, begins and ends the film...