Duel at Diablo

Set in 1880, this adaptation of Marvin Albert’s best-selling 1957 novel Apache Rising arrived at a moment when the Western genre was undergoing significant revision. The film employs the Anglo-Native American conflict as a metaphor for Black-white relations in contemporary US society. In his first Western, Sidney Poitier delivers a commanding performance alongside James Garner, fresh from the hit TV series Maverick. Together, they confront prejudice on the frontier, in a groundbreaking precursor to the interracial buddy films that became a hallmark of US cinema.