John Ford’s Indian Summer… September 23, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, About John Ford, Westerns , trackbackSergeant Rutledge & Cheyenne Autumn
Like the man, John Ford’s politics are…complicated. Just when you think you have Pappy pegged as a left-leaning liberal, then you read of his backing for politicians with the most venal right wing policies. How do you square that with many of his films? How could the author of The Grapes of Wrath, Young Mr Lincoln, The Prisoner of Shark Island, Steamboat Round The Bend, Sergeant Rutledge and Cheyenne Autumn vote for Goldwater and Nixon?
This man, capable of great art, could also be capable of great cruelty; Sergeant Rutledge might be a piece of liberal cinema, but it didn’t stop Ford from telling his lead actor to go and ‘eat with the niggers’ during a filming break.
What was the point? Was it a typically offensive put-down, or was Ford trying to get his company of actors, and Woody Strode in particular, into the right frame of mind with a piece of calculated, nasty, but all too real, racism. As said, like his politics, Ford was a complex human being.
After having viewed Sergeant Rutledge, the story of a black cavalry sergeant on trial for his life, for the first time in, well, God knows how long, and the first time in OAR, I’m still trying to make sense of what I saw, and I’ll probably have to watch it again before I can express anything anywhere near coherent about it. But I’m struggling - really struggling - to come to terms with that last shot in the courtroom.
Without giving the game away to anyone who has yet to see it, what I’d seen to that point was a frankly amazing piece of work, not just given the director, but the times in which it was made. Woody Strode is immense, in every sense, striding the film like the ‘Captain Buffalo’ he is. Quoting from Strode’s autobiography, Ford biographer Joe McBride describes the genuine emotions Strode expresses during his cross-examination scene, and indeed the electricity of these emotions are there for all to see and feel, transmitted across every single frame, enough to make our muscles tense and, for this viewer, to sob out loud with him. It’s not acting; Strode is living the part, and he wasn’t even nominated for Oscar. For shame.
Essentially a courtroom drama, Sergeant Rutledge doesn’t make any great use of the Monument Valley exterior locations, and the framing seems to be a little cramped at times (the transfer on the Warners R1 is also a mite flat, but I can live with it), perhaps Ford was looking for claustrophobia in his film, or maybe it’s those vistas from The Searchers that make it pale by comparison. Unlike that film, and Cheyenne Autumn, the Valley isn’t there to give a sense of great vastness, of the magnitude of Ethan’s task, the isolation of the settlers, or the march through a desolate landscape of a people who were alone and virtually friendless in a country that had been theirs, and theirs alone, for centuries
Sergeant Rutledge is a film with a great moral core, topped with a massively dignified central performance from Strode and his fellow black actors. The rest of the cast, Jeffrey Hunter in particular, barely put a foot wrong…until the wonderful Billie Burke (her final screen role) is given that fatal last courtroom line, and like the mistimed comedy ending of Two Rode Together, my jaw drops open, and my head whirls with a mix of emotions. I must watch it again, and soon.
Cheyenne Autumn has been described as Ford’s apology to the American Indian. The old man himself proffered it as the first western he had filmed from their perspective, but Ford had long been sympathetic to them; from his early days filming in Monument Valley, he had made many friends among the indigenous Navajo and employed them - to their amusement - playing a variety of tribes, and (legend has it) telling dirty jokes whenever a character was required to speak ‘Comanche’, ‘Apache’ or ‘Cheyenne’. Ford and the Navajo embraced each other to the extent that during one hard winter, the old man, dubbed Natani Nez (’Tall Leader’) by the tribe, organised air drops of food and supplies.
In Fort Apache, the slaughter of the cavalry is undertaken reluctantly by Cochise, his shoulders slumping when Owen Thursday gives him no other option. Nathan Brittles is a paternal figure both to his men and the Indians in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, an old man unwilling to shed any blood, and in Rio Grande, the Indians are off the reservation on the warpath after being whipped up into a ‘holy war’ by aggressive tribal leaders (what they are being aggressive about we can only guess, however). In The Searchers, Scar is given just as much justification for his hatred of whites as Ethan is for his psychotic hatred of all Indians.
But in Cheyenne Autumn, Ford’s last western, we finally see history from the Indians’ point of view; just why they were unwilling to share their land with the greedy, lying, money grabbing, racist white settlers, why they couldn’t trust the word of men who broke treaty after treaty, who embraced a policy of genocide, both overtly and covertly, standing by the sidelines as famine and disease achieved what lance, sabre and the bullet could not.
Cheyenne Autumn was panned on release as being overlong and dull. Watching it now, it stands as being one of Ford’s crown jewels. Filmed by Bill Clothier in glorious Super Panavision, the Monument Valley locations are simply stunning (and you can have fun spotting the sites where the old man had planted his cameras many times before).
The story - a ‘footnote in history’ Widmark’s Captain Thomas Archer chides us at the start of his narration - is simple. Based on real tragedies, and Mari Sandoz’s novel, the Cheyenne endure a 1,500 miles march from their south west desert reservation - where nearly three-quarters of the original 1,000 men, women and children had died - in a bid to return to their lushly verdant, traditional hunting grounds at Yellowstone. Ford shows this immensely proud warrior tribe preferring death on a Trail of Tears rather than a lingering annihilation from lack of food and decent medical care.
In reality it was Cherokee who were force marched by the authorities on the actual Trail of Tears, in 1838, 40 years earlier than the setting of the film; some 4,000 died. And the real Dull Knife and Little Wolf, their villages caught up in the brutal retaliation following Little Big Horn, did precipitate a Cheyenne break for freedom similar to that portrayed in Cheyenne Autumn. The former was captured and mercilessly killed, alongside his braves and their squaws, who, it is said, held up their little ones to be shot, at the Fort Robinson massacre. As for the latter, though he did lead the authorities on a merry dance, his story had no real happy ending; it wasn’t a time for such. Nor was it indeed, by the way, for minorities in the America of 1964, a fact Ford was very well aware of. No matter how unpalatable Cheyenne Autumn may be for those that simply want to ‘print the legend’, history, as always, proves more sordid.
Cheyenne Autumn is a picture that stands comparison with the famous ‘Cavalry Trilogy’ movies; indeed, it belongs squarely in their company (moreso than The Horse Soldiers) and it is a fitting and proper valediction. Both ‘Dobe’ Carey and Ben Johnson are back playing virtually the same saddle-sore trooper roles they were given 14 years earlier (and uncredited though he is, Johnson back in the stock company after blotting his copybook with the old man), Mike Mazurki fills Vic McLaglan’s boots as the hard drinking First Sergeant (he’s of Polish extraction, rather than Irish, and given a marvellous speech comparing the Cavalry with murderous Cossacks), and George O’Brien - who starred in Ford’s The Iron Horse - is the fort Commander, though much less benevolent than in previous incarnations.
Indeed, while Ford doesn’t entirely destroy his mythic Cavalry, he doesn’t go out of his way to portray them as ‘the good guys’. O’Brien couldn’t give a damn about the Cheyenne under his care, Patrick Wayne’s vengeful Second Lieutenant just wants them dead, and Karl Malden’s Prussian born Captain is a plain and simple Nazi; he’s only obeying orders he says, as he herds the Cheyenne into their concentration camp like internment, cutting off food and water as a punishment. There’s a streak of melancholy cynicism that runs like a vein of gold through the whole piece and as in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford takes a good, firm grip on the western mythos, and pulls it inside out.
Only Widmark’s Archer comes out of this with his hands clean, initially he views the Cheyenne simply as a foe to be fought - ‘We put on this blue uniform and then we’re soldiers; Cheyenne are soldiers the moment they’re born’ - but he has a streak of humanity that won’t allow them to be butchered - as Cossacks butchered Poles, or treated as sub-humans.
As if realising this was his last hurrah for the western, Ford casts as many old faces as he can, including many familiar faces as ‘Cheyenne’; among them, uncredited, wearing Chiefs’ Eagle Feathers is Chief Dan George. There has been criticism of Warner’s decision to use Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland as the Cheyenne leaders ‘Little Wolf’ and ‘Dull Knife’ - Ford at first wanted Navajo which would indeed have leant a little more verisimilitude, but, given that they were cast, that’s nonsense, surely, and any arguments should have died when they signed their contracts. In the first instance they are excellent actors, doing what thespians have done for centuries - dressing up and pretending to be someone else. In the second, as Mexicans, it’s possible - probable - that the blood of an ancient Native American race flows through their veins, that of the Aztecs. And I won’t hear a word against Victor Jory - he’s magnificent as the old Chief who prefers to expire on the trail rather than ‘in this place of death’.
I’ll say a word too for the ‘Dodge City’ interval, which detractors claim is out of place in the movie. It’s a typical Ford comedy interlude, which leavens an otherwise gloomy tale. It gives the audience time to draw breath and gird their loins for another hour of the grim reality of past misdeeds. I’ve no problems with this, or indeed many of these comedy scenes in Ford films (other than the exceptions quoted above). Ford himself said it was in place of an intermission (though the film was shown in some cinemas with such, and indeed is featured on the DVD presentation), and that no-one did better intermission than James Stewart. Stewart plays a short sighted Wyatt Earp, playing cards with Doc Holliday (Arthur Kennedy) and John Carradine, giving us another version of the card sharp first seen in Stagecoach. Earp gets tangled in the panic caused by the Cheyenne’s march home - ‘Savages murder Settlers!’ yells a newspaper seller with much relish (the whole fourth estate takes a pretty savage beating) - and, to the audience’s delight, first shoots Ken Curtis’s human turd Joe in the foot then hacks out the bullet with a dirty knife.
As he settles back to his card game he asks the Doc that why it is always he that has to perform surgery. ‘You forget that I’m a doctor of dentistry’ says Holliday ‘Now if you’d shot him in the teeth…’ It might be amusing, but at the same time, Ford is underlining his cynicism, and it should be noted that he’s using figures he previously enshrined in My Darling Clementine.
The only real bum note in the whole piece comes with the appearance of Edward G. Robinson as a beleaguered Secretary of the Interior towards the end. Nothing to do with the great Mr Robinson (apart from the fact that his character is a very obvious deux ex machina), but he appears in Monument Valley before a process screen, which is more than a little jarring, considering the otherwise extensive use of the location. Apparently this was to do with Spencer Tracy, Ford’s first choice, having a heart attack during production; whether Robinson was unwilling to fly out to Utah, or it was simply a matter of time, I know not. Thankfully, it’s not fatal (nor was Mr Tracy’s heart attack by the way).
It’s a big film in every sense, with a beautiful and memorable Alex North score, Ford’s most expensive, and one which will reward with multiple viewings, but, as with all Ford films, it’s the little touches which makes one smile - the Remington bronze used in the titles, Robinson’s politician, under siege from the forces of capital, turning to a picture of Lincoln and imploring his ‘old friend’ for advice, the shot against an eye-watering Monument Valley sunset at the end. It might lack the narrative cohesion of some of the old man’s greatest work, it might lack a truly great script, it might lack the authority of a director at the height of his powers, but the stamp of the great visual poet is still there.
McBride urges us to watch Cheyenne Autumn, not for what might have been, but for what it is. And what it is, is a picture that many other directors would have given their soul to include in the filmography. Warners current R1 DVD, like ‘Rutledge’ part of their John Ford Collection, is quite beautifully rendered with strong lush colours and a crystal clear soundtrack.
Both Sergeant Rutledge and Cheyenne Autumn were made when John Ford was deep into his 60s, when many considered his best years behind him. But both these films - capped by The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance of course - show that for Ford still had much to offer in what was proving to be an Indian Summer, and not the winter, of his life in the director’s chair.
Comments»
Another fantastic piece John.
I’ve often wondered, watching Cheyenne Autumn, if the presence of Richard Widmark, a big star, throws the film out of whack. In imagining the film without him, not sure it isn’t a more compelling film. It’s almost as if Ford needed a white male with whom the audience could identify.
Not sure about this, but it’s something I’ve questioned in such films as Cry Freedom, etc.
And then, hey, it’s very possible that in fact to draw people into the theater, he did need both a star and a white male!
Once again, a terrific piece and thanks so much.
It’s a fair point; ‘Archer’ starts the film seeing the indian as the enemy, he then tries to protect them and ends it fighting for their rights in the face of iniquity. I’m sure you’re right, that he is that middle of the road ‘everyman’ who Ford wanted ordinary, contemporary, Americans to empathise with.
If you’re going to offer a bitter pill of reality, it may have been perceived that it was easier to digest if it was sugar coated? As for Widmark himself, it’s doubtful, isn’t it surely, that Warners would have greenlit such an expensive project without a marquee name. McBride says that some years before being offered the part by Ford (and it had a long gestation period), Widmark had commissioned his own research on the Cheyenne migrations and taken it to ‘Pappy’. That possibly was his ‘in’.
Thanks again John, and thank you Mike.