This very unsatisfying movie is really all over the place, just like the era that produced it. In that sense, it's an interesting document of its time, but not too fun to watch. It starts out as a typical corporate-liberal morality courtroom-crime movie, a' la Call Northside 777 or 12 Angry Men. But those movies were unequivocal about their direction -- they knew where they wanted to go and went right there. This one quickly loses its thread as it veers off course into 1950s anti-Communist paranoia-land. This movie isn't satisfied pointing out the dangers of the Communist 5th column that supposedly wanted to tear down our society and values. It doesn't even have faith in its own anti-Communism, posing the idea that 1950s ultra-leftism was bad because it was some kind moneymaking con. The plot about the far right ideologues who want to lynch the boy at the film's outset is forgotten about a third of the way through. The usually terrific Glenn Ford looks lost here -- his notion of moral confusion seems to be wandering around as if he has forgotten his lines. Maybe he's trying to figure out where the plot will go next? The film's final bizarre resolution is unrealistic, to say the least. We're supposed to be happy that the Mexican boy is only sentenced to a juvenile reform school instead of the electric chair. But the problem is -- is the boy a murderer or isn't he? If he's not (as the film seems to imply), why is it fair that he is punished at all? This is the American consensus view at its most confused. The final scene where the prosecutor stands up and agrees with the lenient sentence is the prize topper to this unlikely and directionless trial. This isn't the most far-fetched law movie -- I can't decide whether that honor belongs to the stupid "Suspect" starring Cher or the well-made "Boomerang!" with Dana Andrews. But it's certainly the most confusing -- guaranteed to appeal to the modern nativist right wing, who will probably think it's okay that a Mexican boy be sent to reform school for daring to set foot on an all-white beach or sit next to a white girl. (That'll teach 'em.) I should also mention the headache-inducing "edgy" bebop piano score, which seems to have been a staple of this type of movie in the 50s. It does have a few laughs, though these are unintentional. For example, listen to Dorothy McGuire's little soliloquy about how she turned Communist sympathizer during college -- she just wanted to be special! Weird, weird weird.
Reviews
4 Reviews
A Christmas Carol
(1951)
Best Marley EVER!!!!
8 February 2008
Lots has been said about Sim's performance, and it certainly is wonderful (Sim is possibly the funniest actor ever born.) But I enjoy Sir Michael Hordern's brief turn as Marley more every time I see it. Sure, it's WAYYYYY over the top, especially when he throws his hand over his forehead and wails in agony. But gosh, he sure chews up the scene -- and it's hard to steal a scene from Alistair Sim! I've loved this movie since I was a child, but my best experience was seeing it at a West End cinema in 1999. In Britain they trot this movie out every Christmas season and show it in theaters -- it's considered a national treasure. I was able to leave the cinema and train over to Camden Town to walk around in the snow (I'm afraid it doesn't look anything like it does in the movie, but I really didn't expect that.) Well, enough of my little aside. Everything is great about this movie, but Hordern makes me fall out of my chair laughing when he starts screaming at Scrooge!
Northwest Passage
(1940)
Well, it's well photographed, but .....
20 November 2007
Northwest Passage is one of the few films about the Seven Years' War that isn't based on a James Fenimore Cooper novel, and in that sense, it's a welcome lesson in how that important period has come to be mythologized in popular culture. I've never read the Roberts books, so I can't comment on how faithful the film is to its source material. I can only make a few comments on how movies have their own sensibilities and cultural rules. Like most films, this one tells us more about the era in which it was made than the time period in which the film's events take place. It's certainly an exciting story, but it has a number of cringeworthy elements (and they would have elicited just as many cringes back in the 1930s, I assure you.)Here's a few comments:
Jeffrey Amherst and Sir William Johnson: As anyone who has read any of the fine studies of this era can attest (I recommend the works of James Axtell, Gregory Evans Dowd, Daniel Usner, Daniel Richter, Richard White, and many others as fine introductions to Indian-White relations in the 17th and 18th centuries), this film takes a rather interesting view of these historical figures. Amherst is here depicted as the realistic good guy, who is in tune with Rogers's vicious sentiments. Johnson, on the other hand, is seen as part of the problem because of his private relationships with several Indian groups, especially the Mohawks. Johnson's Mohawk allies are here shown as lazy, duplicitous, suspicious interlopers. In fact, Johnson and his many Indian allies throughout Iroquoia and the Ohio country were indispensable to the British victory in the Seven Years' War, while Amherst, a capable officer but a virulent anti-native racist, instituted policies that helped start the 1763-64 Indian uprising ("Pontiac's War") and actually approved using germ warfare on Indians near Fort Pitt (he approved a plan to give them smallpox-infected blankets.)
Uniforms: If you squint, Roger's Rangers look like they should be in the Confederate Army. This may be a Technicolor issue. In fact, Roger's men often dressed as Indians and other backcountry residents did. It is the demands of movie convention that put them all in blue buckskin uniforms -- just as Japanese and German soldiers always wore particular shapes of helmets, so you can tell them apart from the other guys. Even the Mohawk and Abenaki Indians wear similar "uniforms," i.e. matching loincloths. The Indians in this movie look like they belong in the Southwest or the plains -- not in the Eastern Woodlands, especially late in the year.
Rogers himself: Well, his anti-Indian rants probably do illustrate something of the man himself. It should be noted that Rogers's sensationalized exploits made him a problematic celebrity during his life. He was always distrusted by his British superiors, who nevertheless bowed to public acclaim and gave him important positions after the war, including a brief command of Fort Detroit, and his disastrous tenure commanding Fort Michilimackinac after the Indian uprising. Like many outpost commanders, Rogers let his personal greed take over in the relative freedom of the pays d'en haut, and ended up being arrested and returned to Niagara in irons. Amherst gave him guarded trust, but Amherst's successor, Thomas Gage, and Indian Supervisor William Johnson, considered him a villain. As for the native Americans, everyone knew about Rogers's Indian killing, and he had few Indian friends and many enemies. Everywhere Rogers went became a tense place of interaction between Indians and Europeans.
Indian issues: Well, it's true that Indians, Abenakis and others, used brutal tactics in war. But this movie, like other movies such as Drums Along the Mohawk, definitely take the settlers' side in their confrontations with native Americans. In one scene, Rogers tells his men how the Abenakis should be killed for brutally hatcheting innocent settlers, who were just trying to make lives for themselves and weren't bothering anyone. It should be noted that settlers were often a great bother to Indians, just by their presence alone. Indians who lived in transitional regions resented the encroachments of white settlers more than anything else, including the presence of forts and soldiers. Settlers used land for farming, which was an exclusive operation. Unlike the skin trade, which used native residents as partners, farmers viewed Indians as being in the way. All Eastern Indians knew that farming was the one operation that turned Indian country into European territory exclusively, and did everything they could to oppose it. And as far as relative levels of brutality go, backcountry settlers and soldiers were capable of all the worst kinds of viciousness. Reference the Gnadenhutten Massacre during the Revolutionary War if you want to read about some really vicious behavior by America militiamen.
This movie is a great mirror on its time. Americans looked to their settler past, mythical or otherwise, whenever they wished to differentiate their national identity from the "bad old" Europeans, or the brutal state of nature. The rugged, idealistic frontier settler, hacking a life out of the wilderness but imbued with democratic virtue, was a popular model for Depression-riddled Americans who felt that their agency and power was slipping away. People today might like these movies for the same reasons!
As for me, I think the film is well-acted and filmed, and somewhat exciting, but too laughable to take very seriously. That is, it's laughable when it is not deplorable. This is the most virulent anti-Indian movie I know, worse even than most westerns. Some of the comments here label this as a "family" film. The hero of this film repeatedly labels all Indians as brutes, thieves, and cowards. I wouldn't let any child see this movie.
Jeffrey Amherst and Sir William Johnson: As anyone who has read any of the fine studies of this era can attest (I recommend the works of James Axtell, Gregory Evans Dowd, Daniel Usner, Daniel Richter, Richard White, and many others as fine introductions to Indian-White relations in the 17th and 18th centuries), this film takes a rather interesting view of these historical figures. Amherst is here depicted as the realistic good guy, who is in tune with Rogers's vicious sentiments. Johnson, on the other hand, is seen as part of the problem because of his private relationships with several Indian groups, especially the Mohawks. Johnson's Mohawk allies are here shown as lazy, duplicitous, suspicious interlopers. In fact, Johnson and his many Indian allies throughout Iroquoia and the Ohio country were indispensable to the British victory in the Seven Years' War, while Amherst, a capable officer but a virulent anti-native racist, instituted policies that helped start the 1763-64 Indian uprising ("Pontiac's War") and actually approved using germ warfare on Indians near Fort Pitt (he approved a plan to give them smallpox-infected blankets.)
Uniforms: If you squint, Roger's Rangers look like they should be in the Confederate Army. This may be a Technicolor issue. In fact, Roger's men often dressed as Indians and other backcountry residents did. It is the demands of movie convention that put them all in blue buckskin uniforms -- just as Japanese and German soldiers always wore particular shapes of helmets, so you can tell them apart from the other guys. Even the Mohawk and Abenaki Indians wear similar "uniforms," i.e. matching loincloths. The Indians in this movie look like they belong in the Southwest or the plains -- not in the Eastern Woodlands, especially late in the year.
Rogers himself: Well, his anti-Indian rants probably do illustrate something of the man himself. It should be noted that Rogers's sensationalized exploits made him a problematic celebrity during his life. He was always distrusted by his British superiors, who nevertheless bowed to public acclaim and gave him important positions after the war, including a brief command of Fort Detroit, and his disastrous tenure commanding Fort Michilimackinac after the Indian uprising. Like many outpost commanders, Rogers let his personal greed take over in the relative freedom of the pays d'en haut, and ended up being arrested and returned to Niagara in irons. Amherst gave him guarded trust, but Amherst's successor, Thomas Gage, and Indian Supervisor William Johnson, considered him a villain. As for the native Americans, everyone knew about Rogers's Indian killing, and he had few Indian friends and many enemies. Everywhere Rogers went became a tense place of interaction between Indians and Europeans.
Indian issues: Well, it's true that Indians, Abenakis and others, used brutal tactics in war. But this movie, like other movies such as Drums Along the Mohawk, definitely take the settlers' side in their confrontations with native Americans. In one scene, Rogers tells his men how the Abenakis should be killed for brutally hatcheting innocent settlers, who were just trying to make lives for themselves and weren't bothering anyone. It should be noted that settlers were often a great bother to Indians, just by their presence alone. Indians who lived in transitional regions resented the encroachments of white settlers more than anything else, including the presence of forts and soldiers. Settlers used land for farming, which was an exclusive operation. Unlike the skin trade, which used native residents as partners, farmers viewed Indians as being in the way. All Eastern Indians knew that farming was the one operation that turned Indian country into European territory exclusively, and did everything they could to oppose it. And as far as relative levels of brutality go, backcountry settlers and soldiers were capable of all the worst kinds of viciousness. Reference the Gnadenhutten Massacre during the Revolutionary War if you want to read about some really vicious behavior by America militiamen.
This movie is a great mirror on its time. Americans looked to their settler past, mythical or otherwise, whenever they wished to differentiate their national identity from the "bad old" Europeans, or the brutal state of nature. The rugged, idealistic frontier settler, hacking a life out of the wilderness but imbued with democratic virtue, was a popular model for Depression-riddled Americans who felt that their agency and power was slipping away. People today might like these movies for the same reasons!
As for me, I think the film is well-acted and filmed, and somewhat exciting, but too laughable to take very seriously. That is, it's laughable when it is not deplorable. This is the most virulent anti-Indian movie I know, worse even than most westerns. Some of the comments here label this as a "family" film. The hero of this film repeatedly labels all Indians as brutes, thieves, and cowards. I wouldn't let any child see this movie.
The Limey
(1999)
C'mon, enough about the accent! This was a fun movie!
5 November 2007
Another poster has already made this point, but I'll make it again. Doesn't anyone here read IMDb profiles? Terence Stamp IS a bloody Cockney! He was born in Stepney, and grew up in Bow and Plaistow. I'm pretty sure you can hear Bow Bells from there. I've never run into anyone who sounded like Alain Delon or Otto Preminger either, but I'm not going to say they don't sound like Frenchmen or Germans because of my own isolation. If you don't like Stamp in this movie, fine -- but I'm pretty sure he knows what English folk from East London sound like.
Now, as to the movie. A great homage to Get Carter and other tough guy/revenge movies from the 60s. And I like the musing on battling British/American 60s icons Stamp and Fonda. These days, movies like Easy Rider look silly to me -- they remind me of Rolling Stone Record Guide's great review of the musical HAIR: "What squares thought the 60s were about." But this movie softly lampoons the idea that the 60s were "about" anything. I like Fonda's little soliloquy about how mythical, and yet fun, the 60s were, and it's fun to compare the kitchen-sink "realism" of British 60s cinema with the biker-hippie counter- culture silliness of America. Makes you wonder -- what if Soderbergh had decided to go with Swinging London instead of kitchen sink? Would we have David Hemmings in LA? Beating up bad guys with his Hasselblad? How about Alfie out for revenge? What would that look like? Or maybe the other way -- instead of Dave from Poor Cow, it's Richard Harris from This Sporting Life, come to kick soccer balls at poor Peter F. Or (best of all) Albert Finney from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, fresh from a night of boozing, to throw up on the guys who killed his daughter! So many possibilities.
Now, as to the movie. A great homage to Get Carter and other tough guy/revenge movies from the 60s. And I like the musing on battling British/American 60s icons Stamp and Fonda. These days, movies like Easy Rider look silly to me -- they remind me of Rolling Stone Record Guide's great review of the musical HAIR: "What squares thought the 60s were about." But this movie softly lampoons the idea that the 60s were "about" anything. I like Fonda's little soliloquy about how mythical, and yet fun, the 60s were, and it's fun to compare the kitchen-sink "realism" of British 60s cinema with the biker-hippie counter- culture silliness of America. Makes you wonder -- what if Soderbergh had decided to go with Swinging London instead of kitchen sink? Would we have David Hemmings in LA? Beating up bad guys with his Hasselblad? How about Alfie out for revenge? What would that look like? Or maybe the other way -- instead of Dave from Poor Cow, it's Richard Harris from This Sporting Life, come to kick soccer balls at poor Peter F. Or (best of all) Albert Finney from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, fresh from a night of boozing, to throw up on the guys who killed his daughter! So many possibilities.
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