Drums Along the Mohawk

 

There are some years in film history that have become famous, even legendary.  I've always been a big fan of 1999 because I was given The Matrix, Fight Club, Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, Blair Witch Project (which, whether you like it or not, was incredibly groundbreaking), Three Kings, The Insider and a personal favorite of mine, Office Space.  Or check out the stacked roster of classics in 1941: Citizen Kane, Dumbo, The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York, Sullivan's Travels, and The Lady Eve.  But the top dog in film history will probably always be 1939, which gave us Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, The Women, Love Affair, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Beau Geste, Destry Rides Again, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Ninotchka and Gunga Din.  That's a really top heavy year in terms of classics.  So it is no wonder that a film like Drums Along the Mohawk would get lost in the shuffle.  The film was a success, but as the decades have rolled on, critics have tended to focus on John Ford's other classic from the same year, Stagecoach.

I do have some mixed feelings about the film.  On one hand, I want to stick up for Drums Along the Mohawk.  It is a good film, covering a time period and place we don't normally see in cinema.  But on the other hand, it's certainly not a classic, and suffers from many of the same problems that plague Ford's other films.  

During the height of the Revolutionary War, Gilbert Martin (Henry Fonda) brings his city-born bride Lana (Claudette Colbert) to his frontier farm in New York's Mohawk Valley.  Lana is unfamiliar with the wilderness life and the adjustment is hard, but she tries to make the best of it.  But the intensifying war complicates matters.  British troops led by the villainous Caldwell (John Carradine) have allied with the local Iroquois tribes and are committed to ridding the valley of the revolutionary spirit once and for all.  

The film has a lot of touches of Ford films - a deep admiration, almost idolization, of the frontier life and those hard-working men and women who toiled the land and fought to make America.  It also features the juxtaposition between the violence of the wilderness and the resilience of the tight knit community.  Ford loves the camaraderie of his characters and fills these scenes with joy and humor.  I guess the problem is that I just don't find Ford's sense of humor particularly funny, and I never have.  I suppose it comes down to personal preference, but I just don't like Ford's brand of comedy.  Halfway through the film, when Lana goes into labor, one of Gilbert's friends gets progressively more drunk to the point that he thinks that the newborn baby is actually his, which he bitterly gripes about because he already has too many children.  If that sounds funny, then John Ford is the comedian for you!  

And yet, there is so much fascinating material in this film.  When they aren't busy having community parties, Ford's characters work the land, and always under a veil of tension because they know the British and Iroquois could attack at any time (and often do).  The film expertly weaves in true historical figures and moments such as General Herkimer and the bloody battle of Oriskany, and although the siege during the climax of the film is fictional, it was genuinely tense and much more violent than I was expecting from a film made in 1939.  They were numerous moments when I thought to myself, "Damn, that just got dark."  Drums Along the Mohawk was also Ford's first color picture, and he immediately shows a comfort and expertise with the format.  There is a scene near the end when Martin is running through the wilderness at dawn and the sky was bathed in vibrant reds and oranges that look better than almost anything I've seen.  It's truly beautiful, and all the more impressive because I know it's real and not computer-enhanced.  

I should probably take a moment to discuss Ford's depiction of Native Americans.  I do have mixed feelings about it, especially since I am viewing all of this from a modern lens.  On one hand, John Ford's U.S. cavalry films cemented the "Cowboys and Indians" stereotypes that still plague us today, and that cannot be forgotten.  On the other hand, he would often actually cast Native Americans to play Native Americans, which is admirable.  He also made a film called Cheyenne Autumn that dealt with racism and the ways the Cheyenne tribes were horribly mistreated by the government and those very same pioneers he lauded so heavily earlier in his career.  So I am conflicted.  And those conflicts are reinforced in Drums Along the Mohawk.  There are Native Americans fighting on both sides of the Revolutionary War, and the primary ally of the Americans is Blue Back, played by Chief John Big Tree, who was from the Seneca Nation.  Often, Blue Back is played for uncomfortable laughs.  His behavior is just unbelievably silly (another example of Ford's fine sense of humor), but at the same time, he might also be the most skilled and impactful character in the entire film.  Throughout the whole movie, it is almost always Blue Back who shows up in the nick of time to warn or save someone.  But then, just when I am thinking that Ford is making some progress...I see the scene where two drunk Iroquois stumble into a house and burn it down in one of the most bizarre and nonsensical sequences ever.  And then later Blue Back is silly again.  But then even later, Blue Back is awesome again.  So I don't know where all this leaves me, but I feel it is something worth discussing.

At the end of the day, I do think Drums Along the Mohawk is worth watching.  I would absolutely recommend it because when the film is working, it really is a fascinating and interesting look at a moment in history we don't often see in movies.  It's just been overshadowed by all the other great films of 1939.  And while it may not live up the high standards of those films, that doesn't mean that Drums Along the Mohawk needs to be forgotten.  

MVP:  

This one is easy.  I know I didn't get into the performances in my review, but they were pretty good.  Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert are both solid, and the character actors who pop up in most of Ford's films, like Ward Bond, are always a pleasure to see.  But one actor stands taller than the rest - Edna May Oliver as Mrs. McKlenner, a fiercely independent and strong woman who hires Gilbert and Lana to work her farm after her husband dies.  She is grumpy, bitter, sarcastic, stubborn, dominating and not a little flirty with some of the younger men in town.  She's also fiercely loyal and protective, and she will not hesitate for a moment to pick up a rifle and fight for what she has worked her whole life to build.  She's a supreme badass.  The Oscars must have agreed because she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.  It's not a surprise.  Whenever she enters a scene, it's like a hurricane barrels into the room.  She just utterly dominates.  That is a clear MVP winner to me.  

BEST LINE: 

Okay, I will be a hypocrite here.  I may not like John Ford's sense of humor, but this line made me laugh.  Here is a moment from the reverend's Sunday sermon.  

Reverend Rosencrantz: O Almighty God, hear us, we beseech Thee, and bring succor and guidance to those we are about to bring to Your divine notice.  First, we are thinking of Mary Walaber.  She is only 16 years old, but she is keeping company with a soldier from Fort Dayton.  He's a Massachusetts man, and Thou knows no good can come of that.  

TRIVIA: 

Henry Fonda is actually descended from a family that settled the Mohawk Valley in the mid-1600s.  One of his ancestors Douw Jellis Fonda was actually killed by the Tories and Iroquois in 1780 during a raid that was similar to the ones seen in this movie.  Douw's two sons (one of whom was Henry Fonda's Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather) were taken prisoner and held in Canada for two years.  

The Slave: Son of Spartacus

In my review for The Tartars, I explained a bit about what a "peplum" was.  With Hollywood epics such as Samson and Delilah making bank at the box office, Italian film producers wanted to get into the action and started producing their own sword and sandle pictures that were popularly known as peplum films, named after a type of tunic worn by ancient Romans and Greeks.  These movies were usually made relatively inexpensively, and weren't necessarily critical darlings, but they were a popular sub-genre, especially for teenaged boys.  Sometimes a Hollywood star was even lured to Italy to star in one of these films; for example, Kirk Douglas in Ulysses.  And while Ulysses did fairly well in the American box office, peplum films still rarely made it across the ocean.

That all changed in 1958, when American actor and bodybuilder Steve Reeves was brought to Italy to star as Hercules.  The film was a huge hit in Europe, but then American producer Joseph E. Levine bought the distribution rights and released it in the United States.  The result was a huge box office smash and the peplum genre was suddenly all the rage.  Dozens of peplum movies were released in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and lots of them proved to be really successful.

Hollywood studios even tried to get in on the act - which is how that monstrosity The Tartars was produced.  Geez, I really hate that movie.  And to be honest, I was sort of dreading watching The Slave: Son of Spartacus because of my experience with The Tartars.

Like many of the peplum films, The Slave tries to cash in on a famous Hollywood film - in this case, the classic epic Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas and directed by Stanley Kubrick.  Spartacus is the true story of the slave revolt that almost brought Rome to its knees in 71 BCE.  The film was the biggest blockbuster hit of the year, and Italian director Sergio Corbucci quickly jumped on the bandwagon to produce his own version (and possibly even an unofficial sequel?).  I can only imagine the lawsuits that would happen today, but I guess in the 1960s, I guess you could sneak by!

The Slave picks up the story 25 years after Spartacus' defeat, and follows the adventures of Randus (Reeves), one of Julius Caesar's finest soldiers.  Caesar has just defeated the Egyptian army, but just when he should be celebrating victory, he senses betrayal among his Roman allies - namely, the wealthy Crassus who rules the Eastern portions of the Empire from Syria. Caesar sends Randus and his lieutenants Beroz (Franco Balducci) and Lumonius (Roland Bartrop) to spy on Crassus, but during a storm, Randus dives off his ship to rescue a beautiful slave girl named Saïde (Ombretta Coli) who had fallen off.  The ship sails off without them.  After swimming to shore, Randus and Saïde are captured by slave traders.  Through a series of silly coincidences that I don't want to ruin, Randus discovers he is actually the son of the legendary Spartacus.  The conflicted Randus must now struggle between his loyalty to Caesar and taking charge of the brewing slave revolt in Syria.

Okay, let's get this out of the way.  The Slave: Son of Spartacus isn't winning any awards.  Expectations need to be clear about what you are getting with this film.  This is not Kubrick and Douglas.  This is a fun, little adventure and weirdly enough, The Slave has more in common with Zorro than Spartacus.  Once Randus embraces his role as the Son of Spartacus, he puts on a disguise and attacks Crassus' men, freeing slaves, destroying supplies and generally just sowing chaos across the region.  After every raid, he even writes a giant "S" on the wall before disappearing.  After his attacks, he takes his helmet off, sneaks back into the palace and professes loyalty to the tyrannical Roman regime.  That's definitely Zorro with a Roman twist.  And it's also all pretty silly.

And yet...it is also a pretty good time.  The Slave knows exactly what it is - a swashbuckling adventure for teenagers, and from that perspective, it's actually not half bad.  Maybe the best way to review this is to directly compare it to The Tartars, the film with the bigger movies stars in Victor Mature and Orson Welles, a veteran director in Richard Thorpe, and certainly a more sizable budget.  Let's start with the acting.  Mature and Welles looked tired and uninterested.  They were there for the paycheck and you could tell.  They act like material is beneath them (and in fairness, it kind of is).  But you don't get that attitude from Reeves, Bartrop, and the other performers in The Slave.  They definitely understand the type of movie they are in, but they still give it everything they've got.  They are trying to entertain, not win Oscars, and there is a certain relish to their performances.

I would like to take a second to compare the sets and the look of the fiml.  With the exception of the exterior scenes shot in Yugoslavia, The Tartars was mostly set bound, and you can tell.  The Khan's palace was a cool set, but it still looked like a set.  And the exterior shot of the fortress was just a giant matte painting - a good matte painting, granted, but still a reminder that nothing in this film feels real.  The Slave, with a fraction of the budget, simply looks better because it is filming mostly in real places, including Egypt.  Randus' initial meeting with Caesar takes place in front of the Sphinx, and the ruined city that the slave army is hiding in is really a ruined city.  All this just adds a sense of authenticity to the film that I wasn't expecting and that I really appreciated.   

We can compare the action sequences, as well.  The Tartars' action scenes were really pretty boring, a bunch of stunt doubles waving fake weapons at each other.  But the action in The Slave is kind of fun.  It helps when the combatants look like they are actually trying to hit each other.   And then you have Steve Reeves himself.  He was cast for his muscles, and not his acting chops.  His performance is a bit stiff and stilted, and he isn't the most charismatic leading man in the world.  But then he picks up a sword and flexes those biceps - and wow, this guy looks really good fighting.  Forget the stunt man, Steve Reeves is all in!  And I was digging it.  

And I think it is important to note that Steve Reeves really was a trailblazer in many ways.  Maybe his acting wasn't the best, but he worked hard and became an action star and his physicality truly makes an impression.  He paved the way for future massive musclemen to become stars.  Without Steve Reeves, I don't think we get Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I think that's a pretty huge cultural impact.  

But back to the comparisons.  The biggest strength of The Slave is the direction.  The Tartars was dull, slowly paced and sluggish, and filmed in a style that was, well, old-fashioned.  They just plopped the camera down and let the actors run around in front of it (which isn't always a problem, necessarily, when you have good writing and good performances in front of that camera, neither of which The Tartars enjoys).   Say what you want about how cheesy these peplum films are.  A lot of them were directed by young and hungry filmmakers who were bringing creativity and energy to the proceedings.  The Slave, directed by Sergio Corbucci, features a snappier pace, quicker editing, and dynamic camera movement and angles that really make the film feel more modern.  Eventually, Corbucci and his other peplum filmmakers, including the legendary Sergio Leone, would bring what they learned to a new subgenre that would truly explode - the spaghetti Western.  The peplum films, whose popularity waned by the mid-1960s, proved to be their training grounds.  And it is a lot of fun to see this amount of creativity and energy being given to a film that many people wouldn't feel deserves it.  

I don't want to overstate my point, though.  I'm not saying The Slave is great cinema.  It's really not.  The story is goofy, the acting is very hit or miss, and there is a lot of silliness.  The history would be enough to drive classical historians bonkers.  But at the end of the day, there is a creativity to it that I really admired. Would I recommend it?  Maybe, depending on who I was talking to.  But did I personally enjoy it?  Yep.  And will I be willing to give other peplum films a chance?  I bet I will.  

MVP: 

This is surprisingly a difficult decision.  I really loved Randus' right hand man, Lumonius, played by Roland Bartrop.  He is irreverent and sarcastic, but his humor is really just a tool that hides an observant and cunning Roman officer.  He's probably the most intelligent character in the film, and Bartrop really digs his teeth into the character.  But at the end of the day, I have to give the MVP to Sergio Corbucci.  The main reason this movie works, aside from Steve Reeves' biceps, is because of Corbucci and the energy he brings.  It's my first Corbucci film, but this one makes me want to seek out The Last Days of Pompeii, The Great Silence, and his most enduring hit, the western Django.  

BEST LINE:

This time around, the best line really has to be the worst line.  This bit of dialogue, spoken by Randus to the beautiful slave girl Saïde is just wrong on so many levels that it made me laugh.  Does that make me a bad person?  Saïde is talking about how horrors of servitude and how her family was killed when the Roman armies attacked.  And this is Randus' reply: 

Randus: Look, I'm only a soldier.  I can't change the way things are.  There are masters and slaves.  Like there are pretty girls and ugly girls.  

WTF?!  And I think this is all happening when he's attempting to flirt with her?  Anyways, it's such a horrible line that it needed special attention.  

TRIVIA: 

I have no doubt that the producers considered The Slave to be their unofficial sequel to Kubrick's Spartacus.   For one thing, the movie mentions Spartacus' wife, Varinia.  She is a fictional character, invented specifically for the Howard Fast novel that the classic film is based on, and memorably played by Jean Simmons in the film.