Cheyenne Autumn
Product Type: DVD
Product Price: $19.98
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
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Description
This last Western from director John Ford ranks as one of his most ambitious and moving works. Ford outfits his Trail-of-Tears-like saga with a strong cast, stunning cinematography by long-time collaborator William Clothier and a stirring Alex North score. To play the Cheyenne nation desperately struggling to return to the Yellowstone homeland across 1,500 treacherous miles, Ford recruited hundreds of Navajo tribesmen, many of them veterans of Ford movies dating back to 1939's Stagecoach. The location (which Ford used for the ninth time) is "John Ford Country" - the canyons, buttes and mesas of Monument Valley. And Cheyenne Autumn is compassionate, epic artistry from one of Hollywood's most revered filmmakers.
Cheyenne Autumn is a beautiful title to grace John Ford's final Western, an earnest attempt at long last to "tell the story from the Indians' point of view." The film has moments of grandeur, thanks especially to William H. Clothier's majestic Technicolor compositions--restored to their proper Panavision dimensions on the DVD release--and moments of graceful action thanks to that peerless horseman, Ben Johnson. In other respects, the film falls short of the occasion. Ford is unambiguously supportive of the Cheyennes' resolve to bolt their assigned reservation in the desert Southwest and trek north to their ancestral lands. By emphatic contrast, most of white society, the military, the bureaucracy, and the sensationalist press are portrayed as insensitive, foolish, or downright hateful. Unfortunately, the Cheyenne are nobly wooden and, apart from some Navajo extras, played by non-Indians: Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Sal Mineo, Victor Jory (who's pretty magnificent, actually), and Dolores Del Rio (who's breathtakingly beautiful as ever). As for point of view, it's sympathetic cavalry officer Richard Widmark and Quaker missionary Carroll Baker through whose eyes most of the epic narrative unfolds. A scabrous Dodge City interlude in midfilm, featuring James Stewart as a thoroughly disreputable Wyatt Earp (as opposed to the noble figure Henry Fonda played in My Darling Clementine), was chopped in half after the New York roadshow opening in 1964; it's all there on the DVD. Add to the list of sympathetic whites U.S. Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, played by Edward G. Robinson, who replaced an ailing Spencer Tracy. --Richard T. Jameson
Reviews
Rating: 2 / 5
Date: 2010-07-28
Summary: "Whaaaat??"
This was I guess supposed to be a serious story of the awful treatment of the American Indians- and the first and last thirds of the movie do that quite well. HOWEVER, right in the middle of the story-the middle third- is a total comic western. It has only the slightest connection to the rest of the story and totally destroys the mood and feeling of the main story. It's almost like they had this unfinshed comedy western footage with expensive actors that they had to use up so they just spliced it in! Sorry, no thumbs up! Two stars only for the main story OR for the comedy, not the whole movie.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-06-16
Summary: "great western"
The old westerns are still great to watch. This one has a great cast, too.
Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2010-05-11
Summary: "Suckered Into Watching This"
Cheyenne Autumn came out at the same time as the ponderous Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor. they were both advertised as lavishly expensive "epics" and i couldn't wait to see both of them.
Huge disappoointment! Similarities between both films:
1.Big stars who phone in performances. Everyone in CA seemed to play a parody of him/herself. I don't have to name them; you know who they are.
2.All visual, with scripts that distort true history (All Indians do NOT look alike. It appears the peaceful Navajo were playing the warrior Cheyenne! I HATE it when Caucasions play Indians and try to emulate what they think an Indian talks like, with the stilted English and bad sign language. Oh, and Wyoming is not close to Monument valley! It's as if the director used Florida as a location for a movie set in New York! Aaaarrrrghhhhh!! Also the screenwriters refused to move the story along except at a quadraplegic turtle's pace. I could have sworn this movie was 4 hours long, but another reviewer put it at 2.5 hours! the Wyatt Erp thing? More like "Destry". I expected Marlene Dietrich to show up at any moment singing one of her terrible torch songs. John Ford got such a reputation for being a genius, both at scriptwriting and directing. God help us if this was genius!
3. You stumble out of the theatre wondering what you just saw and why did you waste your time and money. A good one for a Terrible Movie Party!
Skip this one!
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-08
Summary: "Another Ford classic!"
John Ford, who once remarked in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich that he "had killed more Native Americans than any other director in film", has more than redeemed himself in this much derided film. "Cheyenne Autumn" is John Ford's mea culpa! Don't watch this film once; watch it several times, so that its understated patina will grow on you. Such a fine cast, too: all of the Ford stalwarts at their very best, giving their all for their beloved director.
The DVD restores the film to its original roadshow length, which includes the Dodge City sequence. This piece de resistance features some wonderful not-quite-Keystone performances by James Stewart, John Carradine and Arthur Kennedy.
Great cinematography and editing. Ford hated Alex North's rather anachronistic score, stating to Bogdanovich: "I hate to see a man dying along in the desert with The Philadelphia Orchestra behind him".
Where's the Blu-ray?
Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-03-29
Summary: "The chronicle of a desperate journey"
Based upon Mari Sandoz's book Cheyenne Autumn (Second Edition), which was actually an early example of what Truman Capote called a "nonfiction novel," this final Western by director John Ford (he made only two more films before retiring and died nine years later) fictionalizes and broadens the original while still sticking closely to the basic events. It's 1878, and the Northern Cheyennes have languished for a year in the arid Indian Territory, dying of measles and malaria and insufficient food. When a Congressional committee that was supposed to come and hear their grievances fails to appear, the three chiefs--Tall Tree (Victor Jory), Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland), and Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban)--resolve to lead their people back to their northern-plains homeland, and an epic flight begins. Pursuing the fugitives is Capt. Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark), the chief security officer at the Reservation, who has fought them and respects them as warriors, and, like many long-time frontier officers, is disgusted by the Government's cavalier way of ignoring or breaking its promises to the Indians; travelling with them, in hopes of helping the many orphan children, is Deborah Wright (Carroll Baker), the Quaker schoolteacher. As the Indians' flight stretches through weeks and months, even young Lt. Scott (Patrick Wayne), who begins with a fire-breathing urge to avenge his father (killed in the Fetterman Massacre of 12 years earlier) on Indian--any Indians--comes to feel respect and compassion for them, and when they surrender to by-the-book Prussian-born Capt. Wessells (Karl Malden) of Fort Robinson and are faced with the prospect of a murderous winter march back to the Territory, Archer takes a wild gamble and heads for Washington to seek help from Interior Secretary Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson in a pivotal role).
Some viewers may take issue with the casting of non-Indians in the major Indian roles--Jory, Roland, Montalban, Sal Mineo as Dull Knife's impulsive young warrior-son Red Shirt, Dolores Del Rio as his mother (though she at least is established early on as not an Indian by blood, but a Mexican captive named Spanish Woman who has become Cheyenne herself over her many years with the tribe)--but it's worth keeping in mind that in the 1960's there really weren't very many Indian actors in Hollywood to choose from, and at least Ford does use the Navajos of Monument Valley, who knew him well, as extras. (It's sad that Ford stalwarts Ben Johnson, as Pvt. Plumtree, and Harry Carey, Jr., as Pvt. Smith, aren't credited; several of Plumtree's lines are reminiscent of Johnson's turn as Sgt. Tyree in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.) The presence of Widmark and Baker as sympathetic POV characters helps to emphasize the raw deal the Indians got, and though the Monument Valley scenery isn't quite right for the facts of the journey, it's magnificent as always. There are also several good battle scenes and two really excellent quieter ones--the night departure of the Indians from the reservation, and their creative circumvention of a railroad line in their path. Though perhaps not a perfect example of the Fordian oeuvre (the whole Dodge City sequence could probably have been dispensed with), it's a good closing piece for the famed director and an affecting story.