Viewers will enjoy the staggering beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains in this no-nonsense, fast-paced, colorful story of a patrol of scarlet-coated Mounties guiding a diverse group of passengers over a perilous mountain pass while pursued and constantly noodged by Indians. The movie should have been called "Alberta" instead of "Saskatchewan," since Alberta is the province where shooting took place. But I suppose "Alberta" sounds too much like an Astair/Rogers musical, while "Saskatchewan," though longer and harder for youngsters to read and pronounce, sounds like a curse in some exotic language and implies violent action through "katch", "chew", and "chew an".
The viewer should enjoy the visual splendor and remain unchallenged by the familiar story of cavalry and Indians. I don't know how the Sioux will feel about it. They're the villains of the piece.
It seems that in the Canadian West of 1877, the white settlers and a handful of Royal Canadian Mounted Police lived in harmony with the local Cree Indians. The Mountie's second-in-command, Alan Ladd, is actually an adopted brother of one of the Cree braves, Jay Silverheels. So far, so reasonable -- and roughly accurate. Somehow the Canadian mountains and the high plains were absorbed into the country with a nearly complete absence of the kinds of violence that took place in that great nation to the south.
Then two flies appear in the ointment. One is the post's new commanding officer, the principled but adversarial Robert Douglas, heavy of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler and a couple of other such films. He is intent on preventing the peaceful Cree from causing any trouble, so he disarms and alienates them. Mutters Silverheels, "They teach us to hunt and then they take away our means to do it."
This betrayal tends to drive the Cree into an allegiance with Fly Number Two -- the American Sioux, who have just massacred General Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and have now escaped across the border into Canada. Bang, bang, and then BOOM. (That's the explosion of a wagon filled with barrels of black gunpowder blowing a dozen Indians to smithereens.)
Let's see. What else. Ladd mutinies against Douglas and relieves him of his service revolver and his authority. Shelly Winters joins the party in a low-cut dress, accompanied by Hugh O'Brien as a sheriff escorting her back to Great Falls, Montana, to be hanged for a killing for which the treacherous O'Brien himself was responsible. And the victim was his own brother. Well, you can see what kind of guy Hugh O'Brien is. No wonder that Ladd, half his size, keeps punching him out.
The direction is by Raoul Walsh and it zips along as most of his Warners productions did. Walsh, like many old-school directors, didn't hold with psychological nonsense. A man was what a man was. Similarly, a woman was what a woman was. They were defined by their actions. No inferences allowed. You know, as a minor observation, when this movie was in first release it was criticized by some reviewers because Shelly Winters' wardrobe suggested that she had a bosom. It is to laugh. Actually, Winters' dialog, like all the rest, is concise to the point of being stilted, but she probably gives the most honest performance. Ladd seems content to glory in his blazing red coat with its gilded pips, his blue riding breeches with the gold stripes, and his black boots and silver spurs. As I said, this is colorful stuff. J. Carrol Naish, an Irish-American, is a raggedy French scout this time around. In the past he'd played Asians, Italians, Tibetans, and just about everything except a Siberian Chukchee -- and that only because nobody ever made a movie about the Chukchee. And in every role, he used the same all-purpose accent.
The plot seems to have been dreamed up by a committee but the location belongs to God alone. The images make you yearn for the clean, dry, cool air of sunny Banff and a scent of pine that doesn't come out of a bottle.
The viewer should enjoy the visual splendor and remain unchallenged by the familiar story of cavalry and Indians. I don't know how the Sioux will feel about it. They're the villains of the piece.
It seems that in the Canadian West of 1877, the white settlers and a handful of Royal Canadian Mounted Police lived in harmony with the local Cree Indians. The Mountie's second-in-command, Alan Ladd, is actually an adopted brother of one of the Cree braves, Jay Silverheels. So far, so reasonable -- and roughly accurate. Somehow the Canadian mountains and the high plains were absorbed into the country with a nearly complete absence of the kinds of violence that took place in that great nation to the south.
Then two flies appear in the ointment. One is the post's new commanding officer, the principled but adversarial Robert Douglas, heavy of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler and a couple of other such films. He is intent on preventing the peaceful Cree from causing any trouble, so he disarms and alienates them. Mutters Silverheels, "They teach us to hunt and then they take away our means to do it."
This betrayal tends to drive the Cree into an allegiance with Fly Number Two -- the American Sioux, who have just massacred General Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and have now escaped across the border into Canada. Bang, bang, and then BOOM. (That's the explosion of a wagon filled with barrels of black gunpowder blowing a dozen Indians to smithereens.)
Let's see. What else. Ladd mutinies against Douglas and relieves him of his service revolver and his authority. Shelly Winters joins the party in a low-cut dress, accompanied by Hugh O'Brien as a sheriff escorting her back to Great Falls, Montana, to be hanged for a killing for which the treacherous O'Brien himself was responsible. And the victim was his own brother. Well, you can see what kind of guy Hugh O'Brien is. No wonder that Ladd, half his size, keeps punching him out.
The direction is by Raoul Walsh and it zips along as most of his Warners productions did. Walsh, like many old-school directors, didn't hold with psychological nonsense. A man was what a man was. Similarly, a woman was what a woman was. They were defined by their actions. No inferences allowed. You know, as a minor observation, when this movie was in first release it was criticized by some reviewers because Shelly Winters' wardrobe suggested that she had a bosom. It is to laugh. Actually, Winters' dialog, like all the rest, is concise to the point of being stilted, but she probably gives the most honest performance. Ladd seems content to glory in his blazing red coat with its gilded pips, his blue riding breeches with the gold stripes, and his black boots and silver spurs. As I said, this is colorful stuff. J. Carrol Naish, an Irish-American, is a raggedy French scout this time around. In the past he'd played Asians, Italians, Tibetans, and just about everything except a Siberian Chukchee -- and that only because nobody ever made a movie about the Chukchee. And in every role, he used the same all-purpose accent.
The plot seems to have been dreamed up by a committee but the location belongs to God alone. The images make you yearn for the clean, dry, cool air of sunny Banff and a scent of pine that doesn't come out of a bottle.