Throughout the thirties and most of the forties Hollywood's attitude to Native Americans was quite a simple one. It wasn't quite as simple as "The only good Injun is a dead Injun", but it wasn't much better. There was little or no attempt to challenge the "Manifest Destiny" ideology, namely that white Americans had a more advanced civilisation than other races and that they consequently had a God-given right to dominate the whole of the North American continent, regardless of the wishes of its indigenous peoples.
This attitude began to change in the late forties and early fifties. In particular, "Broken Arrow" from 1950 has become famous as one of the first major Westerns not only to treat the Indians sympathetically but also to treat them as the equals of the white man. An Indian character is given equal prominence with the main white character and it is made clear that the whites are just as much guilty of cruelty and savagery in their conduct of the war as the Indians. "Apache" is another example of a film from this period made from a pro-Indian viewpoint.
Not all Westerns from the fifties, however, were so liberal. "Only the Valiant", for example, takes a straightforward "Whites good, Indians bad" line, and "Arrowhead" is, if anything, even more reactionary. The story is set in the 1880s and the US government has tasked the army with implementing its policy of making peace with the Apaches. "Peace" is something of a euphemism for a policy of ethnic cleansing which will see the Apaches relocated to reservations in Florida, leaving their land free for colonisation by white settlers. (As this land seems to consist of little more than arid semi-desert, I couldn't actually understand why any white settlers would want it).
The main character is Ed Bannon, a scout working with the US cavalry. Bannon is that stock Western character, a white man who has grown up among the Indians, but his childhood experiences have not made him sympathetic towards them. Quite the opposite. Bannon loathes the Apaches, whom he regards as cruel and treacherous savages. Believing as he does that all red men speak with forked tongue, he opposes even the Government's harsh peace terms as unduly lenient, and does all he can to obstruct them. His argument is that the Apaches are only feigning acceptance of the whites' terms and that the real aim of the Apache leader, Toriano, is to launch a bloody uprising. The army, inevitably, distrust and disbelieve Bannon, and he, equally inevitably, is proved right by events.
It is often argued that films and other artistic products of past decades should not be judged by modern standards of "woke" political correctness, but the truth is that the attitudes expressed by Bannon, and impliedly endorsed by the film, were unacceptable even by the standards of 1953. The war, which had finished only a few years earlier, should have taught us the dangers of blind hatred of entire races of people. Racist attitudes, however, are not the film's only weakness.
Charlton Heston made a number of Westerns, but with the possible exception of "Will Penny", few of them are as well-remembered as his work in other genres, notably the epic. His performance in "Arrowhead" is not one of his best, but he was struggling with the difficult problem of "how do you play a guy who's supposed to be the hero but who in fact is a complete racist jerk?" Probably the best acting comes from Jack Palance as Toriano (this being a period when it was still politically correct to cast white actors as non-whites) but I felt that even he did not really merit the fulsome praise which Heston showered upon him in his autobiography.
The film's other weakness is the direction of Charles Marquis Warren, specifically the pacing, as the first half is very slow moving, with all the action coming in a rush at the end. This is one of the weakest westerns of the period, and the prime candidate for the title of Heston's worst-ever film. 3/10.
This attitude began to change in the late forties and early fifties. In particular, "Broken Arrow" from 1950 has become famous as one of the first major Westerns not only to treat the Indians sympathetically but also to treat them as the equals of the white man. An Indian character is given equal prominence with the main white character and it is made clear that the whites are just as much guilty of cruelty and savagery in their conduct of the war as the Indians. "Apache" is another example of a film from this period made from a pro-Indian viewpoint.
Not all Westerns from the fifties, however, were so liberal. "Only the Valiant", for example, takes a straightforward "Whites good, Indians bad" line, and "Arrowhead" is, if anything, even more reactionary. The story is set in the 1880s and the US government has tasked the army with implementing its policy of making peace with the Apaches. "Peace" is something of a euphemism for a policy of ethnic cleansing which will see the Apaches relocated to reservations in Florida, leaving their land free for colonisation by white settlers. (As this land seems to consist of little more than arid semi-desert, I couldn't actually understand why any white settlers would want it).
The main character is Ed Bannon, a scout working with the US cavalry. Bannon is that stock Western character, a white man who has grown up among the Indians, but his childhood experiences have not made him sympathetic towards them. Quite the opposite. Bannon loathes the Apaches, whom he regards as cruel and treacherous savages. Believing as he does that all red men speak with forked tongue, he opposes even the Government's harsh peace terms as unduly lenient, and does all he can to obstruct them. His argument is that the Apaches are only feigning acceptance of the whites' terms and that the real aim of the Apache leader, Toriano, is to launch a bloody uprising. The army, inevitably, distrust and disbelieve Bannon, and he, equally inevitably, is proved right by events.
It is often argued that films and other artistic products of past decades should not be judged by modern standards of "woke" political correctness, but the truth is that the attitudes expressed by Bannon, and impliedly endorsed by the film, were unacceptable even by the standards of 1953. The war, which had finished only a few years earlier, should have taught us the dangers of blind hatred of entire races of people. Racist attitudes, however, are not the film's only weakness.
Charlton Heston made a number of Westerns, but with the possible exception of "Will Penny", few of them are as well-remembered as his work in other genres, notably the epic. His performance in "Arrowhead" is not one of his best, but he was struggling with the difficult problem of "how do you play a guy who's supposed to be the hero but who in fact is a complete racist jerk?" Probably the best acting comes from Jack Palance as Toriano (this being a period when it was still politically correct to cast white actors as non-whites) but I felt that even he did not really merit the fulsome praise which Heston showered upon him in his autobiography.
The film's other weakness is the direction of Charles Marquis Warren, specifically the pacing, as the first half is very slow moving, with all the action coming in a rush at the end. This is one of the weakest westerns of the period, and the prime candidate for the title of Heston's worst-ever film. 3/10.