Cheyenne Autumn
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.41 You Save: $12.56 (63%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.50 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Cheyenne Autumn
Movie Review: No Problems
Summary: 4 Stars
Had no problems at all . Very fast service. Will buy from again.
Movie Review: John Ford's heartfelt tribute to the Cheyenne Trail of Tears
Summary: 3 Stars
Report card for CHEYENNE AUTUMN, John Ford's epic retelling of the Cheyenne Trail of Tears, an 1878 exodus of over 300 men, women, and children off their barren Oklahoma reservation 1,500 miles north to the Black Hills of Dakota.
Acting. *** (3 stars out of five.) It's hard to know exactly who to point the finger at, but a finger has to be pointed at someone. Richard Widmark stars as the cavalry officer who spends most of the movie chasing the fleeing Cheyenne, and he's very good as the hard driving, ambivalent army officer. Even Carroll Baker as a Quaker schoolteacher and Mike Mazurki as the troop's top sergeant are given some nice scenes. The problem lies with the casting of the Cheyennes. Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland play Little Wolf and Dull Knife, two real life characters who led the Cheyenne in their dangerous flight. Sal Mineo, of all people, plays Little Wolf's son Red Shirt. Montalban and Roland are both proven commodities - good actors, too - but they weren't Native Americans (in fact, both were from Mexico - Mineo was an Italian-American who hailed from Brooklyn.) They aren't the first actors covered in greasepaint to play characters of another race, and that isn't the biggest problem, anyway, although casting a non-Native American in those roles probably wouldn't even be attempted today. The problem lies with Ford's approach to the Cheyenne, which can probably best be characterized as solemn and dignified. The intention is laudable, but the execution leaves a huge hole in their movie. Montalban and Roland come off as stiff and wooden and lacquered, and the movie is crippled by it. Even when they're in scenes alone with each other they're forced to say stuff like `My brother! We have always thought as one. Not even a straw has come between us!' If Ford had drawn up just one scene that allowed Little Wolf and Dull Knife to let the starch out of their spine long enough to say something like`I don't know if we're gonna make `er, Little Wolf,' -in other words, be identifiably human for a couple hundred feet of celluloid - they would have locked us in with them. But he didn't, and they don't.
Pacing. **. Ye gods preserve me from movies that are so long they need an `Intermission Entr `Acte' in the middle of them. CHEYENNE AUTUMN clocks in at a morbidly obese 154-minutes, 2-1/2 hours, and like most marathon epics it tends to flow unevenly. The likeliest candidate for liposuction is the Dodge City scene that occurs right before the intermission. Jimmy Stewart and Arthur Kennedy play Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, two participants in a hastily formed posse/citizen army created to intercept the Cheyenne in their flight. It's a fairly long, almost slapstick interlude that would only make sense if we were emotionally engaged with the Cheyenne and needed comedy to relieve the gloom. But Ford doesn't come close to getting under the skin of either Little Wolf or Dull Knife, and of the Cheyenne we remain distant, detached observers. For what it's worth, Stewart made no less convincing a Wyatt Earp than Mineo a Red Shirt.
Photography. *****. Breathtaking and stunning are the first words that come to mind, followed by beautiful and sublime. Ford was a visual artist of the highest caliber, and CHEYENNE AUTUMN doesn't disappoint on that score. You can freeze the image at just about any point in the movie and you'll get a beautifully composed still picture. It helps that this, Ford's last western, was shot in his beloved Monument Valley. It doesn't hurt that his Cheyenne take three-quarters of the movie getting out of that small patch of territory, either.
CHEYENNE AUTUMN is a mixed bag, worth a recommendation with reservations. If you're a fan of John Ford movies it's probably essential viewing, if for no other reason than it's the only film of his in which Native Americans were treated as wholly sympathetic characters.
Movie Review: Not the disaster it's often painted
Summary: 3 Stars
Common wisdom has it that Cheyenne Autumn is a well-intentioned failure, and while his last Western is certainly far from John Ford's best, it is one of those films that becomes more impressive on repeated viewings. Although seen by many as an apologist epic made as an act of contrition by Ford for so many decades of stereotyping Native Americans, he always denied this, and it has to be said that, Two Rode Together apart, his Westerns generally had a more respect for the various tribes than his contemporaries. Instead its appeal seems partially as a good yarn, albeit one compromised by budgetary concerns, and one of his sporadic shots at an important message picture with a social conscience. Although it's not an unqualified success, his often spectacular retelling of the Cheyenne tribe's epic trek from their rundown reservation back to their original homeland has a lot to recommend it. While it's hard today to see the main Cheyenne characters played by the likes of Sal Mineo and a predominantly Latin-American cast - Ricardo Montalban, Dolores Del Rio and Gilbert Roland among them - and have most of the film seen through the eyes of white characters like Richard Widmark's conflicted cavalry officer, Carroll Baker's school ma'am and many familiar faces from the Ford stock company (including a surprisingly unbilled Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr in virtual reprises of their Rio Grande roles), it was a major achievement at the time to even tell a story about the callous treatment of the Native American tribes: feelbad epics had never been a good bet at the box-office.
Certainly at times you get the feeling that Warner Bros. were trying to save money wherever possible. Many of the more dramatic incidents of the real trek were cut from the script to save money, one key section is obviously shot on a soundstage rather than on location and there is some crude backprojection at the end (perhaps necessitated by having to replace Spencer Tracey with Edward G. Robinson), often leaving the film looking rather disjointed. The biggest misstep is the Dodge City sequence, which was Ford's idea of a comic relief intermission. While mildly amusing, it's a massive shift of tone that adds nothing to the story aside from an opportunity to add a little starpower with James Stewart's comical Wyatt Earp and cronies Arthur Kennedy and John Carradine and which could easily be removed from the film entirely without anyone noticing (indeed, it was cut from many prints after the film opened to get more shows in). Nonetheless, there are still many powerful sequences, from the Cheyenne standing all day in the baking sun to welcome a Senate Committee that can't be bothered to travel the dusty road to the reservation to a prolonged episode in a fort when Karl Malden's self-aggrandizing and ambitious commander sees them more as an opportunity than as starving and freezing human beings. There's certainly much to like, from William H. Clothier's fine widescreen photography of Monument Valley (this would be Ford's last film in his favorite location), a good score from Alex North and a nicely underplayed proposal scene in a schoolhouse. If it never quite gels, it's still a noble attempt at popularising difficult subject matter.
Warners 2.35:1 widescreen DVD is the fully restored version of the film, including a vintage 20-minute documentary on the real trek, the theatrical trailer and an often amusing audio commentary by Ford biographer Joseph McBride - apparently the extras can often be heard swearing in their own language secure in the knowledge that none of the crew had a clue what they were really saying!
Movie Review: Uneven, disjointed, but worth watching...
Summary: 3 Stars
This is John Ford's last Western, and a film in which he tries to make amends for (in some films) his rather shabby treatment of Native Americans. It is not a typical Ford Western, though. Yes, it's filmed in Monumental Valley, and it boasts some of the greatest cinemtography ever in a Ford film. Yet, it seems rambling, even disjointed at times. It is Ford's longest work (clocking in at, for Ford at least, a long 158 minutes), and it feels like it could have used a little editing. There isn't much humour in it, except for the Dodge City episode, which is awkwardly inserted into the middle of the film. It really seems out of place because the rest of the film is very serious with very little comic relief included. But the episode itself is actually one of Ford's funniest scenes EVER. The banter between James Stewart, Burt Kennedy, John Carradine, and Elizabeth Allen is hilarious. The scene was originally cut out of the initial theatrical version, but then later restored for VHS/DVD releases. Ford seems to be trying something new here, but just not getting it right. This film is missing the poetry that is in many of his other Westerns. The film comes across as rather preachy, ponderous, and lumbering (even though the subject matter is definitely important). Tag Gallagher's book on Ford, he states that Ford wanted to cast actual Native Americans in the roles of Montalban, Mineo, and Roland, treating them like a Greek Chorus unable to communicate with the whites. This idea was rejected by the producers of the film. He reportedly didn't care for Alex North's score, either. Ford films always had a more traditional, folk tinged score that was used sparingly throughout his films. North's score underscores almost every scene, here. It is nice, however, to see this film widescreen. Before, it was only available in wretched, pan and scan versions, which absolutely butchered Ford's compositions. Here we get to see the spectacular photography by William Clothier, who shot this film in 70mm. Ford only completed one more feature film after this (the underrated Seven Women), and this ended up being his final Western. It's worth watching, for sure (especially if you're a Ford admirer), but it is not one of his better films.Movie Review: The picture was handsome, shot in Monument Valley and Moab, Utah, but considering its genre it was slow, even tedious...
Summary: 3 Stars
John Ford dealt with one of the long-lasting Indian tragedies in his "Cheyenne Autumn," the wasting away of a tribe in an uncongenial pen called a reservation and its efforts to take matters into its own hands...
Indians, to use a modern term, had become redundant; that was their true tragedy... They were unwanted in what the whites wanted to make of the West and so they were 'placed' and disposed of, thereby suffering the usual 'superfluous' maladies of physical and moral debilitation... Here they are portrayed as the victims of insensitive herding...
The Cheyennes--1,500 miles away in Oklahoma from their Yellowstone home--had seen their numbers depleted from one thousand to less than three hundred in the course of a disease-ridden year... With these sorts of statistics it was as much a matter of simple logic as an act of desperation when they upped and left one night, bound on foot for their old hunting grounds, probably knowing full well that the cavalry would make them hurry, as they did, all the way... An epic in real life. Would the master epic-maker match it? In purely visual terms the answer was 'yes'. Ford vivid1y depicted the starvation and disease plaguing the Cheyenne trek... But somehow Ford never wholly got to the heart of the matter although the intent was there and at times this is a most impressive and moving film...
Carroll Baker appears as a Quaker teacher who tries in vain to he1p the unfortunate migrants... Richard Widmark is the army captain who is as sympathetic as uniform allows, and Arthur Kennedy is razor-sharp in his impersonation of Doc Holliday, who, with Stewart's Earp, is drafted into leading a posse against the Indians... Stewart deliberately re-routes them and the Indians get away... Edward G. Robinson plays a humane and kindly Secretary of the Interior who helps bail out the unlucky Cheyenne.