Drums Along the Mohawk
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Movie Reviews of Drums Along the Mohawk
Movie Review: Good historical piece about early frontier.
Summary: 5 Stars
A good historical yarn about pre-revolutionary Ameican frontier struggles. Good viewing. R. WoolfeMovie Review: Drums Along The Mohawk
Summary: 5 Stars
A classic! A bit Hollywoodish, but a great film nonetheless. I love and highly recommend this one.Movie Review: john ford classic
Summary: 5 Stars
quite simply , the best film ever made about the American revolution; a classic!Movie Review: An engrossing Revolutionary War story from John Ford, with many of his strengths and some of his weaknesses
Summary: 4 Stars
When Lana Martin (Claudette Colbert) arrives by wagon with her new husband, Gil (Henry Fonda), to Mohawk Valley and his homestead, she isn't prepared for what she sees. The time is just before the Revolutionary War. The valley is beautiful and unspoiled, but the homestead is a one-room log cabin Gil has built, and the farm will need to be worked by the two of them. Lana has never seen an Indian, but in the course of the movie she's going to see a lot, and most won't be friendly.
Drums Along the Mohawk is John Ford's curious but effective look at one aspect of the Revolutionary War. The story isn't about George Washington or the great battles. It's the story of what happens in this one, isolated valley in upstate New York. While there are Indian attacks and we can see the results of a battle or two, the story really is about Lana Martin and how she changed. We watch her and Gil build their farm, and we see it burnt to the ground when war comes to the valley. From a young woman in a big, frilly dress facing a life she had never imagined, by the end of the movie Lana is wearing a soldier's coat and is prepared to shoot down an attacker, which she does with hardly a blink. She sees Gil return from his first battle almost shell-shocked. We see her and Gil having to become hired hands when their farm is destroyed. We see her suffer a miscarriage. At the start of the movie, Gil was an honest, hard-working young man, almost naive at times. Now he and Lana are watching the birth of their new nation. They've both become...capable. "Well," Gil says to her at the close, "I reckon we'd better be gettin' back to work. There's goin' to be a heap to do from now on." And we know he's talking about building a nation, not just a new farm.
The movie is effective despite John Ford's long-time propensity for ham-handed humor, sentimental myth building and his indulgence in stereotypical portrayals of Indians as either child-like objects of amusement or animal-like objects of fear. What saves this story, as it saved many of Ford's films, is his great talent for cinematic story-telling. As corn-ball as some of the scenes in this movie are -- the short, chubby drunk or Gil's amazement that his wife is giving birth or the wise but child-like behavior of the Christian Indian chief -- we still are caught up in Gil's and Lana's story. Although the movie is particularly a pean to the women who had to struggle on, sometimes fighting, sometimes waiting, Ford gives the film an unusual unwarlike tone. The widow Mrs. McKennar, who took Gil and Lana in when their farm was destroyed, looks at Gil marching off to his first battle and thinks about her husband. "Sometimes he'd wave. Ten to one he wasn't even seeing me. He was thinking about all those men, you see. All those men he went out to fight...to kill and be killed...blast his eyes, loving it." One powerful scene has Gil and the other men back from the battle. They won but it didn't go well. Gil has collapsed, and as Lana tends to him he barely notices her. He just stares into the distance while he tells what happened when they were ambushed. "I got down back of a log and aimed at a fellow. He leaped straight up in the air. Fell forward on his face. After that we just kept shooting as fast as we could load for I don't know how long. Adam Hartman came over beside me. His musket was broke. He had a spear. He kept grinning. I remember thinking, 'He's having a good time. He likes this.' Pretty soon he pointed off. I saw an Indian coming toward us, naked. I tried to load but it was too late. Adam stood up and braced his spear and the Indian came down. I never saw a fellow look so funny, so surprised. He just hung there, with his mouth open...lookin' at us, not sayin' a word. I had to shoot him, there wasn't anything else to do."
Ford pushes the buttons of duty, faith and patriotism. We've learned that war isn't the glorious struggle some make it out to be. Still, Ford shows us that fighting to protect our land, to protect our chance to build our farm and keep our children safe is proper. In 1939, that was a strong message. So was his theme of patriotism with which he closes the movie. At the fort in Mohawk Valley a company of regular soldiers arrives to tell the people that the war has been won, that Cornwallis has surrendered to Washington. They're carrying a flag. A churchman looks at it and says to the others, "So that's our new flag, the thing we've been fighting for. Thirteen stripes for the colonies and thirteen stars in a circle for the Union." And with that a couple of men take the flag and climb to the top of the church steeple, where they tie it down so that it waves in the wind. Ford knew how to punch home a point, alright.
Fonda and Colbert were both fine actors. Fonda, in particular, brings, as usual, a strong sense of decency to his role. While I think he and Colbert make a slightly improbable pair (Colbert in all her roles, for me, seems to have a sly worldliness that makes her so good at sophisticated comedy), they work well together. The movie is really war from a woman's point of view, and Colbert brings it off.
The DVD presentation is, to my eyes, variable. There is an extra that shows how the film was restored, but I think a good deal more work, if it is possible, is needed. At times the film is gorgeous, at other times the picture is too soft. Often, especially during daylight scenes, there is a faint but noticeable red or green edge to people and objects.
Movie Review: Good Movie, Mixed Quality Transfer
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm not sure any filmmaker has ever loved the American landscape more than John Ford did, and Drums Along the Mohawk is a fine example of this love affair. The story is a simple one: Henry Fonds and Claudette Colbert play Gil and Lana Martin, a young couple establishing their new home on the then-frontier of the Mohawk Valley in western New York, during the American Revolution. Their idyll is interrupted by marauding indians and British loyalists. Although the Martins are at the center of the story, the film is not particularly character driven, instead, they serve as witnesses to the events around them, and in which they are caught up. The real star of the film is America itself, its motley settlers and its beautiful landscape. In the film's more meditative moments, it approaches greatness, as when Lana Martin, a small figure in the foreground, collapses in grief as she watches the militia marching off in an ant-like column in the background, the rest of the image dominated by sky and rollng green hills. Some of the character actors give the film added gravity and humor, notably Arthur Shields as the ultra-pious minister who does not mind working an advertisement for a local merchant into his sermon; and Edna May Oliver, as a larger-than-life widow who takes the Martins under her wing. (Ward Bond's boisterous overacting detracts a bit from the experience. I suppose he got better as he got older, as his performance in the Searchers is classic.)
Some reviewers have commented on the overt patriotic sentiment of the film, observing that it dates the movie. These reviewers imply that the patriotic fervor of the film needs to be viewed through the lens of the Second World War, as the movie was made in 1939. This ignores two important circumstantial facts: first, the vast majority of Americans in 1939 were proud of their Revolutionary heritage, and needed no excuse to celebrate it; second, Europe did not descend into war until September 1, 1939, and the vast majority of Americans believed that America had no compelling reason to get involved in what they perceived as a strictly European quarrel. Drums Along the Mohawk is not a call to arms. It celebrates the sacrifices made by America's first patriots, but in doing so it does not glorify war. The battles are depicted as solemn and tragic experiences, albeit highlighted by heroic acts. In a long monologue after being wounded in battle, Gil Martin describes the experience to his wife, and he does not mince words, nor does he idealize the conflict. In 1939, Americans believed in rallying around the flag, but defense of American interests did not immediately connote warmongering. Far from it, many of the most vociferous opponents of American involvement in the European war were equally outspoken in their willingness to defend their country. The two principles were not contradictory.
As for the DVD itself, the quality of the transfer is mixed. 20th Century Fox clearly has no desire to emulate Warner Bros. recent run of meticulous digital restorations of classic MGM and Warner films. Several shots in Drums Along the Mohawk are marred by a substantial offset in the three-color technicolor negatives. Until 1955, Technicolor was shot with a three-strip camera, and the three negatives produced a single color image. A minor offset in the negatives produces an image similar to what you see in a 3D movie if you don't have the glasses on. I am not sure if the original negatives for Drums Along the Mohawk survive. Nor do I know whether, without the orginal negatives, the marred shots in Drums Along the Mohawk could be improved. (I suspect that 20th Century Fox, when confronted with the choice between putting out the inferior print they had on hand or developing a better transfer, the company took the easy route and didn't explore the costlier--but more satisfying--alternative.) It is a pity that a film as visually stunning as this should not receive a better digital transfer.
Still, in the absence of a better DVD issue, this is a worthy addition to the library of any lover of classic American movies. And, to be honest, the price is quite reasonable. You get what you pay for.