Nordwest-Passage

Exciting picture with open-air spectacular scenes starts depicting in a foreword : ¨This is a story of our early America..of the century of conflict with French and Indians .. when necessity made simple men, unknown to history, into giants in daring and endurance . It begins on Potmouth New Hampshire in 1759...¨ This Technicolor MGM classical describing the troop of Rogers' Rangers battling the hostile Indians and wilderness. The historical novel Northwest Passage (1937), by American author Kenneth Roberts, portrayed the events of Rogers' Rangers' raid on the Abenaki town of St. Francis. The first half of the novel was adapted in this film by Talbot Jennings and Laurence Stallings , being lavishly produced and uncomprimisingly directed by King Vidor . It actually intents to be the first of a two-part epic but the second half was never realized and the Northwest passage itself is never seen. The picture is packed with spectacular battles, heroism , heartbreaking scenes and blood-letting deeds . The main cast ans secondary support give good performances with special mention to Spencer Tracy , Walter Brennan and Robert Young. It contains marvelously photographed in glimmer Technicolor by Henry Jaffa and adequate musical score by Herbert Stothart. This is a winner for Spencer Tracy fans.

The story is based on real events , these are the following : During 1759, the Rangers were involved in one of their most famous operations: they were ordered to destroy the Abenaki settlement of Saint-Francis in Quebec. It has been the base for raids and attacks of British settlements. Rogers led a force of 200 rangers from Crown Point deep into French territory. Following the October 3, 1759 attack and successful destruction of Saint-Francis, Rogers' force ran out of food during their retreat through the wilderness of northern Vermont. Once the Rangers reached a safe location along the Connecticut River at the abandoned Fort Wentworth, Rogers left them encamped. He returned a few days later with food, and relief forces from Fort at Number 4 now Charlestown, New Hampshire, the nearest English town.In the raid on Saint-Francis, Rogers claimed 200 enemies were killed, leaving 20 women and children to be taken prisoner, of whom he took five children prisoner and let the rest go . The French recorded that only 30 were killed, including 20 women and children. According to Francis Parkman Ranger casualties in the attack were 1 killed and 6 wounded; however in the retreat, 5 were captured from one band of Rangers and nearly all in another party of about 20 Rangers were killed or captured. One source alleges that of about 204 Rangers, allies and observers, only about 100 returned.

Kenneth Roberts was a distinguished novelist who wrote many fine fictional works about colonial and revolutionary America. Probably his biggest seller was Northwest Passage a fictionalization of the exploits of Roger's Rangers during the French and Indian War.

His books sold well at the time and we have to remember that in viewing Northwest Passage we are seeing a fictional story rather than the real story of Roger's Rangers. At that we are only seeing part of that book, nothing at all about a search for a land route across North America.

The historical significance of the Rangers is that Robert Rogers had an idea that one should be living and thinking like the American Indian in order to fight him. His ideas about specialized units who could meet the enemy on his own terms in colonial America have been followed right down to the Green Berets in Vietnam. His is a distinguished contribution in military history.

To do that and lead such a group you have to be one charismatic leader. And in Spencer Tracy, Rogers has the best kind of interpreter.

This was Tracy's first color feature for MGM and Louis B. Mayer spared no expense for this film. No back lot backwoods here, the company went on location to the Payette River in Idaho for the outdoor scenes depicting colonial era New York State. No stunt doubles here either, that's Tracy, Walter Brennan, Robert Young and the rest of the company waist deep in those rapids forming that human chain. Some of the stars nearly drowned making this film.

One aspect of this film is rarely discussed and that was the politics surrounding the Indians. Please note that while Tracy is burning the Abinagi village, he has some friendly Mohawks with him. When the British and French went to war in this theater of the Seven Years War, the various Indian tribes chose up sides, trying to figure which group of whites would give them the better deal. The Mohawks are part of the Iroquois Confederation and they aligned themselves with Great Britain. Various other tribes allied with with French. Both were supplied with the white man's weapons of war and both fought on each side. And neither got a really great deal in the end.

Northwest Passage is definitely not for the politically correct of the day. Tracy is leading a savage reprisal against the Abinagi, he burns the town, kills all the males of fighting age, steals their meager food supplies to feed his men who are hungry themselves. Tracy makes it clear this is reprisal for raids against the British colonists. Prominently displayed for the camera just before the shooting start is that large exhibit of settler's scalps in the village.

Of course the real story is the retreat back, fleeing a much larger force of French in the area. The men are starving as they reach the rendezvous point which is an abandoned fort. Tracy races ahead of the men who've been promised a feast when they get there and as he makes it there he realizes the supplies haven't come. He starts to break down, but as he hears his men behind him, he regains control of himself and starts issuing the orders necessary for their survival. It's all done in a few minutes without dialog and its own of Spencer Tracy's greatest film moments.

Northwest Passage will not find too much favor with a lot of today's audience. But taken for what it is worth, it is a story about brave men and their struggle for survival in the colonial wilderness.

Apologies for the clichéd summary above but this is a great adventure from the good old days of Hollywood . The story is very simple : Map maker Langdon Towne finds himself in a spot of bother and in a slightly unlikely turn of events is drafted into Rogers rangers who are on a mission to attack a hostile red skin stronghold . Hardly a radical plot but director King Vidor and screenwriter Talbot Jennings craft a very good film that only Hollywood in its hay day could produce .

It's not only a great adventure but a technically brilliant film for its time. Check out the wonderful cinematography where the primary colours are at the fore , rather similar to the colours used in GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ . Make up your own mind how successful the colouring is but I found it absolutely beautiful . There's also a show stopping scene where the camera follows the line of sight of a ranger taking aim at a red skin . Wonderful cinematography

There are one or two flaws though . One is that not only are some of the characters too old to be elite fighting men but they seem too old to still be alive . Honestly how old did people live to in the mid 18th century ? The rangers themselves are written as being a good bunch o blokes but I found them just a little too good to be true while no doubt the thought police will complain about the native Americans being portrayed as a bunch of blood thirsty savages , but this was made before revisionary westerns like the overrated DANCES WITH WOLVES and before Marlon Brando sent native Americans to collect Oscars , but at least King Vidor has cast real natives in the part of Indians and hasn't dressed up a bunch of white guys pretending to be injuns

Good Hollywood movie featuring the rangers . Probably brought more recruits to the regiment than SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and BLACK HAWK DOWN put together

Harking back to Kenneth Roberts' Roberts' "Northwest Passage," Rogers' life after the legendary mission to destroy the nest of Abenaki vipers equally unbelievable.

Did you know that Rogers undertook with just two companies of Rangers an equally legendary 1763 expedition into what was called the Northwest (the Ohio territory) to accept the surrender of the French posts to the British, who had in that year won the French and Indian War?

This trip afoot took Rogers nearly halfway across the continent. In fact, Rogers proposed to the British Crown an expedition to the Pacific, an exploration which one of his captains later partly accomplished while Rogers was stuck commanding Fort Michilmackinac in what would later become Michigan.

Thus Rogers almost achieved in 1763 what Lewis and Clark wouldn't actually fully achieve till some 40 years later -- an expedition of exploration to the Pacific Ocean.

Rogers was indeed turned down by George Washington at the start of the American Revolution as a volunteer Ranger in the colonial forces. Instead, Washington had Rogers arrested and tossed into prison.

Understandably rankled by this, Rogers broke out of jail and went over to the British.

Rogers is the guy of whom George Washington said: "He is the only man I ever feared."

We have our unfathomably brave predecessors in the Rangers to thank for the British colonists' ultimate victory in the 150-year-long war against the French and Indians -- America's longest war, and one that NO elementary or high school ANYWHERE in America teaches ANYTHING about.

Robert Rogers was larger than life. He is often called the Father of U.S. Special Forces, for his work pioneering the colonial rangers in early America. His Rules for Ranging are still required reading by the U.S. Rangers and Green Berets.

But Rogers wasn't the first colonial ranger. It is uncertain who could claim that title, because the tradition of "ranging" goes back to early England and Scotland. The colonists took that tradition with them when they settled America. Rangers were deployed in Jamestown.

Ranger Benjamin Church, who was instrumental in winning King Philip's war (1675-1678) in New England, is also called the Father of the Rangers. It was his team that hunted down and killed King Philip (aka Metacomet) in Rhode Island.

King Philip's War is another one of those gigantic historical struggles not taught in our schools.

This was the war in which the Indians pushed the American colonists all the way back to the shoreline towns all across New England (except in Connecticut, where there were just a few battles), and almost into the ocean.

Did you know that New England's colonists almost starved during that war, and would have had it not been for ships full of emergency provisions sent from England? The Indians banded together -- most of them, but not all -- to exterminate the white man.

But the colonists won that war.

They won all of the other Indian wars in New England too.

Rogers is the guy who turned the tide in the last such war.

If you read anything about Rogers and the men he fought with, you will not believe the hardships they endured to bequeath us our free and easy lives of today. Those who sling arrows at Rogers and his Rangers from their easy chair in a warm home on land won by their forebears from the Indians have no conception - absolutely none - of just how feral the so-called native Americans were.

FACT: Like most Stone Age peoples, most Indian tribes engaged in constant warfare. Tribal death rates, as a percentage, were far higher than any of the white man's wars. The Comanches would become the apex tribe in North America when it comes to aggression, outstripping even the Abenakis and Pequots. In fact, the Comanches were so powerful that they hunted the terrifying Apaches for fun, and chased all of the Apache tribes off the plains. Read "Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History" by S.C. Gwynne if you want to understand Stone Age pathologies.

The "noble savage" is a myth. Most tribes, given half a chance, would exterminate enemy tribes in a New York minute. They extracted positive orgasmic delight in the most heinous and protracted tortures. These cultures refined torture for century upon century. This had nothing whatsoever to do with the New Age apologetics about "absorbing a victim's spirit." Balderdash. They just liked torture.

Rogers' bushwhacking victory over the Abenaki Indians -- the Northeast's Islamofacist terrorists of one-quarter of a millennium ago -- helped finally end the last of the five consecutive French and Indian wars in New England. Ironically, these wars had been going on pretty much continuously almost from the year of discovery -- 1609 -- i.e., the year that Samuel de Champlain (the "Father of New France") discovered the lake named for him, the same year that Henry Hudson sailed up the river named for him.

Yes, the year of discovery was 400 years ago in 2009 and the year of British victory in the 150-year war against New France was 1759, 250 years ago in 2009.

Tempus fugit.

There are few films about the French and Indian War (1754 - 1763) which is surprising. Given the rising solidity of Anglo-American relations in the late 1930s into World War II more films should have been made. I can only think of this one and THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (with Randolph Scott and Henry Wilcoxen) as the best - possibly sole - examples. But NORTHWEST PASSAGE is a marvelous example of how to make an interesting historical film. Briefly, it is 1759, and Major Robert Rogers and his famous Rangers (probably America's first example of a special forces unit) are sent into territory in the hands of an enemy Indian group. The film shows all the problems of 18th Century forest fighting, with supply problems, ambushes, and personal problems. Rogers does not have to only worry about Indian attacks (off screen we hear of the massacre of part of his men who separated for security reasons to rendezvous at a later spot), but with starvation and madness (witness Addison Richards insane ranger). But the mission is accomplished, and one step brought forward to the successful completion of the war.

But the story was not fully told, due to the expenses of filming (it was filmed mostly outside the studio). The actual title is NORTHWEST PASSAGE: PART I. Robert Young plays Langdon, a young college student (actually he looks slightly old for that role) who is skillful in drawing and drafting. So he is taken under Major Rogers' wing (Langdon and his best friend - played by Walter Brennan - were almost arrested for quasi-seditious remarks about a local British government official played by Montague Love) and go on the trek. Tracy/Rogers needs Young/Langdon as a map maker. He has plans to find the Northwest Passage with his Rangers once the war is finished. The present film ends with Langdon married and watching Rogers and his Rangers marching off on their next mission.

The sequel would have been a downer, but a brilliant one - and I suspect the subject matter of the sequel had more to do with killing the problem than the actual expense (after all, the first part was a hit film, and made back it's cost at the box office). In the sequel Rogers tries to get his exploration plans under way, only to run afoul of history: it seems the colonies and Britain are becoming less and less friendly due to the issue of taxation and British legislation like the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts. Rogers (as he was an officer - albeit an irregular one - in the British army) is a loyalist, and Langdon and his friends are not. Gradually Rogers becomes more and more isolated due to his political stand. In the end he goes into exile, and becomes a bitter, defeated ex-hero. The Northwest Passage is not to be discovered by this remarkable man. It would be first sited by Thomas Simpson, an explorer for the Hudson Bay Company, in 1838-39.

The ill-fated Franklin Expedition (1845-49) would find the key to the passage, but perish in the course of the discovery. This would not fully become notable until Sir Robert McClure (in 1851) and Sir Leopold McClintock (in 1859) rediscovered the passage while seeking Franklin's men. Finally Roald Amundson would successfully sail through the passage on the Gjoa in 1903-1905.

The sequel, as you can see, became increasingly anti-British (the audience in America would have to be pro-American if shown in America). Therefore it would have been out of place in a period when American films were to be pro-English. That's more likely the reason that the sequel was not made with Tracy being shown going slowly to seed. An understandable reason, but it would have been Tracy's greatest part - the hero denied his just claim for glory by sheer historical chance. The completed NORTHWEST PASSAGE would have been one of the masterworks of 20th Century motion picture making.