Le grand passage

Northwest Passage is one of the few films about the Seven Years' War that isn't based on a James Fenimore Cooper novel, and in that sense, it's a welcome lesson in how that important period has come to be mythologized in popular culture. I've never read the Roberts books, so I can't comment on how faithful the film is to its source material. I can only make a few comments on how movies have their own sensibilities and cultural rules. Like most films, this one tells us more about the era in which it was made than the time period in which the film's events take place. It's certainly an exciting story, but it has a number of cringeworthy elements (and they would have elicited just as many cringes back in the 1930s, I assure you.)Here's a few comments:

Jeffrey Amherst and Sir William Johnson: As anyone who has read any of the fine studies of this era can attest (I recommend the works of James Axtell, Gregory Evans Dowd, Daniel Usner, Daniel Richter, Richard White, and many others as fine introductions to Indian-White relations in the 17th and 18th centuries), this film takes a rather interesting view of these historical figures. Amherst is here depicted as the realistic good guy, who is in tune with Rogers's vicious sentiments. Johnson, on the other hand, is seen as part of the problem because of his private relationships with several Indian groups, especially the Mohawks. Johnson's Mohawk allies are here shown as lazy, duplicitous, suspicious interlopers. In fact, Johnson and his many Indian allies throughout Iroquoia and the Ohio country were indispensable to the British victory in the Seven Years' War, while Amherst, a capable officer but a virulent anti-native racist, instituted policies that helped start the 1763-64 Indian uprising ("Pontiac's War") and actually approved using germ warfare on Indians near Fort Pitt (he approved a plan to give them smallpox-infected blankets.)

Uniforms: If you squint, Roger's Rangers look like they should be in the Confederate Army. This may be a Technicolor issue. In fact, Roger's men often dressed as Indians and other backcountry residents did. It is the demands of movie convention that put them all in blue buckskin uniforms -- just as Japanese and German soldiers always wore particular shapes of helmets, so you can tell them apart from the other guys. Even the Mohawk and Abenaki Indians wear similar "uniforms," i.e. matching loincloths. The Indians in this movie look like they belong in the Southwest or the plains -- not in the Eastern Woodlands, especially late in the year.

Rogers himself: Well, his anti-Indian rants probably do illustrate something of the man himself. It should be noted that Rogers's sensationalized exploits made him a problematic celebrity during his life. He was always distrusted by his British superiors, who nevertheless bowed to public acclaim and gave him important positions after the war, including a brief command of Fort Detroit, and his disastrous tenure commanding Fort Michilimackinac after the Indian uprising. Like many outpost commanders, Rogers let his personal greed take over in the relative freedom of the pays d'en haut, and ended up being arrested and returned to Niagara in irons. Amherst gave him guarded trust, but Amherst's successor, Thomas Gage, and Indian Supervisor William Johnson, considered him a villain. As for the native Americans, everyone knew about Rogers's Indian killing, and he had few Indian friends and many enemies. Everywhere Rogers went became a tense place of interaction between Indians and Europeans.

Indian issues: Well, it's true that Indians, Abenakis and others, used brutal tactics in war. But this movie, like other movies such as Drums Along the Mohawk, definitely take the settlers' side in their confrontations with native Americans. In one scene, Rogers tells his men how the Abenakis should be killed for brutally hatcheting innocent settlers, who were just trying to make lives for themselves and weren't bothering anyone. It should be noted that settlers were often a great bother to Indians, just by their presence alone. Indians who lived in transitional regions resented the encroachments of white settlers more than anything else, including the presence of forts and soldiers. Settlers used land for farming, which was an exclusive operation. Unlike the skin trade, which used native residents as partners, farmers viewed Indians as being in the way. All Eastern Indians knew that farming was the one operation that turned Indian country into European territory exclusively, and did everything they could to oppose it. And as far as relative levels of brutality go, backcountry settlers and soldiers were capable of all the worst kinds of viciousness. Reference the Gnadenhutten Massacre during the Revolutionary War if you want to read about some really vicious behavior by America militiamen.

This movie is a great mirror on its time. Americans looked to their settler past, mythical or otherwise, whenever they wished to differentiate their national identity from the "bad old" Europeans, or the brutal state of nature. The rugged, idealistic frontier settler, hacking a life out of the wilderness but imbued with democratic virtue, was a popular model for Depression-riddled Americans who felt that their agency and power was slipping away. People today might like these movies for the same reasons!

As for me, I think the film is well-acted and filmed, and somewhat exciting, but too laughable to take very seriously. That is, it's laughable when it is not deplorable. This is the most virulent anti-Indian movie I know, worse even than most westerns. Some of the comments here label this as a "family" film. The hero of this film repeatedly labels all Indians as brutes, thieves, and cowards. I wouldn't let any child see this movie.

It is great when you find an old movie that you have never seen before, and I have seen many. This epic is one of broad scope and adventure, well balanced with good and evil aspects. A film of this quality could NEVER be made today and not maintain an unprejudiced view. Bravo!

Northwest Passage is based on a novel of the same name by Kenneth Roberts, in fact it is an adaptation of its first part The Roger's Rangers, the second part was also originally planned to be filmed by King Vidor, but MGM dropped the project fearing the costs involved. As a consequence only the first part of the novel was brought to the screen where passage through the northwest never actually happens but only is talked about.

The story is centred on Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) and his rangers who take a dangerous and adventurous journey through the territory controlled by the Indians and the French troops in 18th century America in order to destroy a hostile Indian village from where English settlements are constantly being attacked.

Right in the beginning the rangers are joined by right out of Harvard idealistic young cartographer Langdon Towne (Robert Young) who is dreaming of becoming a great painter `like Velasquez or Rubens' and is enthusiastic about the journey because of possibility it offers to paint portraits of Indians and landscapes in contrast with the other rangers who are mainly driven by yearning of revenge for relatives murdered during Indian raids.

Northwest Passage is possibly the best and the most visually impressive King Vidor's adventure film. Breathtakingly beautiful landscapes shown here certainly stand out as the most wonderful even among King Vidor's work who was well known for beautiful Technicolor exteriors in his movies. A beautiful film, definitely worth watching. 8/10

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.

This is a western only in the widest sense of the word, since it's not set in the Old West. It's set in the mid 18th century during the French and Indian War, on what was the frontier then. It can be seen as an adventure movie, although mostly it's a war film. It's also a character study of Major Robert Rogers, very well interpreted by Spencer Tracy, commander of Rogers' Rangers, an American military company of rangers attached to the British Army (this was of course before the War of independence).

The movie is harsh in its military objective (destroying an hostile Indian village) as in its depiction of the epic journey to get there and to get back. And its mostly about the journey, where Rogers pushes his men on a grueling trip through the wilderness, on boats and on foot, through sheer grit and strength of character.

Some reviewers have complained of "too much walking in the woods", but that's the point of the movie, showing how these men pushed themselves through such a harsh journey.

It's filmed in technicolor, and that's a good thing, because this movie needs a good cinematography. The cinematography we get is not perhaps breathtaking, but it's good enough to do the trick and get us into the story.

One complaint I have is that the actors, while dirty and disheveled through all the hardships, never really look like they are starving. Also, the actual battle, while not the climax of the movie, was not done that well, at least if we judge it by modern standards. But it doesn't really matter, because as I said what matters here is the journey and the determination to survive, and that is well depicted.

An intense, harsh, war movie made in 1940 for a nation that was about to get into the biggest war.

Curiously, despite the title, it has nothing to do with searching for the Northern Passage. That was supposed to come in the second part that was never filmed. In fact, in the credits it's called chapter I.