Le grand passage

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

Northwest Passage was produced in one of the golden years of the golden era of Hollywood....1939-1940., and contains all of the best of what MGM had to offer. Based on the Kenneth Roberts novel of the same name, Northwest Passage covers "Part I - Roger's Rangers" of that epic work. Set in Colonial American during the French and Indian Wars, it recalls the true exploits of a group of Rangers sent up into the French-Canadian woods to wipe-out a village of enemy-aiding warriors..... and especially the agonizing hardships on the trip home as they are pursued by the French. The scope of this movie has always impressed me, from the coziness of the firelight of a Studley's Tavern, the richness of The Reverend Brown's palor, the solid construction of Crown Point, and the beauty of the forest.

The Cast is top-notch headed by Spencer Tracy as Major Rogers. Robert Young, Walter Brennen, Ruth Hussey, and others help to make this a real treat to watch. The technicolor is of the fine old process, and we see hues and tones that are not visible in today's movies. Also, the musical score is compelling. This movie is absorbing, and when watched without interruption, the viewer gets swept along as though part of the story.

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.

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.

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!