Le Fils de Geronimo

This colorful western adventure has a nice mixture of action and moral dilemma as hostilities break out between the cavalry and Indians. Charlton Heston, in one of his early roles, is obliged to walk a fine line between loyalty and treason, as an adopted son of a chief and as a cavalry scout. The picture was filmed in South Dakota's lush Black Hills, a country of great natural beauty. There are cavalry-Indian skirmishes and intrigue at the army post as Heston plays both ends against the middle. As both sides prepare for battle, the pressure mounts for Heston to be a hero or a renegade, and bring peace or destruction for his Sioux brethren. Peter Hansen, Richard Rober and Milburne Stone are among the good cast and Susan Morrow and Joan Taylor are the ladies who are smitten with Heston, one as a scout, the other as a Sioux warrior. Paul Sawtell contributes another fine score, a spare, melancholy accompaniment to a golden-age western.

Oh my, this is all backwards. True that the Sioux and Crow were bitter enemies, but the Crow were the good guys in the Indian wars and the Sioux, heaven knows, were not! The Crow served as army scouts during the battles against these Sioux. The history of the Sioux shows them in constant warfare with surrounding tribes. You need a scorecard to tell Charlton Heston's loyalty from one moment to the next, but all's well that ends well in a great compromise. The scenery is beautiful and the women gorgeous. The Caucasian actors make a valiant effort to look and sound native. This film held my interest, but barely.

Let us never forget that director George Marshall was maybe like Richard Thorpe a very prolific film maker, beginning his career during the silent period, and then resuming his filmography with all kinds of movies, comedies - even with Laurel and Hardy - dramas, adventures, crime and above all westerns: THE SAVAGE, THE SHEEPMAN, GUNS FOR FORT PETTICOAT, and a segment of HOW THE WEST WAS WON, PILLARS OF THE SKY and the two versions of DESTRY; as George Miller with his both MAD MAX, decades later. That said this western is verry rare in terms of topic. I try to remember a western with a reverse scheme, an Indian raised by White folks....

The Savage is directed by George Marshall and adapted to screenplay by Sydney Boehm from the novel The Renegade written by L.L. Foreman. It stars Charlton Heston, Susan Morrow, Ian MacDonald, Peter Hansen, Joan Taylor, Richard Rober, Ted de Corsia, Frank Richards and Don Porter. Music is by Paul Sawtell and cinematography by John F. Seitz.

It's an honourable failure, a film of good pro Indian intentions, but ultimately the narrative thrust is dampened by a script not prepared to challenge its themes. Plot finds young Jim Aherne (Orly Lindgren) as the only survivor of a wagon train attack by the Crow Indians who are not prepared to adhere to the newly called for truce between the whites and the reds. Fortunately for Jim, the Sioux come along and see off the Crow and the Sioux chief raises him as his own son in the Indian traditions. Growing up to be Warbonnet (Heston), he's a happy man, but trouble is brewing between the whites and the reds and Warbonnet gets torn between loyalties.

What transpires is a familiar thread that sees Warbonnet, a white man by birth but Indian of upbringing, see at first hand racism and foolhardy politics from both sides of the fence. There's a good quota of action spread throughout the pic, with the location photography around the Black Hills of Dakota making for a pleasing backdrop, and there's some well structured passages that let Heston strut his stuff. Yet it never adds up to being more than a gentle sermon, with characters that basically can't veer from the standard old fashioned formula of such pictorial genre pieces.

Worth a viewing for Heston and Western purists, but not worth hunting high and low for. 6/10

Photographed in color in the Black Hills of South Dakota, George Marshall's "The Savage" is a sympathetic look at the Indian Sioux presenting them as people, recurring on love and loyalty based on mutual respect—in this case, the bond between a Chief Indian and his adopted son...

The film opens in 1868 on Sioux country, with a wagon trail attacked by the aggressive Crow Indians... All are massacred except Young Heston, eleven-years old... Sioux warriors arrive on the scene, in their eyes the young boy is a brave warrior, instantly adopted by Yellow Eagle—chief of this Miniconju branch of the Sioux with the name of War Bonnet...

Time goes by and the boy grows to manhood... War was about to break out between the Sioux nation and the white men... Heston has to decide soon on whose side will fight... Meanwhile, a pretty young squaw named Luta (Joan Taylor) has fallen in love with Heston who sees her only as his "little" sister... She reacts by calling him: "Man of stone, man who sees no woman, man of no love. Blind one!"

The great moment of the film is the test of truth, before the assembled warriors in the great council meeting, questioning on Heston's divided loyalty... Yellow Eagle's only request: "My son. I ask only one thing. Do not bring disgrace to my name."

Charlton Heston early efforts as an actor are exciting:

• Heston, the best warrior: galloping at full tilt to catch a wild white stallion..

• Heston's wisdom at the Indian meeting: "Is it the pigment of a man's skin which makes him a Miniconju, a member of the mighty Sioux? Is it the color of his eyes? No, neither of these things. It is the beating inside his body."

• Heston's anger: "From this day forth, let no man call me white!"

• Heston's delicate hint if he allows the ambush to go through, innocent men, women, and children will be killed: "My heart no longer quickly grows hot with anger, but all whites are not killers."

• Heston, a peacemaker: "I do not ask for sympathy. I am here to stop you from destroying yourselves."

• Heston's warn: "More soldiers will come... More guns as many as there are stars in heaven. For every soldier you kill, ten will come."

With violent action scenes and great beautiful sceneries (mountains, lakes, woods, grasslands) "The Savage" is a fair Western, solemn, humane, rather tedious...

Strangely enough, one year later, Heston is cast in an excellent Western "Arrowhead," as a chief of scouts for U.S. armed forces fighting Apaches...