Le Fils de Geronimo

To a large degree calling this film The Savage is quite the misnomer because Charlton Heston as the lead character is anything, but savage. Heston who starts out in the film with his character as a child played by Orley Lindgren is the only survivor of a wagon train massacre by the Crow Indians. A band of Sioux drive off the Crow who are their bitter enemies and take in Heston who is raised by the Sioux and given the Indian name War Bonnet.

That's his last real contact with white people until years later he rescues some cavalry troopers pinned down by the Crows who are his mortal enemies now as well. Lieutenant Peter Hansen brings him to the cavalry fort where he's accepted and even evinces some interest by Hansen's sister Susan Morrow.

But when Heston's own Indian sister Joan Taylor is killed by some other troopers the Sioux call for war and Heston is in the fight.

The Savage is a sincerely made effort at showing the American Indians as three dimensional characters in line with Broken Arrow and Devil's Doorway which came out a couple of years earlier. But the script and plot are totally muddled and with it Heston's character. In the end I'm not sure how or why he was doing what he did.

Heston does well in the part and another crucial role of note is that of Indian hating army captain Richard Rober whose career was cut short when he was killed in an automobile accident. He played a fine selection of villains in his short career and his last film was released five years after he died. Rober probably hid his face in shame in an afterlife when Jet Pilot came out.

In Heston's early years between those two DeMille epics The Greatest Show On Earth and The Ten Commandments his films varied in quality from good to mediocre. The Savage kind of falls between both categories, good intentions with poor execution.

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

Coming two years after "broken arrow",this movie continues in the same vein:the Indians are treated as human beings who have wisdom and whose struggle is legitimate.Most of them are loyal,even if there are traitors and cowards among them(the same goes for the white ones).Actually,it's John Ford who came first as an Indians' champion with "fort Apache"(1948).

"The savage" is a moderately satisfying western,which owes a lot to Charlton Heston's majestic presence.The pastoral scenes are nice enough but they don't cut these of "Broken arrow".For instance, the female character has not Debra Paget's radiant presence and anyway she disappears too soon.The direction has neither Daves' lyricism,nor Ford's or Mann's epic inspiration,even less Walsh's madness.Sometimes Georges Marshall (and his scriptwriters) look like school teachers,giving good and bad marks, sometimes to the Indians,sometimes to the "soldier blue".

The topic of the man torn between two cultures will be resumed by Martin Ritt in the sixties (Hombre,1967)and Kevin Costner's "Dance with wolves" will be a successful update of "broken arrow".As for Marshall's film,Charlton Heston's numerous fans may appreciate his convincing rendition.

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.

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....