L'enfant du désert

I was about 11 years old when my parents took me to the Fox Theater in Inglewood, California to see this film. It just so happened that Dean Stockwell was appearing in person before the film and was answering questions from the audience. He was very shy and an adult male did most of the answering. I remember loving this film - perhaps because the star was present - as a western adventure involving a big locomotive. I remember the relationship between the father, looking for the boy, and the son as being more realistic than I had seen in films. By this age I was a veteran film-goer, seeing my first film, a Walt Disney film, at age of six. I gotta get a copy of this film to re-live it.

This a neat, colourful "Captains Courageous" variation, with veteran Joel McCrea and youngster Dean Stockwell combining really well. The moralising and the sentimentality are underplayed and the action is excitingly staged by underrated director Kurt Neumann (even if some of the 'wild horse' scenes are taken from an earlier Universal-International western - directed by George Sherman - called "Red Canyon"). All in all this 78 minute oater is well worth catching.

Young Dean Stockwell is one spoiled kid, but with his father Leon Ames running a railroad, he's hardly got time for the kid. After Dean gets lost on the New Mexico desert when his father's train stops to take on water, he's found by Joel McCrea who's the top hand of a Cattle Drive going to Sante Fe.

That Cattle Drive is the making of young Dean. Under the tutelage of Joel, the kid turns out to be quite a good hand.

If the story sounds familiar like everyone else who reviewed this film, we all noted the obvious similarity between Cattle Drive and Captains Courageous.

McCrea and Stockwell had worked well together before in Stars in My Crown for MGM the year before. Though Cattle Drive is a good film, I can't recommend Stars in My Crown highly enough.

Look also for a nice performance by Chill Wills as the cook on the drive. A man definitely good to stand in with as we learned in Monte Walsh.

There's no violence in Cattle Drive, there's no women in it either. We do learn Joel does have a girl friend as he shows a picture of Frances Dee to all who will look.

It's a shame that Cattle Drive is not out on VHS or DVD it's a perfect family film to rent.

Although the CONNECTIONS link on IMDb does not say it, this is clearly a remake of "Captains Courageous"--the famous Spencer Tracy/Freddie Bartholomew film of the late 1930s. Now, Dean Stockwell plays the bratty rich kid and Joel McCrea takes Tracy's role as a friend and nursemaid (of sorts) to this kid. But, instead of being set at sea, this film is in the Old West--on the prairie. Instead of a fishing boat, the boy is taken on a cattle drive. When the brat is lost on a cross-country railroad trip, he is picked up by a group of cowboys. One takes the boy under his wing and shows him responsibility and kindness--things the boy truly needed to learn for himself. Because the basic story was so nice, this new film couldn't help but work as well--which it did, thanks to some excellent performances by Stockwell, McCrea and Chill Wills. Well worth watching--and nearly as entertaining as the original. This film's one advantage over the earlier film is McCrea's simple performance. Although Spencer Tracy won the Oscar for his performance, to me it was a bit broad in style.

By the way, the ending of "Cattle Drive" is very, very, very different from "Captains Courageous"--very!

Solid script, good plot, strong performances - especially from the young Dean Stockwell - and superb scenery make for a very entertaining film. Nothing gimmicky in technique but solid and professional with a decent pace. Story has an excellent moral being the taming of a spoilt Eastern kid by a gang of experienced cowboys on a cattle drive. It is, however, not a typical kid's picture - it has a wide appeal and works for adults as well as children. Reviewed January 2001 on a very rare appearance on British television.