It's 1763 in and around Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania. Gary Cooper is an amiable captain in His Majesty's First Own Monongahela Fusiliers or something. Trouble is brewing with the Indians, called "savages." The savages speak a made-up language, unless "iksa" is a prominent part of their Algonquian dialect. When they speak English, they say: "You burn white woman at stake." Paulette Goddard is a slave whose ownership is in question -- a tug of war between the honorable Cooper and the villainous Henry da Silva.
The legitimate owner, of course, is Cooper, who soon takes to romancing his slave. "The moonlight has turned your dress into emeralds." And "The starlight is dancing in your eyes." Now, lines like this don't come easily to Gary Cooper, nor does his dress uniform. Comfortable in fringed leather, he has to wear this garish outfit to the governor's ball. An absurd three-cornered hat. A bright blue jacket with scarlet facings and bright brass buttons. But BOOTS -- no white stockings for Gary Cooper. Real men don't wear white stockings. It's just one step away from fishnet and garter belts. All together, he carries on like a man with long, jointed sticks instead of limbs, but always honorable.
Cooper bamboozles a tribe of savages about to burn Goddard alive by playing tricks with a compass. The Indian chief, Boris Karloff, is stupefied by the unerring arrow of the compass. It's a scene out of Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." Karloff's character -- Guyasuta - Chief of the Senecas -- was a real historical figure, an early pal of, and guide for, George Washington. Paulette Goddard is an attractive women, even though she is no longer the sprightly nymph with the pretty legs from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." And she's superb as a slave whose dress may be torn to shreds, who may be rough-housed by the villainous, cheating, thieving, lying, murdering, rapist Howard da Silva, dunked in a rapidly flowing river, and tortured by Indians, and who must scrub floors in a filthy tavern, but who never loses a false eyelash or is without lipstick and rouge. She was never a bravura actress but evidently a nice woman. When she died, she left most of her estate to New York University.
Those taverns, by the way, look convincing as all get out, like the other interiors. Production design and set dressing don't usually get their due but they should because they add so much texture to the images. That tavern is stuffed full of sacks of grain, hewn tables, simple rickety chairs, piles of corn, long rifles hung on racks, trenchers, pewter tankards and unidentifiable bits of feathered artifacts. The direction is by Cecil B. De Mille so don't expect nuance in the acting. When a woman is frightened, she doesn't just scream. She puts her clenched fists against her cheeks, pops her eyeballs, and shrieks in horror -- if she doesn't faint outright.
The movie has its merits. It's as colorful as a peacock's tail. The interplay between the characters is old fashioned but classic. We get to see George Washington when he was a mere colonel. And there is a genuinely exciting scene in which Cooper and Goddard escape from the pursuing Indians in a canoe. Their canoe plunges over a waterfall the size of Niagara and their escape is a miracle. At the end, Fort Pitt is besieged by whooping savages, scaling the palisades using canoes as ladders. The white defenders shoot them down by the hundreds, but savages are as many as needle on pine tree, mosquito in swamp, fish in Lake Erie, flea on hound dog, snake on head of Medusa, pigeon on statue, dollar in Trump wallet, fly on picnic table, illegal at border, gun in NRA closet.
The climax involves a shoot out between two enemies. "I know you can draw faster than me," says one of them, drawing a line quickly from a thousand and one scenes in cheap Westerns. Well, Fort Pitt is under siege and hopelessly outnumbered. And the outcome? The cavalry arrives and saves the day. Salutem ex mortuis.
The legitimate owner, of course, is Cooper, who soon takes to romancing his slave. "The moonlight has turned your dress into emeralds." And "The starlight is dancing in your eyes." Now, lines like this don't come easily to Gary Cooper, nor does his dress uniform. Comfortable in fringed leather, he has to wear this garish outfit to the governor's ball. An absurd three-cornered hat. A bright blue jacket with scarlet facings and bright brass buttons. But BOOTS -- no white stockings for Gary Cooper. Real men don't wear white stockings. It's just one step away from fishnet and garter belts. All together, he carries on like a man with long, jointed sticks instead of limbs, but always honorable.
Cooper bamboozles a tribe of savages about to burn Goddard alive by playing tricks with a compass. The Indian chief, Boris Karloff, is stupefied by the unerring arrow of the compass. It's a scene out of Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." Karloff's character -- Guyasuta - Chief of the Senecas -- was a real historical figure, an early pal of, and guide for, George Washington. Paulette Goddard is an attractive women, even though she is no longer the sprightly nymph with the pretty legs from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." And she's superb as a slave whose dress may be torn to shreds, who may be rough-housed by the villainous, cheating, thieving, lying, murdering, rapist Howard da Silva, dunked in a rapidly flowing river, and tortured by Indians, and who must scrub floors in a filthy tavern, but who never loses a false eyelash or is without lipstick and rouge. She was never a bravura actress but evidently a nice woman. When she died, she left most of her estate to New York University.
Those taverns, by the way, look convincing as all get out, like the other interiors. Production design and set dressing don't usually get their due but they should because they add so much texture to the images. That tavern is stuffed full of sacks of grain, hewn tables, simple rickety chairs, piles of corn, long rifles hung on racks, trenchers, pewter tankards and unidentifiable bits of feathered artifacts. The direction is by Cecil B. De Mille so don't expect nuance in the acting. When a woman is frightened, she doesn't just scream. She puts her clenched fists against her cheeks, pops her eyeballs, and shrieks in horror -- if she doesn't faint outright.
The movie has its merits. It's as colorful as a peacock's tail. The interplay between the characters is old fashioned but classic. We get to see George Washington when he was a mere colonel. And there is a genuinely exciting scene in which Cooper and Goddard escape from the pursuing Indians in a canoe. Their canoe plunges over a waterfall the size of Niagara and their escape is a miracle. At the end, Fort Pitt is besieged by whooping savages, scaling the palisades using canoes as ladders. The white defenders shoot them down by the hundreds, but savages are as many as needle on pine tree, mosquito in swamp, fish in Lake Erie, flea on hound dog, snake on head of Medusa, pigeon on statue, dollar in Trump wallet, fly on picnic table, illegal at border, gun in NRA closet.
The climax involves a shoot out between two enemies. "I know you can draw faster than me," says one of them, drawing a line quickly from a thousand and one scenes in cheap Westerns. Well, Fort Pitt is under siege and hopelessly outnumbered. And the outcome? The cavalry arrives and saves the day. Salutem ex mortuis.