Cheyenne Autumn
by John Ford
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DVD details
Actor: Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Ricardo Montalban, Richard Widmark, Sal MineoDirector: John Ford
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Restored, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.20:1
Running Time: 156 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-02-13
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Cheyenne Autumn
DVD Review: John Ford's heartfelt tribute to the Cheyenne Trail of Tears
Summary: 3 Stars
Report card for CHEYENNE AUTUMN, John Ford's epic retelling of the Cheyenne Trail of Tears, an 1878 exodus of over 300 men, women, and children off their barren Oklahoma reservation 1,500 miles north to the Black Hills of Dakota.
Acting. *** (3 stars out of five.) It's hard to know exactly who to point the finger at, but a finger has to be pointed at someone. Richard Widmark stars as the cavalry officer who spends most of the movie chasing the fleeing Cheyenne, and he's very good as the hard driving, ambivalent army officer. Even Carroll Baker as a Quaker schoolteacher and Mike Mazurki as the troop's top sergeant are given some nice scenes. The problem lies with the casting of the Cheyennes. Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland play Little Wolf and Dull Knife, two real life characters who led the Cheyenne in their dangerous flight. Sal Mineo, of all people, plays Little Wolf's son Red Shirt. Montalban and Roland are both proven commodities - good actors, too - but they weren't Native Americans (in fact, both were from Mexico - Mineo was an Italian-American who hailed from Brooklyn.) They aren't the first actors covered in greasepaint to play characters of another race, and that isn't the biggest problem, anyway, although casting a non-Native American in those roles probably wouldn't even be attempted today. The problem lies with Ford's approach to the Cheyenne, which can probably best be characterized as solemn and dignified. The intention is laudable, but the execution leaves a huge hole in their movie. Montalban and Roland come off as stiff and wooden and lacquered, and the movie is crippled by it. Even when they're in scenes alone with each other they're forced to say stuff like `My brother! We have always thought as one. Not even a straw has come between us!' If Ford had drawn up just one scene that allowed Little Wolf and Dull Knife to let the starch out of their spine long enough to say something like`I don't know if we're gonna make `er, Little Wolf,' -in other words, be identifiably human for a couple hundred feet of celluloid - they would have locked us in with them. But he didn't, and they don't.
Pacing. **. Ye gods preserve me from movies that are so long they need an `Intermission Entr `Acte' in the middle of them. CHEYENNE AUTUMN clocks in at a morbidly obese 154-minutes, 2-1/2 hours, and like most marathon epics it tends to flow unevenly. The likeliest candidate for liposuction is the Dodge City scene that occurs right before the intermission. Jimmy Stewart and Arthur Kennedy play Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, two participants in a hastily formed posse/citizen army created to intercept the Cheyenne in their flight. It's a fairly long, almost slapstick interlude that would only make sense if we were emotionally engaged with the Cheyenne and needed comedy to relieve the gloom. But Ford doesn't come close to getting under the skin of either Little Wolf or Dull Knife, and of the Cheyenne we remain distant, detached observers. For what it's worth, Stewart made no less convincing a Wyatt Earp than Mineo a Red Shirt.
Photography. *****. Breathtaking and stunning are the first words that come to mind, followed by beautiful and sublime. Ford was a visual artist of the highest caliber, and CHEYENNE AUTUMN doesn't disappoint on that score. You can freeze the image at just about any point in the movie and you'll get a beautifully composed still picture. It helps that this, Ford's last western, was shot in his beloved Monument Valley. It doesn't hurt that his Cheyenne take three-quarters of the movie getting out of that small patch of territory, either.
CHEYENNE AUTUMN is a mixed bag, worth a recommendation with reservations. If you're a fan of John Ford movies it's probably essential viewing, if for no other reason than it's the only film of his in which Native Americans were treated as wholly sympathetic characters.
Description of Cheyenne Autumn
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