Retro Film Review: Fort Apache (1948)

Retro Film Review: Fort Apache (1948) | Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

People who like to classify films according to their quality are often reminded of a phenomenon called “guilty pleasures” — films that are bad, but still liked, even by those cinephiles who should know better. On the other hand, we might encounter quite the opposite phenomenon – films that should be viewed as masterpieces, but are actually not very liked. The author of this review encountered such a phenomenon very often in the case of John Ford. The reason for that probably lies in first impressions which weren’t very favourable towards John Ford’s work. In my early years I used to like westerns very much, but westerns by John Ford, who had often been referred to as the best and most important director of the genre, looked somewhat “too artistic” or not attractive enough to be actually liked. Those impressions stuck with me in later years, even after my taste in films evolved.

Such was the case with Fort Apache, the 1948 western by John Ford, first in his US Cavalry trilogy. The script of the film, written by Frank S. Nugent, is based on the story called Massacre by James Warner Bellah. Fort Apache is a small, desolate garrison of the US Cavalry, populated by a rag-tag bunch of Civil War veterans, many of them former officers now reduced in rank and pay. The garrison gets a new commander – Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday (played by Henry Fonda), accompanied by his lovely daughter Philadelphia (played by Shirley Temple). Thursday sees his new post as a humiliation and desperately seeks ways to reclaim his honour and prove himself a capable military leader. His arrogance causes conflict with his subordinates, and his class snobbery creates a rift between him and Philadelphia when she falls in love with young Lt. Michael O’Rourke (played by John Agar), son of Sergeant O’Rourke (played by Ward Bond). The biggest conflict arises when Thursday, against the advice of his much more experienced subordinate, Captain York (played by John Wayne), decides to betray Cochise, the legendary Apache chief, in order to start a war that would bring him the long-desired fame. In the end, Thursday reaches his goal, but not in the way he had anticipated.

Since the plot of this film bears more than a small resemblance to the legend of Custer’s Last Stand, John Ford uses this opportunity to explore the reality of the Old West while at the same time keeping a mythical distance from this popular subject. The film indeed deals with darker pages of Old West history – the ways in which the US government dealt with the Indians and its own war veterans, and the rigid class system that existed in the US Army at the time. These motifs are explored in a variety of vignettes that deal with the everyday lives of the Fort Apache cavalrymen. Although many of them slow down the pace of the film, making it two hours long, some are very amusing and sometimes even touching; John Ford obviously liked his characters, and thanks to the actors of his legendary “Stock Company” they remain the most memorable element of this film. This is not the case with the romantic subplot involving Philadelphia and young O’Rourke – it seems forced into the movie only to satisfy a Hollywood formula.

The acting in the film is, on the other hand, very good. Henry Fonda, who plays an arrogant and self-obsessed militaristic maniac, never slips into overacting and paves the way for his role as the true villain in Once Upon a Time in the West twenty years later. John Wayne, overshadowed by Fonda’s performance, has a rather thankless role as second fiddle. That role is even more compromised by the sudden and rather unexplained change of heart in Wayne’s character – Captain York, who was portrayed as a man of integrity, follows the party line at the end. Wayne was probably less responsible for that than Ford himself, who had rather ambiguous feelings about the military while making this film. On one hand, he clearly deplores militaristic folly, while on the other, he sees the military as one big family. That ambiguity is probably the biggest weakness of this film, with the rather forgettable musical score by Richard Hageman being a close second.

So, this film isn’t among the best westerns ever made, not even among the best films by John Ford. Despite all its imperfections and despite the fact that it isn’t must-see or cult classic material, Fort Apache is still a very good piece of cinema, essential for those who want to see expressions of American myths in Hollywood movies.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on October 7th 1999)