If you can forgive the obvious--the white actors playing natives and the "Me want cookies" delivery of lines by the Indians--you've got a movie so good that you may find yourself doing what I did as Robert Wagner (about as handsome a young man as a gal could ever hope for) tries to control his emotions as he tries to care for the lifeless body of Jeffrey Hunter. It's as loving a moment in a western as you may ever see, and as tragic--nearly as painful to watch as John Wayne getting the door closed on him at the end of The Searchers. I watched this scene and let out an audible "awwww."
My daughter heard me and thought I was talking to myself.
Wagner, who starts the movie as a lightweight actor in over his head, gains stature in a quiet and unobtrusive manner. You grow to like him, not through heroics but from calm intelligence. Wagner underplays his Josh Tanner; you respect his grit and compassion, even as you wonder how a guy could be that boyish.
I was just looking for a good, old-fashioned western when I taped White Feather off Fox Movies a few months ago. What I got was a heart- felt, eye-brimmingly sad, and astonishingly beautiful (to look at) film about the last days of the Plains Indians as a group of free peoples.
Made in 1954, White Feather was clearly designed to compete with the mind-suck of television by offering a very wide screen image. Director Robert Webb and his cinematographer take time to make you suck in air from the exotic Durango, Mexico locations (standing in for Wyoming). As the many nations head toward their shared misery of their reservation ghettos, they pass by the viewer, so close you can see the agonized stoicism of the womens' faces. The wide angle captures the bigness of the diaspora in reverse. The cinematography adds to the near-epic story by making us witness a tragedy writ large.
White Feather is sparingly violent, literate, and superbly acted film, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants something more than a Saturday Matinée shootemup.
My daughter heard me and thought I was talking to myself.
Wagner, who starts the movie as a lightweight actor in over his head, gains stature in a quiet and unobtrusive manner. You grow to like him, not through heroics but from calm intelligence. Wagner underplays his Josh Tanner; you respect his grit and compassion, even as you wonder how a guy could be that boyish.
I was just looking for a good, old-fashioned western when I taped White Feather off Fox Movies a few months ago. What I got was a heart- felt, eye-brimmingly sad, and astonishingly beautiful (to look at) film about the last days of the Plains Indians as a group of free peoples.
Made in 1954, White Feather was clearly designed to compete with the mind-suck of television by offering a very wide screen image. Director Robert Webb and his cinematographer take time to make you suck in air from the exotic Durango, Mexico locations (standing in for Wyoming). As the many nations head toward their shared misery of their reservation ghettos, they pass by the viewer, so close you can see the agonized stoicism of the womens' faces. The wide angle captures the bigness of the diaspora in reverse. The cinematography adds to the near-epic story by making us witness a tragedy writ large.
White Feather is sparingly violent, literate, and superbly acted film, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants something more than a Saturday Matinée shootemup.