"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" is the second part of John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy, coming between "Fort Apache" (1948) and "Rio Grande" (1950). All three films star John Wayne as a cavalry officer during the Indian wars of the late 19th century. In the other two episodes of the trilogy Wayne plays the same man, Kirby York, but here he plays a different character, Captain Nathan Brittles.
Wayne was 42 at the time the film was made, but Brittles is supposed to be considerably older, probably in his late fifties, an aging officer on the verge of retirement. The year is 1876, the year of Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and news of this event has spread throughout the West. Encouraged by the news, the Cheyenne and Arapaho have left the reservation and gone on the warpath. Brittles is given one last mission to try and avert a conflict. His task is made more complicated by the fact that he has also been ordered to escort his commanding officer's wife and her niece Olivia to an eastbound stagecoach.
A subplot deals with the rivalry between two young officers for the affections of the lovely Olivia. The film's title refers to an American tradition of women wearing yellow ribbons to show that they have a husband or lover serving with the Armed Forces. Olivia has started to wear a yellow ribbon, but refuses to say for which of the officers she is wearing it. This tradition is also made explicit in the theme song, which we hear sung several times by the men under Brittles' command. As in the other two parts of the trilogy, the cavalrymen seem to spend as much time singing as they do fighting.
This is the most visually attractive instalment in the trilogy, and the only one of the three to be made in colour. It was shot on location in Ford's beloved Monument Valley, which also features in several of his other films, and its visual look is said to be based on the paintings of the great Western artist Frederic Remington. It won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color, even though the cinematographer Winton Hoch frequently clashed with Ford.
I would rate the film more highly than "Rio Grande", but not as highly as "Fort Apache", which remains my favourite of the trilogy. Wayne is excellent here, but there are no other performances to rank alongside that of Henry Fonda in "Fort Apache", where his character, Owen Thursday, loosely based upon Custer, is a genuine tragic hero, a man destroyed by a flaw in his character. The characterisation can be based upon stereotypes; Ford may have been an Irish-American, but the character of Sergeant Quincannon, intended as comic relief, panders to the Anglo-Saxon prejudice that Irishmen are all hard-drinking, garrulous and quarrelsome.
For all its visual attractiveness "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" does not really contain any great set-piece scenes, except possibly the one near the end where Brittles and his men stampede the Indians' horses out of their camp, thus avoiding war without bloodshed, and this scene has always struck me as unconvincing. Would not the Indians, who are experienced warriors and heavily reliant upon their horses, have posted sentries to guard against the possibility of such a manoeuvre?
The trilogy as a whole tends to suffer from another drawback, that of looking at history from a too one-sided viewpoint. The films are set during the Indian Wars, but there are no major Indian characters. The only Indian referred to here by name is Chief Pony That Walks, and he is portrayed largely as an irrelevance, a peace-loving but beaten old man, unable to control the younger hotheads within his tribe. Ford never attempts to challenge the Manifest Destiny view of American history, the doctrine which held that white Americans had both the right and the duty to subdue and settle in the whole continent without regard to the wishes of its indigenous peoples. There is no attempt to understand why many Native Americans had come to believe that the white man could not be trusted and had rejected the pacifism of Pony That Walks. "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" is an attractive and well-crafted Western which in its day did well at the box office, but it does not qualify as a great one. 7/10
Wayne was 42 at the time the film was made, but Brittles is supposed to be considerably older, probably in his late fifties, an aging officer on the verge of retirement. The year is 1876, the year of Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and news of this event has spread throughout the West. Encouraged by the news, the Cheyenne and Arapaho have left the reservation and gone on the warpath. Brittles is given one last mission to try and avert a conflict. His task is made more complicated by the fact that he has also been ordered to escort his commanding officer's wife and her niece Olivia to an eastbound stagecoach.
A subplot deals with the rivalry between two young officers for the affections of the lovely Olivia. The film's title refers to an American tradition of women wearing yellow ribbons to show that they have a husband or lover serving with the Armed Forces. Olivia has started to wear a yellow ribbon, but refuses to say for which of the officers she is wearing it. This tradition is also made explicit in the theme song, which we hear sung several times by the men under Brittles' command. As in the other two parts of the trilogy, the cavalrymen seem to spend as much time singing as they do fighting.
This is the most visually attractive instalment in the trilogy, and the only one of the three to be made in colour. It was shot on location in Ford's beloved Monument Valley, which also features in several of his other films, and its visual look is said to be based on the paintings of the great Western artist Frederic Remington. It won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color, even though the cinematographer Winton Hoch frequently clashed with Ford.
I would rate the film more highly than "Rio Grande", but not as highly as "Fort Apache", which remains my favourite of the trilogy. Wayne is excellent here, but there are no other performances to rank alongside that of Henry Fonda in "Fort Apache", where his character, Owen Thursday, loosely based upon Custer, is a genuine tragic hero, a man destroyed by a flaw in his character. The characterisation can be based upon stereotypes; Ford may have been an Irish-American, but the character of Sergeant Quincannon, intended as comic relief, panders to the Anglo-Saxon prejudice that Irishmen are all hard-drinking, garrulous and quarrelsome.
For all its visual attractiveness "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" does not really contain any great set-piece scenes, except possibly the one near the end where Brittles and his men stampede the Indians' horses out of their camp, thus avoiding war without bloodshed, and this scene has always struck me as unconvincing. Would not the Indians, who are experienced warriors and heavily reliant upon their horses, have posted sentries to guard against the possibility of such a manoeuvre?
The trilogy as a whole tends to suffer from another drawback, that of looking at history from a too one-sided viewpoint. The films are set during the Indian Wars, but there are no major Indian characters. The only Indian referred to here by name is Chief Pony That Walks, and he is portrayed largely as an irrelevance, a peace-loving but beaten old man, unable to control the younger hotheads within his tribe. Ford never attempts to challenge the Manifest Destiny view of American history, the doctrine which held that white Americans had both the right and the duty to subdue and settle in the whole continent without regard to the wishes of its indigenous peoples. There is no attempt to understand why many Native Americans had come to believe that the white man could not be trusted and had rejected the pacifism of Pony That Walks. "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" is an attractive and well-crafted Western which in its day did well at the box office, but it does not qualify as a great one. 7/10