A regular John Ford classic. Claudette Colbert played her role well, but her character was initially quite unlikeable. I suppose this was to show her personal growth over the course of the film. Fonda was, of course, Fonda, a bottomless pit of earnestness. Edna May Oliver was wonderful as the widow. She got an Ocar nomination, but too bad for her that this was the same year as Gone With the Wind and Hattie McDaniel.
A few commentators have lamented that Ford caricatured the Indians and portrayed them as unfairly savage. If anything they were portrayed as not nearly as savage as reality. The North American Indians in general, and the Iriquois in particular, were among the most savage and bloodthirsty races on earth. At least two instances from the film struck me letting them off much too easy. When the widow McKlennar is surprised in her bed by two warriors burning her house, she browbeats them into carrying her out of the room on her bed. These Indians would have immediately tomahawked her to death on the spot. And when the captive is rolled out to be burnt below the walls of the fort, well, the Indians would almost certainly have tortured him to death for their own amusement. There was no military advantage to letting the fort know that he was captured, and the Indians torture of captives was well known. It was a large part of their culture. which was utterly martial. The fort would never surrender, because only torture and death awaited those who did. (On rare occasions captives would be kept alive as slaves, and rarer still, a few were adopted into the tribe) The British would sometimes encourage these massacres, and sometimes try to stop them, almost never with any success. No amount of politically correct revisionism changes what these Indian societies were in those days.
A few commentators have lamented that Ford caricatured the Indians and portrayed them as unfairly savage. If anything they were portrayed as not nearly as savage as reality. The North American Indians in general, and the Iriquois in particular, were among the most savage and bloodthirsty races on earth. At least two instances from the film struck me letting them off much too easy. When the widow McKlennar is surprised in her bed by two warriors burning her house, she browbeats them into carrying her out of the room on her bed. These Indians would have immediately tomahawked her to death on the spot. And when the captive is rolled out to be burnt below the walls of the fort, well, the Indians would almost certainly have tortured him to death for their own amusement. There was no military advantage to letting the fort know that he was captured, and the Indians torture of captives was well known. It was a large part of their culture. which was utterly martial. The fort would never surrender, because only torture and death awaited those who did. (On rare occasions captives would be kept alive as slaves, and rarer still, a few were adopted into the tribe) The British would sometimes encourage these massacres, and sometimes try to stop them, almost never with any success. No amount of politically correct revisionism changes what these Indian societies were in those days.