It is no surprise that a movie about travel in the Northwest would be nominated for Best Cinematography. In fact, another film that year, North West Mounted Police, competed in the same category. They lost, as we currently are to The Thief of Bagdad.
A political comment is appropriate when reviewing this film as it is a statement of our feelings in the middle part of the 18th century in America. Just as Major Rogers (Spencer Tracy) was trying on moccasins, he says, "Don't any of these red hellions have man-sized feet?" A statement that indicates just what he thought of the Native Americans he, and his band of Roger's Rangers, were wiping out. Well, they managed to cross the frontier and slaughter a village full of 'Indians," in fulfillment of their mission as mercenaries for the British in the French and Indian War. (Shades of Blackwater!) The film concerned itself mostly with the trip home, which was hellacious, and cost him most of his men.
I enjoyed seeing Spencer Tracy (Oscars for Boy's Town and Captains Courageous, and seven more nominations) in his prime. This movie came out just after his two Oscar wins, and you see him at his peak.
Robert Young ("Father Knows Best", "Marcus Welby, M.D.", The Enchanted Cottage) was quite interesting as a more humane individual (Harvard grad, artist, mapmaker), who tagged along to escape jail (Gitmo?) for criticism of the administration.
Walter Brennan, who won an Oscar in 1939 and 1940 for The Westerner and Kentucky, and won one just a few years prior for Come and Get It, and who would get a nomination in the following year for a favorite: Sgt. York, was at the peak of his career and really shone as Young's sidekick.
I am just glad that Young gets home to his fiancée, Ruth Hussey (The Philadelphia Story). Tracy goes off to kill more Native American in hopes of a promotion in the Tory Government, not knowing that he had hooked up with the losers.
Directed by five-time Oscar nominee King Vidor, who is in the Guinness World Records as having "The Longest Career As A Film Director", spanning 67 years beginning with Hurricane in Galveston (1913) in 1913 and ending with the documentary The Metaphor (1980) in 1980.
A political comment is appropriate when reviewing this film as it is a statement of our feelings in the middle part of the 18th century in America. Just as Major Rogers (Spencer Tracy) was trying on moccasins, he says, "Don't any of these red hellions have man-sized feet?" A statement that indicates just what he thought of the Native Americans he, and his band of Roger's Rangers, were wiping out. Well, they managed to cross the frontier and slaughter a village full of 'Indians," in fulfillment of their mission as mercenaries for the British in the French and Indian War. (Shades of Blackwater!) The film concerned itself mostly with the trip home, which was hellacious, and cost him most of his men.
I enjoyed seeing Spencer Tracy (Oscars for Boy's Town and Captains Courageous, and seven more nominations) in his prime. This movie came out just after his two Oscar wins, and you see him at his peak.
Robert Young ("Father Knows Best", "Marcus Welby, M.D.", The Enchanted Cottage) was quite interesting as a more humane individual (Harvard grad, artist, mapmaker), who tagged along to escape jail (Gitmo?) for criticism of the administration.
Walter Brennan, who won an Oscar in 1939 and 1940 for The Westerner and Kentucky, and won one just a few years prior for Come and Get It, and who would get a nomination in the following year for a favorite: Sgt. York, was at the peak of his career and really shone as Young's sidekick.
I am just glad that Young gets home to his fiancée, Ruth Hussey (The Philadelphia Story). Tracy goes off to kill more Native American in hopes of a promotion in the Tory Government, not knowing that he had hooked up with the losers.
Directed by five-time Oscar nominee King Vidor, who is in the Guinness World Records as having "The Longest Career As A Film Director", spanning 67 years beginning with Hurricane in Galveston (1913) in 1913 and ending with the documentary The Metaphor (1980) in 1980.