James Stewart agrees to accompany soldier Richard Widmark in a mission to restore kidnapped white people back from the Comanche... which proves not to be the greatest idea in the world. Frank Nugent's screenplay comments on the problems of assimilation.
It feels slightly uncertain in tone - Widmark and Stewart are supposedly friends, but Stewart pulls a gun on the other. Repatriated Indian kills his 'mother', turns out he was Shirley Jones' long lost brother all along, before he's lynched. Linda Cristal isn't allowed to fit in anywhere. Andy Devine provides comedy relief. I suppose all Ford's films are something of a jumble but this one feels a little more uncertain. It turns put he didn't like the script, did the film as a favour for Harry Cohn.
Great moments include the opening, Stewart's mercenary girlfriend Annelle Hayes, long take of Widmark and Stewart by the river. With Woody Strode, John McIntire, Paul Birch.
Ford in conversation with PB: "We've got this big screen... If i can play a scene in a two-shot, where you can see both faces very well, I prefer it that way." Photographed by Charles Lawton.
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