The Indian Fighter (1955)

The Indian Fighter (1955)

Directed by Andre De Toth ; written by Frank Davis and Ben Hecht

Stars Kirk Douglas, Elsa Martinelli and Walter Mattheau 

US : 88minutes

The first film to be produced by Douglas' own Bryna Productions is also one of the first to offer a revisionist view of some of the accepted genre cliches. Douglas' Johnny Hawks is ostensibly a freelance scout working

 with the US Army in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War; yet he has sympathy with the plight of the native Americans who are having their land stolen by the relentless push west of the white settlers.

The fact that he's unwilling to align clearly with either side, seeing both sides of every argument, leads him (during the course of the film)  into conflict with both the indigenous population and the newcomers - they each in turn question his motives and loyalty. Douglas becomes a (literal) outsider figure, standing apart from the conflict and attempting to negotiate peace between the two factions despite the actions of greedy and suspicious characters on both sides to manufacture war for their own reasons and to their own ends.

In addition there's a secondary theme which runs through the film : a paean to the beauty of the natural beauty of the Old West before the coming of the railroad, deforestation and the creep of "civilisation". Elisha Cook's character is a army foot soldier who has one of the first still cameras and is desperate to capture images of the landscape and those who live there before they are wiped out and/or changed forever.

The point is underlined by De Toth's direction and the gorgeous Cinemascope and Technicolour photography by Wilfred M. Cline : not for them the barren wastelands of Monument Valley, this is a lush verdant natural paradise beautifully captured in a large number of panoramic travelling shots.

In amongst this focus on the soon-to-be-lost landscape De Toth doesn't forget that it's supposed to be an action-adventure film. There's an extended, thrilling, scene around the hour mark where an attack on the US Army fort is played out in near-silence before Franz Waxman's stirring score is allowed to creep back in.

Douglas (dressed head to toe in buckskin) is the very epitome of lithe grace and matinee idol poise and style : although his rough handed method of courtship of the daughter of the local Sioux chief suggests that there are corners of his psyche that remain unreconstituted, he's a believable figure with a natural goodness struggling against the difficult ;position in which he finds himself.

A thoughtful, clever and beautifully constructed film.