Ferocious and fun, Apache is the first of a pair of action films that made Burt Lancaster a western hero while launching the directing career of Robert Aldrich, the king of bankable Hollywood anarchy. Burt is an unlikely-lookin’ Apache, but the solid story and gutsy liberal theme make this one of Hollywood’s more successful ‘Indian hero’ movies. Apache rewards multiple viewings, thanks to a forward momentum that barrels through its ninety-minute running time.
The story is basically a downer about a warrior adjusting to the specter of unavoidable defeat. Seeing the decimation of his tribe and the ruin of his way of life, the unregenerate renegade Massai (Burt Lancaster) refuses to surrender with Geronimo (Monte Blue). Shipped with a trainload of Indians to a Florida reservation, Massai escapes en route and makes his way back West on foot. He’s baffled by the strange world of the white man’s towns. At first believing he’s been betrayed by his sweetheart Nalinle (Jean Peters), Massai kidnaps her and wages a one-man war against white men and cowardly Indians alike. Indian fighter Al Sieber (John McIntire) and Nalinle’s fiancee Hondo (Charles Buchinsky, not yet Bronson) are given the job of hunting Massai down. But the whirlwind warrior is more than a match for the two of them, and the whole Union Army as well.
Apache is several movies rolled into one. As a vehicle for the action-dervish Lancaster, it allows him to sell a social message while wowing the kids with the athletic circus thrills of his costume pictures, as seen four years previous in Jacques Tourneur’s The Flame and The Arrow. Burt runs like the wind, or better, like his previous Native American superman character Jim Thorpe. He routinely leaps fifteen feet off high rocks, and without a lot of padding or ground prep. With Burt in ‘Red Face’ makeup Massai may now feed fuel to PC complaints. But Massai is so charismatic, he surely inspired real Apache kids to cheer for him at matinees.
The most original part of the movie is Massai’s escape from that Florida-bound relocation train in Missouri. His Odyssey takes him through the white man’s strange world. Striding through an 1880’s urban ‘downtown,’ he’s puzzled by things like women’s bustles and Chinese merchants. Massai is too obsessed to be all that curious about these oddities, but the cumulative impression of ‘civilization’ forces him to acknowledge that opposition is futile — there are too many White Men and they are just too powerful.
At first sight Massai seems a clichéd ‘Injun savage’ whose only virtue is his stubborn resistance. But it’s actually a fair portrait of a strong man reacting in a rational way to the demise of his entire universe. Massai embodies the soul of his culture as he asserts his warrior pride. He’s also pig-headed and ignorant, judging others by his narrow views. On his trek back Massai spends a night at the farm of an assimilated Cherokee named Dawson, who gifts him with some good corn seed. Dawson is played by Morris Ankrum, who would return as a Mexican general in Aldrich & Lancaster’s next film, the even bigger hit Vera Cruz. Massai becomes interested in the corn seed out of pride: what can the Cherokee do that the Apache cannot do better?
It’s impressive to see Massai redeemed by the love — and pragmatic good sense — of a good woman. Jean Peters’ abused & bruised Nalinle loves Massai so much that she doesn’t mind being bound hand and foot and dragged across some really rough country. Getting Massai to call off his war against the white man’s world is no easy feat for Nalinle. Her faith makes the bag of Cherokee seeds into a hopeful symbol that works well in the film’s liberal scheme. Fatherhood does the rest: by the finish Massai has become an idealized ‘Apache For All Seasons.’ That would work well if it didn’t paint the story into a corner from which it can’t escape. I’ll get to that issue a little farther down.
This was the first movie to earn Robert Aldrich some industry traction as a director. One of the most respected assistant directors in the business, Aldrich’s reputation was such that an MGM producer had simply slipped him into the job of directing The Big Leaguer. Aldrich was a huge sports fan so the baseball story was a good fit. Adapted from a TV show, his second movie World for Ransom became such a mess that he didn’t even sign it. But its theme of atomic extortion strongly reflects Aldrich’s bent toward controversial subject matter. It’s possible that producer Burt Lancaster signed Aldrich to direct Apache hoping that he would just follow the star’s orders. To say that Lancaster wanted things done his way would be an understatement. He would soon direct his own movie, The Kentuckian.
It’s obvious that the director of Apache knows what he’s doing. The movie has zero ‘visual fat.’ Every camera angle contributes to the clear narrative. The movie really moves, expressing most of its points through action. In keeping with Aldrich’s consistent subversive streak, Massai is an enthusiastic terrorist hero. His warrior code requires an honorable death rather than accept a compromise. The movie only shows Massai fighting legit opponents — no slaughtering women and children for this matinee hero. ← Of course, the real achiever is Jean Peters’ Nanlinle, who manages to steer her man from proud suicidal rage, almost all the way to Dagwood Bumstead domesticity.
→ I recognize views of Sedona, Arizona, and I think I see Vasquez Rocks as well. But Apache seems to have been shot all over, with faraway mountain views taken in the High Sierras. Aldrich does excellent work keeping locations in the West San Fernando Valley from looking like the usual movie ranches.
1954 was a big year for Civil Rights progress, at least in the media. Apache’s liberal-aggressive stance fits the temperament of both its star and director. I see some sensitive screenplays in the early work of James R. Webb, but nothing as energized as this show. The script wastes no time establishing the basics of white persecution.The white authority figures see the Apache as a problem that needs to be removed by whatever means works. The treacherous, publicity-seeking Weddle (John Dehner) wants to profit from the situation, and is such a slimeball that he’ll commit murder just to lessen his workload. Scout and tracker Al Sieber (John McIntire) is a professional with more integrity. He doubts that Massai will stop being a menace, but has an open mind and welcomes evidence to the contrary. (Sieber is also a real historical figure.) The cavalry commander in charge Lt. Col. Beck (Walter Sande) is an interesting creation, thoughtful and open-minded about Massai’s potential for reform. The show even plays fair with the depiction of Charles Bronson’s Hondo, an Apache working as a guide for the Army and eager for advancement. Massai considers Hondo a craven sellout, especially because he covets Nanlinle as well. The movie accepts Hondo as a logical consequence of assimilation.
This show and Vera Cruz appear to be Charles Bronson’s last roles under the name Buchinsky. His first billing as Charles Bronson came in the same year’s Drum Beat for Delmer Daves… but still playing an Indian.
Robert Aldrich shared Burt Lancaster’s desire to dispense with Hollywood niceties. An entire episode in the movie celebrates the entertainingly brutal Massai-Nanlinle relationship. Massai tosses Nanlinle around like a sack of potatoes, drags her through the dirt, and ties her up for hours on end like a dog. It’s practically a parody, yet the direction and performances don’t elicit laughs. Some might think it not all that far removed from bondage porn. Since it’s Jean Peters on the receiving end of the abuse, she comes out of it still looking like a million.
What was the deal with Peters and rough stuff? In Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street she’s game for a scene in which Richard Kiley literally cleans house with her, shoving and smashing her into one piece of furniture after another. The rough stuff in Apache only makes Nanlinle seem to love Massai more. Wotta gal, as they say. Did Howard Hughes respond to Peters’ screen image? They married three years later.
The finale of Apache is often noted as having been imposed against Robert Aldrich’s wishes. The original script ended in a logical tragedy: Massai is shot down just as he shows a proclivity toward farming, assimilating as had the Cherokee farmer. United Artists (or Lancaster’s producing partners?) allowed Aldrich to shoot that downbeat ending, but also instructed him to film an alternate upbeat finish, ‘just in case.’
Naturally the director was later outranked and the happy ending was used against his wishes. “If you don’t shoot it, they can’t use it against you,” he reasoned. The finished version feels good but is rather absurd. It doesn’t make sense for the Army to show Massai mercy, considering that he has just shot, clubbed and stabbed several troopers.
We can’t blame the producers, as the original downer ending would have left audiences for Apache in a bad frame of mind. Considering the industry climate of the time, the original ending might also have invited charges of anti-Americanism against the filmmakers. Mourning the bad historical deal handed Native Americans was acceptable, but not suggesting that winning the west was a genocide (gasp). When Aldrich took control of his films, his provocative, overheated dramas frequently invited conservative outrage.
Viewers incensed by Apache’s view of Massai as an idealistic hero can take comfort in the fact that Robert Aldrich revisited this same subject matter twenty years later, in his jarringly violent, unsentimental tale of another Apache renegade, Ulzana’s Raid… starring Burt Lancaster. The great star is still pretty darn spry, but he doesn’t jump off any fifteen-foot rocks.
