Northwest Passage

The historical epic Northwest Passage took the first generation of Technicolor cameras to rough locations, with crack director King Vidor calling the shots. Extra directors, cameramen and 12 additional writers were assigned to the project. It’s an impressive achievement, with Spencer Tracy as the bold guerilla leader and Robert Young the gentle Harvard man along for the ride. The big surprise is the film’s refusal to soft-pedal the violence of the American frontier. The theme is justifiable genocide against hostile Native Americans, and the description / depiction of ghoulish atrocities was unheard of in a pre-war movie, especially one from MGM.

The expensive film adaptation depicts a military expedition during the French & Indian Wars, from a novel serialized in The Saturday Evening Post. Filmed on distant locations in the Northwest, with untouched forests standing in for New England in 1759, the filming was as elaborate as a real army maneuver. It was also a learning experience for Technicolor. A sizeable crew was needed just to cart the enormous 3-Strip camera around — the ordeal of lugging the 400-pound monster up unpaved trails is no laughing matter.

For its year Northwest Passage is surprisingly realistic. King Vidor was committed to capturing how difficult it was for revolutionary-era soldiers to march hundreds of miles into enemy territory. Vidor had already expressed his feelings about the horrors of combat in his silent classic  The Big Parade. War was already breaking out in Europe during production. Vidor must have wanted to impress upon young Americans just how bloody and cruel battle could be. The film’s scenes of mass violence are fairly unprecedented — and in crimson Technicolor, no less — but what really sticks are its verbal descriptions of mutilation and torture. How did this get past the Production Code?

The show is actually titled Northwest Passage, Book 1 — Rogers’ Rangers, with the idea that a Book Two would continue Kenneth Roberts’ story. But MGM later pulled the plug on any sequel. Economics were likely part of the decision, but we wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Spencer Tracy was unwilling to go back for more. He never had a physical workout to equal this one, before or since.

The story begins in New Hampshire town of Portsmouth. Aspiring artist Langdon Towne (Robert Young) has been booted from Harvard for speaking his mind. The father of his sweetheart Elizabeth (Ruth Hussey) decides that he’s a bad egg and forbids their association. When Langdon’s drunken words offend Portsmouth’s corrupt town boss, he and his jailbird friend Hunk Marriner (Walter Brennan) escape westward, only to become enlistees for bloody warfare. Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) commands an elite militia fighting for the British, in Robin Hood-like green uniforms. “Rogers’ Rangers” take boats and trek West and North to strike at a French-allied Abenaki Indian encampment at St. Francis. The mission is punitive: the Rangers’ primary motive is to slaughter as many enemy natives as possible, in retaliation for earlier murderous Indian raids.

The expedition is harsh, to say the least. To avoid detection and capture, Rogers forces the Rangers to march for days without food. Injured men are left behind to die. Rogers deals harshly with troublemakers. He dismisses some of his Indian troops after confirming that an officer back home has ordered them to sabotage the mission. But the Rangers reach their target, a large village of enemy Abenakis, undetected. They get set to kill all the able-bodied warriors.

Almost all of Northwest Passage takes place outdoors among beautiful landscapes of forests and lakes. A long line of Ranger rowboats works its way upriver, and Rogers watches from the hills as boats with French soldiers in bright uniforms pass in the other direction. The movie communicates well the idea that just a few miles beyond colonial towns, green forests stretch beyond the horizon, a seemingly limitless frontier for expansion.

In a movie like this we expect to hear talk of grand motives for the future. The little bit we hear about a future search for a Northwest Passage to the Pacific, comes almost as pie-in-the-sky talk. There are no speeches about opening the wilderness and building a nation, as in the previous year’s  Drums Along the Mohawk by John Ford. Major Rogers’ soldiers don’t know or care what the conflict with the French is all about, and instead fixate on the wholesale killing of Indians.

Langdon is talked into enlisting with the idea that he’ll be able to paint the wilderness in his spare time, advance his standing as an artist, AND win the girl of his dreams when he gets back to Portsmouth. But meanwhile he’ll be drawing maps for Major Rogers. The Harvard reject becomes a crack guerilla fighter, as does his pal, the alcoholic miscreant Hunk Marriner.

Rogers has friendly Mohawk Indians with his troop. Rogers’ dealings with them have the expected racist taint for a Hollywood film of the era. The Native Americans are constantly being judged in negative ways. But I’d make the case that King Vidor is just reflecting an earlier era of cruel prejudice. In reality, both sides paid hostile Indians to do their dirty fighting.

Langdon listens as the Major encourages veterans to talk about Indian atrocities — raping women, chopping men up a bit at a time, braining babies, the works. Rogers refers to these outrages to inspire maximum hatred. It isn’t enough to follow orders — outrage and savagery are required. One description of a prisoner having his ribs severed and pulled out one by one seems unthinkably strong for a studio film of 1940. With that preparation, the Rangers go at their business without a doubt in their minds — they’re in the Injun Killin’ bizness.  ^*

The anti-Abenaki bloodlust reaches its peak in the massacre, where we see the Rangers methodically exterminate almost all the braves (and there must be hundreds) in an enormous Abenaki village set at the side of a sizeable river. No Abenaki women are seen in this large encampment, and only one boy. Despite all the ‘clean killing’ we see, King Vidor depicts what feels like a genocidal action.

The ‘bad’ Abenakis are warring on behalf of the French, but no Frenchmen are seen up close. The few that are killed stay discreetly off-screen.  The film was in production when war was declared. Could the filmmakers have wanted to downplay the French as villains, considering the situationin Europe?

The film’s last act depicts the Rangers’ terrible retreat under forced march and without provisions.  Against Rogers’ advice the group splits up, only for some parties to be ambushed by the enemy and slaughtered. Langdon Towne has been shot in the midsection, and can barely keep up with his comrades even when helped by a rescued white prisoner (professional sufferer Isabel Jewell, of  Lost Horizon). She’d rather stay behind and remain an Indian, but Rogers won’t permit it. Rogers encourages Langdon to survive so he can see his sweetheart again.

And this is a film from the MGM house of glamour?Starving soldiers do their best to hold out, but one goes crazy and wanders off, convinced that home is just over the hill. In an unexpectedly savage subplot, a mentally unbalanced Ranger (Addison Richards) tells Hunk that he hasn’t been going hungry, that he has plenty to eat.  ↘  He’s toting the severed head of an Abenaki in a bag, and has been feeding from it.  Even in a later, more permissive era, nothing like that happened with  Alfredo Garcia….  King Vidor surely had a lot of clout, to be able to make Northwest Passage the way he saw fit.

King Vidor takes a pragmatic, unromantic view of all this military carnage, but the mission is never in doubt. Wounded Rangers, and one who has simply broken his leg in a fall, stay behind without complaint, knowing that they’ll starve, or be killed by the enemy or wild animals. One of these is favorite actor Regis Toomey, whose friendly smile is immediately recognizable. When the troop finally makes contact again with British troops, formal military etiquette is still observed. American life in the middle 1700s seems totally confusing when it comes to territorial disputes and fighting. Has anything changed?

Spencer Tracy is excellent as the ‘leader of men’ making life and death decisions based on the assumption that his mission can’t be compromised by anything. He can’t be a normal guy, as he explains to Hunk Marriner. Did the filmmakers want to tell America that it must be tougher to fight in the coming war in Europe?  Rogers is celebrated as a success for bringing half his force back alive. A lot of good men fall by the wayside, to be forgotten. The freed white prisoners, including Isabel Jewell,  ↓  walk off and are not seen again. From what Langdon says, were they slaughtered by the enemy too?

We aren’t big fans of Robert Young  ↗   but we like him in this show — the actor clearly roughed it along with Tracy and the others. King Vidor presents a gallery of loyal Lieutenants and aides, with good input from actors Donald MacBride and  →  Douglas Walton. Addison Richards is genuinely scary as the Ranger turned cannibal.

As is typical, Walter Brennan  ↖  steals the picture. His Hunk Marriner goes straight from the drunk tank to honorable service. The actor leaves out his bridge to show his missing teeth. Ruth Hussey indeed looks terrific in Technicolor, although it’s amusing when she answers the front door for a surprise visit from Langdon, and just happens to be dressed and coiffed good enough to be presented to Royalty.

We’re told that Northwest Passage filmed exactly the first half of the book; it ends with the feeling that the next adventure will be non-military mission of exploration. A few unresolved story threads are left hanging: the corrupt politics back in Portsmouth and a high-ranking traitor in the British command itself. As it is, the image presented here of the historical Major Robert Rogers differs from the quick summary offered in his Wikipedia entry — it looks as if our noble hero eventually fought on the English side in the War of Independence!