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| 201 WhattheCriticsSaid... chapter 1: the silent red man The Vanishing American “The Vanishing American,” the photodrama presented last night in the Criterion Theatre before a brilliant gathering in which there were a host of celebrities, proved to be an inspiring production fashioned with infinite pains. The theme, of course, deals with the passing of the American Indian. . . . From a fleeting glimpse of the aborigines, glancing like dogs to right and left as they emerge from their recesses, one is taken to their skin-clad and paint-bedaubed successors, and then to the more interesting but slothful cliff-dwellers, who are pictured on ledges in the Grand Canyon, some dozing and others going about their toil listlessly. Energy then stalks along in the shape of the redskin, who mercilessly and easily defeats the inactive people . . .” —“The Screen,” by Mordaunt Hall. New York Times, October 16, 1925. Redskin “Sobeautifularemanyofthenaturalcolorsequencesin‘Redskin,’whichwaslaunchedlastSaturday at the Criterion Theatre, the spectators were impelled to applaud some of the lovely visions that greeted the eye. And, while this story is about as plausible as some of Douglas Fairbank’s [sic] agile adventures, it is nevertheless most carefully cast and completely acted. The incidents, far-fetched though they may be, are usually more gratifying than annoying. “OnceagainRichardDixistobeseenasamanofcopperhue.ThelasttimeheplayedanIndian was in ‘The Vanishing American.’ This time he appears as a Navajo, a fine athletic and agile person, who becomes smitten with the undeniable charms of a Pueblo maiden named Corn Blossom. “Wing Foot (Mr. Dix) loves and is loved by Corn Blossom, but the Navajos and Pueblos can’t see eye to eye. The Pueblo chieftains will that Corn Blossom shall marry a man from her own tribe, but help comes from the whites, and Wing Foot, who, during a chapter, goes to college, eventually escapes from the violent Pueblos, and so does his Pueblo girl. “There seems to be an erroneous conception in the sequence where Wing Foot goes to college, for the students there are made to look down upon a redskin. This, in itself, is an incredulous What the Critics Said . . . What the Critics Said . . . 202| What the Critics Said . . . notion and in a measure it is a pivotal point of the story. Certainly no white student would have been scornful of Wing Foot, who proved himself to be the fleetest of the fleet at the college . . .” —“The Screen,” by Mordaunt Hall. New York Times, January 28, 1929. chapter 2: john ford and “the duke” on the warpath Drums along the Mohawk “Walter D. Edmonds’s exciting novel of the Mohawk Valley during the American Revolution has come to the Roxy’s screen in a considerably elided, but still basically faithful, film edition bearing the trademark of Director John Ford, one of the best cinema story-tellers in the business. ‘Drums Along the Mohawk’ was tailored to Mr. Ford’s measure. It is romantic enough for any adventurestory lover. It has its humor, its sentiment, its complement of blood and thunder. About the only Ford staple we miss is a fog scene. Rain, smoke, and stockade burnings have had to compensate. The fusion of them all has made a first-rate historical film, as rich atmospherically as it is in action. . . . Mr. Ford has been fortunate, too, in finding such externals to play his Mohawk people as those which go under the names of Henry Fonda, Claudette Colbert, Edna May Oliver, Eddie Collins, Arthur Shields, Ward Bond and Roger Imhof.” —“The Screen,” by Frank S. Nugent. New York Times, November 4, 1939. Fort Apache “A rootin’, tootin’ Wild West show, full of Indians and United States cavalry, dust and desert scenery and a nice masculine trace of romance, has been honestly put together under the masterful direction of John Ford in Argosy’s ‘Fort Apache,’ which came to the Capitol yesterday. Folks who are looking for action in the oldest tradition of the screen, observed through a genuine artist’s camera, will find plenty of it here. “But also apparent in this picture, for those who care to look, is a new and maturing viewpoint upon one aspect of the American Indian wars. For here it is not the “heavy” of the piece, but a hard-bittenArmycolonel,blindthroughignoranceandapassionforrevenge.Andrangedalongside this willful white man is a venal government agent who exploits the innocence of the Indians while supposedly acting as their friend. “Thus, for the standard white movie audience, ‘Fort Apache’ will chiefly provide a handsome and thrilling outdoor drama of ‘war’ on the American...

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