Product: Fort Apache (Color Enhanced) [VHS] (1948)
Rating: 4.0
A clash of personalities
This Fordian classic is one-third of the "Cavalry Trilogy" and the only one that focuses on a character other than the one played by John Wayne. Around 1876, Lt.-Col. Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda), following a generalship in the Civil War and several years in Europe, arrives in the Arizona Territory with his 16-year-old daughter Philadelphia (Shirley Temple) to take up the duties of C.O. at Fort Apache, which has been temporarily under Capt. Kirby York (Wayne), with the older Capt. Sam Collingwood (George O'Brien), with whom Thursday has a history, as his adjutant. Also newly come--or perhaps more accurately newly returned, since he grew up there--to Fort Apache is the new-minted Lt. Michael O'Rourke (John Agar), son of the post's sergeant-major (Ward Bond), a 15-year veteran who started out as an officer in an Irish regiment during the War. Phil Thursday and young Michael almost immediately fall in love, while Thursday attempts to impose his particular style of command on his men--and on the Apaches, led by Cochise (Miguel Inclan), whom he tricks into returning from Mexico by using York and the chief's trust of him as a stalking horse. What results is tragedy for almost everyone concerned.Thursday is a paradoxical character: he claims he isn't a martinet, but he behaves like one, especially with regard to his daughter's romance; he confronts the corrupt Agent for the Apaches, Silas Meacham (Grant Withers), then loses all sympathy and respect for the Indians before he even meets them face-to-face; he's arrogant, yet courageous to the point of sacrificing his own life to fulfill what he considers his duty--and he can dance a very respectable polka, too! Fonda, who ordinarily specialized in more sympathetic roles, deserves commendation for managing to bring to life a character so unlike his usual. Like most Westerns of its era, this film plays rather fast and loose with history: no Secretary of War with the name Thursday mentions ever really existed; Cochise did war against the Americans for a good dozen years, but once a treaty had been made with him he never broke out again, and he died quietly on his reservation in 1874. Yet it does accurately point out that much Indian trouble could have been avoided if the agents hadn't been almost universally crooks; and its picture of everyday life on a remote Army post--the training of recruits, the formal behavior of the miniature society that grew up in these situations, the mutual-assistance society formed by the wives of officers and noncoms alike--is splendid. A high point is the "Sergeants Four," Quincannon (Dick Foran), Shattuck (Jack Pennick), hard-drinking Tipperary native Festus Mulcahy (Ford stalwart Victor McLaglen), and the half-Mexican, former-Confederate-officer Beaufort (Pedro Armendariz), who provide both comic relief and a thumbnail sketch of what Indian-fighting noncoms must have been like. And, of course, the stark, striking Monument Valley scenery, though not as impressive in black and white as it would be in color, is a plus. Through it all John Wayne provides a pivot-post around which everything revolves--a stabilizing influence with a practical understanding of Apache ways and tactics and a strong sense of his own obligations and honor, who ends, deservedly, by commanding the regiment. This is definitely one of the best of the many Ford/Wayne teamups and should be in the collection of anyone who likes the work of these two stalwarts.