Product: Fort Apache (Color Enhanced) [VHS] (1948)
Rating: 4.0
An epic Western which contains sequences in its director's best manner...
In portraying the history of the United States from the Revolutionary War to World War II, John Ford continually resorted to a deeply personal, nostalgic form of legend... If there is no doubt of his importance to the development of the Western, his uniquely sentimental, poetic glorification of the white American's conquest of the wilderness is both picturesque and reactionary...The cavalrymen get a more honorable deal from three films made in succession by him: 'Ford Apache,' 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,' and 'Rio Grande.' These are quite properly referred to as his 'cavalry trilogy' as they deserve to be considered as a body of work dedicated to a particular theme, that of the life of the cavalry and their role as frontier protectors in times of Indian uprising...'Fort Apache' is about the tensions in an isolated fort-social and military - hierarchy tensions, and, ultimately, the purely military tensions that arise when the commanding officer is transparently ill-fitted for his command...Henry Fonda is a vain, domineering, and embittered colonel who can't get over losing his Civil War rank as general... He arrives at the Arizona desert outpost to take over from the experienced Indian fighter, John Wayne... He is arrogant, accepting no advice, and further alienates the hard-bitten veterans by refusing to support the romance of his lovely daughter (Shirley Temple) with a young lieutenant from West Point (John Agar) who happens to be the son of sergeant major (Ward Bond).There are nice touches in the film here about army traditions, and undisciplined troops: Civil War veterans living in noisy harmony; amusing and touching moments with variety of vignettes that deal with the everyday lives of Fort Apache cavalrymen; and pretty Irish drunk humor from Victor McLaglen... The inevitable climax concerns, of course, the colonel's arrogance and ignorance leading his men into an Apache massacre...Ford consistently finds the most beautiful way to frame a scene, and the black and white photography is stunning... But the best of the trilogy is undoubtedly 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,' which remains for many their favorite Western movie...