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"To the North," as Keats says, the Harvard dropout's visceral education. He's a lad in colonial times (Robert Young), dreaming of art and instead getting tricked into joining a military expedition by a mug of hot buttered rum. Major Rogers (Spencer Tracy) and his Rangers into the wilderness of the French and Indian War, knee-deep in the swamp, arm to arm in the river's ferocious foam. "We don't stop for funerals." The trajectory of the mission dictates the two-part structure, bravado first followed by exhaustion and hunger and madness. "Might as well be back in jail," grouses the greenhorn's friend (Walter Brennan). King Vidor's consideration of The Big Parade for Technicolor and wartime, at once robustly expansionist and cautiously isolationist. At the center is the raid on an Abenaki village, full of encircling fusillades and torched tepees, a confrontational view of the kind of Manifest Destiny massacre usually discreetly left out of coonskin-cap epics. (The fiery staging is a bridge between Griffith and Kurosawa.) The hero's beloved (Ruth Hussey) is a portrait on his sketchbook, his visual skills are best used in maps, meanwhile Vidor helps himself to Thomas Cole canvases for the exceptional location shooting. The green of landscapes remains sumptuous while the green of uniforms fades and tears, the elusive titular territory is the stuff of awe and frustration: "Hardwood groves like cathedrals," says the commander, "as good a name for Nowhere as any," says a grunt. The decapitated "souvenir" in the sack, the mirage of the ruined fort, the miracle of redcoats bearing gifts. "You've got one advantage over the rest. They just want to stay alive, you want to stay alive and paint pictures." Consequences far and wide, Objective, Burma!, The Big Sky, The Searchers, Deliverance, Fitzcarraldo... With Nat Pendleton, Robert Barrat, Lumsden Hare, Donald MacBride, Douglas Walton, Addison Richards, Isabel Jewell, and Regis Toomey.
--- Fernando F. Croce |