Tonight I watched another Epic from our old pal Cecil B. DeMille, called "Unconquered" (1947). This time the setting was not Biblical but Early American. The story takes place just after the French - Indian War, a few years before the American Revolution. The film begins in England, where Paulette Goddard is on trial for the murder of a British soldier who has killed her brother. She is found guilty and given a choice : death by hanging or 14 years of indentured servitude in the American Colonies, where she will be sold upon arrival. She chooses servitude and next we see her on board a ship, sailing toward her destination.
A man of wealth and power is also aboard, played by Howard Da Silva. He is an arms dealer who sells the latest technology to the Indians - tomahawks mainly, but rifles too. He is in the war business and aims to cause conflict between the Indians and the Colonists, as he will profit from it. Beauty intrudes, however. Da Silva gets sidetracked when he sees Goddard, who is 37 in real life but playing (and looking) much younger. He finds out that she will be for sale as a bonded servant when the ship lands, and he wastes no time in making an early, preemptive bid for her, for no other reason than to possess her and force her to love him, though as a conniver in league with the warring Pontiac Indians, he already has an engagement with the daughter of their Chief, played by Boris Karloff of all people.
Gary Cooper, playing "Captain Chris Holden" is also onboard this ship. He knows all about the corrupt ways of Howard Da Silva, so he automatically bids against him for ownership of Miss Goddard. Cooper wins the shipboard auction, but instead of holding her prisoner until they reach land, he immediately signs papers giving Goddard her legal freedom. This angers bigshot Da Silva to no end, and from there the plot is launched.
This romantic angle runs throughout the film and is the thread that holds the plot together, but the content is all about the war at the Pennsylvania/Virginia border where Fort Pitt was located at the fork in the Ohio River. Manufacturers have discovered the vast amount of coal under the Earth, that could be used with the iron ore already being mined to create steel, which would later become the great commodity of that geographical area. The Howard Da Silva character is in on the steel game very early, and has control of the sharpest and most deadly instruments being produced. Gary Cooper is out to stop him. We never find out exactly where his Captainship comes from, but he seems to be in the Colonial Army and is in conference with Colonel George Washington (before he was a General).
This is a DeMille film, so there are dozens of characters and shifting subthemes recurring throughout the 2 hour and 26 minute production. It's the kind of movie where even the most marginal character is going to get his 45 seconds of screen time, and get in a good line of dialogue in the process.
But the greater whole of the movie is about the changing relationship between Paulette Goddard, red hair aflame and green gown aglow in the big studio light, and the low key Cooper, aka "Mr. Yup and Nope", who just has to show up and recite his lines in Technicolored period garb to come off looking good, which he does as always.
The film is not as classic as the Biblical DeMilles. It is long and somewhat unsustainable because DeMille is not so great at getting beneath the action. He leaves Paulette Goddard to try and carry the underwritten scenes in the plot interludes, simply by dressing her in finery and focusing on her expressive face. But it's not enough.
The Indians are mostly expressionless though intelligent savages.
Howard Da Silva is gonna hang in there to get what he believes is rightfully his.
There is a lot of Hollywood Cliche happening here, but the thing is that it's Cecil B. DeMille, so you expect it. The main problem, which keeps this movie from being great, is that he loses the playfulness he dared to show in the Biblical movies, the sauciness and idiosyncratic character motivations that we saw in "The Sign Of The Cross" for example. In "Unconquered" it feels like he is trying to give us a history lesson (ala William Castle, lol), but with somewhat wooden characters. It goes on forever and he can't make up his mind whether it's about Indians or Paulette Godard.
Still, I will give "Unconquered" Two Thumbs Up, just because - as overdone as it is - it's still Cecil B. DeMille, and we know by now that he is a great filmmaker if not a master director. We know that his films, at least some of them, are classics, and that others are worth seeing as well.
See "Unconquered", then, just to add to your De Mille education, and watch it on a night when you have time and patience. These days, I am like you - I am not big on movies that are longer than 90 minutes to be honest, because I want filmmakers to get to their point.
But again, this was Cecil B. De Mille, and Epics have their place, and stories told in Old Hollywood were always well written no matter the length, even if the director was more attuned to spectacle than subtlety. ////
This morning we only had four people in choir, but the singing was good anyhow. I like the concept of a "singing group" as I have mentioned, and don't mind the small number of singers, which vary from a low of 4 (as today), up to 10, when everybody shows up. I'd rather have our small group than a bigger one composed of semi-committed singers who attend sporadically for a few weeks and then are never seen in church again. We've had several of those. I like the permanent group we have, be we four or ten, or whatever number in between.
I hope your Thanksgiving weekend was a good one. See you in the morning.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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