Cheyenne Autumn [VHS]

The story for this film, was written by Marie Sandoz, who as a young girl, grew up on the edge of a Cheyenne Reservation. Her books are based on conversations she had with warriors who actually lived through, and took part in the saddest days of their glorious history.
If you skip the usual Hollywood absurdities contained in the Wichita Kansas segment, you may well enjoy the images captured by the use of the 70mm Panavision cameras, used to capture the sheer majesty of the landscape, the land that once belonged to these noble people.
No doubt this film could be remade today, and be far more authentic, but the original locations are probably covered in concrete now. Still, it's worth a watch, if you make the necessary allowances.

I have read the reviews about John Fords 'Cheyenne Autumn'. John Ford tried in this film I believe to highlight the truth about the american indians,the true native americans, not the different cultures who claimed to be americans. He tried to highlight the plight of the native americans and how they were forced from their native lands onto reservations where nothing except weeds would grow. They couldn't hunt buffalo because they like the indians had been hunted and killed almost to the point of extinction.In the 60's when the film had been made all the news had been about the civil rights movement and the rights of the black american citizens. John Ford tried to remind the american public that there was another race of people in America who weren't receiving any civil/human rights and were still living on reservations in inhumane conditions. John Fords last movie ' Cheyenne Autumn' was like all his previous films a great movie and a lasting tribute to a great director and an indictment of how americans and their goverment had mistreated the true american people.

Common wisdom has it that Cheyenne Autumn is a well-intentioned failure, and while his last Western is certainly far from John Ford's best, it is one of those films that becomes more impressive on repeated viewings. Although seen by many as an apologist epic made as an act of contrition by Ford for so many decades of stereotyping Native Americans, he always denied this, and it has to be said that, Two Rode Together apart, his Westerns generally had a bit more respect for the various tribes than his contemporaries. Instead its appeal seems partially as a good yarn, albeit one compromised by budgetary concerns, and one of his sporadic shots at an important message picture with a social conscience. Although it's not an unqualified success, his often spectacular retelling of the Cheyenne tribe's epic trek from their rundown reservation back to their original homeland has a lot to recommend it. While it's hard today to see the main Cheyenne characters played by the likes of Sal Mineo and a predominantly Latin-American cast - Ricardo Montalban, Dolores Del Rio and Gilbert Roland among them - and have most of the film seen through the eyes of white characters like Richard Widmark's conflicted cavalry officer, Carroll Baker's school ma'am and many familiar faces from the Ford stock company (including a surprisingly unbilled Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr in virtual reprises of their Rio Grande roles), it was a major achievement at the time to even tell a story about the callous treatment of the Native American tribes: feelbad epics had never been a good bet at the box-office.

Certainly at times you get the feeling that Warner Bros. were trying to save money wherever possible. Many of the more dramatic incidents of the real trek were cut from the script to save money, one key section is obviously shot on a soundstage rather than on location and there is some crude backprojection at the end (perhaps necessitated by having to replace Spencer Tracey with Edward G. Robinson), often leaving the film looking rather disjointed. The biggest misstep is the Dodge City sequence, which was Ford's idea of a comic relief intermission. While mildly amusing, it's a massive shift of tone that adds nothing to the story aside from an opportunity to add a little starpower with James Stewart's comical Wyatt Earp and cronies Arthur Kennedy and John Carradine and which could easily be removed from the film entirely without anyone noticing (indeed, it was cut from many prints after the film opened to get more shows in). Nonetheless, there are still many powerful sequences, from the Cheyenne standing all day in the baking sun to welcome a Senate Committee that can't be bothered to travel the dusty road to the reservation to a prolonged episode in a fort when Karl Malden's self-aggrandizing and ambitious commander sees them more as an opportunity than as starving and freezing human beings. There's certainly much to like, from William H. Clothier's fine widescreen photography of Monument Valley (this would be Ford's last film in his favorite location), a good score from Alex North and a nicely underplayed proposal scene in a schoolhouse. If it never quite gels, it's still a noble attempt at popularising difficult subject matter.

Warners 2.35:1 widescreen Region 1 NTSC DVD is the fully restored version of the film, including a vintage 20-minute documentary on the real trek, the theatrical trailer and an often amusing audio commentary by Ford biographer Joseph McBride - apparently the extras can often be heard swearing in their own language secure in the knowledge that none of the crew had a clue what they were really saying!