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Broken Arrow


#704 - Broken Arrow
Delmer Daves, 1950



In 1880s Arizona, a white man befriends an Apache war chief and becomes embroiled in a multi-sided conflict.

Another day, another movie about the unsurprisingly complicated relations between white Americans and Native Americans. Broken Arrow is rooted in historical fact as it sees Jimmy Stewart play a white man whose basic human decency towards a wounded Apache boy gradually results in him earning their trust, though his fellow whites still regard the tribe as bloodthirsty savages and have trouble believing that he was able to maintain genuinely peaceful relations with them. Stewart's character then does his best to broker something stronger than an uneasy cease-fire as he becomes more and more involved with the Apaches as he befriends their leader (Jeff Chandler) and starts to warm to one of the tribe's women (Debra Paget).

Broken Arrow is another lean movie so I think it deserves a lean review. It has the usual brand of old Hollywood workmanship to it so the craft doesn't draw attention for either the right or wrong reasons. Stewart naturally proves a good centre around which to build the film, while Chandler and Paget give serviceable performances that compensate for some rather distracting redface. I do give films like this credit for at least attempting to offer sympathetic portrayals of Native Americans in a mainstream 1950s film, but even so the resulting film is arguably a bit too thin even when considering its brief running time.