Unconquered (1947)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's 1763 and we have a good guy Gary Cooper (Chris) and a bad guy Howard da Silva (Garth). They should be on the same side in the war for the American territories but da Silva is siding with the Indians and secretly selling them weapons. Convicted killer Pauline Goddard (Abby) is a slave girl that is caught in the middle of both their plans.It's interesting to see that Hollywood films in 1947 portrayed arms sellers as the bad guys whereas in complete contrast, we celebrate arms dealing as a good thing today. This has been recently highlighted when Donald Trump very publicly signed an arms deal with Saudia Arabia of all countries! And it was heralded as a good thing – media just reported it as a matter of fact without any sense of criticism. I was shocked. But then again, this is nothing new. When I was a boy, I lived near a house that I'd walk passed on a daily basis that had Picassos on the wall, that sort of thing. It's owner – a friend of the Royal Family and very open arms dealer – Khashoggi. It's everywhere and we don't seem to have a moral compass on this issue. We are a country of Howard da Silvas and no-one blinks an eye. That's where capitalism has taken us. I think we should be reigning things in. So, in line with current thinking, da Silva should come out on top. Thankfully, this is Hollywood.The cast are very good although it is funny how Goddard has a constant supply of lipstick and shampoo to make her hair nice and fluffy throughout the film. No criticism on her acting, though – she is a good female lead. And Cooper, whilst maybe a little old for the role, still has the star quality to carry the film. It's a good epic film to enjoy on a Sunday afternoon or whenever you have some time.

This is my favourite Cecil B DeMille picture. I'm not really a huge fan of his films, however this one dealt with a slice of history I find fascinating.The story is set in Britain's American colonies during the Pontiac Rebellion of 1763. Just before the conflict commences, Captain Chris Holden (Gary Cooper) buys indentured convict, Abby Hale (Paulette Goddard). At first it is to thwart adversary Martin Garth (Howard Da Silva), but later they fall in love. Da Silva has the showiest role as the frontier equivalent of the head of organised crime - he supplies the Indians with weapons and ignites the war.Some old movies gained a touch of movie magic because of the slightly unreal look of the sets, especially when shot in moody B/W, but not Cecil's movies, they just looked fake. Lighting outdoors for the technicolour cameras was a problem for sure, but one movie, "Northwest Passage" made a few years earlier and set around the same period managed to do it brilliantly. The problem with locking the film away on the sound stage is that this was a time in American history that is all about the outdoors; the unexplored wilderness with the small population of colonists set against the vastness of the mountains and forests. Michael Mann caught it in "The Last of the Mohicans", but DeMille's movie is very stagebound.However Cooper and Goddard hold the thing together. Paulette Goddard could wear period costumes beautifully, and she played feisty well. Cooper was the epitome of the confident, quietly spoken man of action although he didn't change gears much from film to film.Real life characters are threaded throughout the story: George Washington and even Guyasuta, the Indian Chief played by Boris Karloff. However Cecil didn't avoid too many stereotypes in his depiction of the Indians, in fact he probably invented some of them.Paulette Goddard plays an Englishwoman sentenced to transportation to the American colonies and virtual slavery. Before the War of Independence, 40,000 convicts were sent. After losing America, Britain transported its convicts to create colonies in Australia, eventually 150,000 were sent over about 60 years. Possibly not many Americans or Australians are aware of that connection.There haven't been many films about this era other than various versions of "The Last of the Mohicans". "Unconquered" works despite its cheesiness mainly because of the actors and the colourful period in which it is set.

It's 1763 in and around Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania. Gary Cooper is an amiable captain in His Majesty's First Own Monongahela Fusiliers or something. Trouble is brewing with the Indians, called "savages." The savages speak a made-up language, unless "iksa" is a prominent part of their Algonquian dialect. When they speak English, they say: "You burn white woman at stake." Paulette Goddard is a slave whose ownership is in question -- a tug of war between the honorable Cooper and the villainous Henry da Silva. The legitimate owner, of course, is Cooper, who soon takes to romancing his slave. "The moonlight has turned your dress into emeralds." And "The starlight is dancing in your eyes." Now, lines like this don't come easily to Gary Cooper, nor does his dress uniform. Comfortable in fringed leather, he has to wear this garish outfit to the governor's ball. An absurd three-cornered hat. A bright blue jacket with scarlet facings and bright brass buttons. But BOOTS -- no white stockings for Gary Cooper. Real men don't wear white stockings. It's just one step away from fishnet and garter belts. All together, he carries on like a man with long, jointed sticks instead of limbs, but always honorable. Cooper bamboozles a tribe of savages about to burn Goddard alive by playing tricks with a compass. The Indian chief, Boris Karloff, is stupefied by the unerring arrow of the compass. It's a scene out of Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." Karloff's character -- Guyasuta - Chief of the Senecas -- was a real historical figure, an early pal of, and guide for, George Washington. Paulette Goddard is an attractive women, even though she is no longer the sprightly nymph with the pretty legs from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." And she's superb as a slave whose dress may be torn to shreds, who may be rough-housed by the villainous, cheating, thieving, lying, murdering, rapist Howard da Silva, dunked in a rapidly flowing river, and tortured by Indians, and who must scrub floors in a filthy tavern, but who never loses a false eyelash or is without lipstick and rouge. She was never a bravura actress but evidently a nice woman. When she died, she left most of her estate to New York University.Those taverns, by the way, look convincing as all get out, like the other interiors. Production design and set dressing don't usually get their due but they should because they add so much texture to the images. That tavern is stuffed full of sacks of grain, hewn tables, simple rickety chairs, piles of corn, long rifles hung on racks, trenchers, pewter tankards and unidentifiable bits of feathered artifacts. The direction is by Cecil B. De Mille so don't expect nuance in the acting. When a woman is frightened, she doesn't just scream. She puts her clenched fists against her cheeks, pops her eyeballs, and shrieks in horror -- if she doesn't faint outright.The movie has its merits. It's as colorful as a peacock's tail. The interplay between the characters is old fashioned but classic. We get to see George Washington when he was a mere colonel. And there is a genuinely exciting scene in which Cooper and Goddard escape from the pursuing Indians in a canoe. Their canoe plunges over a waterfall the size of Niagara and their escape is a miracle. At the end, Fort Pitt is besieged by whooping savages, scaling the palisades using canoes as ladders. The white defenders shoot them down by the hundreds, but savages are as many as needle on pine tree, mosquito in swamp, fish in Lake Erie, flea on hound dog, snake on head of Medusa, pigeon on statue, dollar in Trump wallet, fly on picnic table, illegal at border, gun in NRA closet.The climax involves a shoot out between two enemies. "I know you can draw faster than me," says one of them, drawing a line quickly from a thousand and one scenes in cheap Westerns. Well, Fort Pitt is under siege and hopelessly outnumbered. And the outcome? The cavalry arrives and saves the day. Salutem ex mortuis.

I had heard that Howard Hawks wanted Gary Cooper to play the lead in red river, but Cooper didn't want to play a character that dark so he played in this instead. That would of been cool to see Cooper play John Wayne's part in Red River. This movie has a great cast like Cooper, Ward Bond, Boris Karloff and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. This movie has been compared to Northwest Passage but i think this one is better. Cooper is good as usual and so is the rest of the cast.