Fighting Caravans (1931)

Powerful

A lot of fun.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

In the early days of sound Paramount purchased a number of Zene Grey stories to be filmed, mostly as B picture attractions and done by their rising new B picture cowboy, Randolph Scott. Fighting Caravans however got the A picture treatment and starred Gary Cooper. Cooper plays a young hell raising scout who's been taught the ways of the woods by two grizzled old timers, Ernest Torrence and Tully Marshall. All three of them sign on to guide a wagon train in the 1860s west. Adding to the attraction for Cooper is pretty young Lily Damita who earlier on pretended to be his wife to get him out of trouble with a sheriff.A lot of the same ground was covered by Twentieth Century Fox the year before with The Big Trail and its new star John Wayne. The Big Trail however failed to find its audience, but Fighting Caravans with proved box office star Cooper showed a respectable profit for Paramount-Publix as the white mountain studio was called at that time. Of course both films owe plenty to James Cruze's silent classic, The Covered Wagon.Like in The Big Trail the villain here is a renegade white man, stirring up the Indians. The very rousing attack on the wagon train during the climax had elements of it borrowed over 20 years later in the James Stewart western, Bend of the River.A whole lot of Gary Cooper's early sound films for some reason are never shown. Possible that prints no longer exist. Though Fighting Caravans is not a great film, it's an entertaining one. In fact a few years later it was remade by Randolph Scott in Wagon Wheels where that film used all kinds of stock footage from this one.

The story is stunningly trite, which is not unusual for Zane Gray novels. Two hard-drinking, grizzled scouts, big Scots-accented Bill Jackson and squirrelly little Jim Bridger have raised a handsome young orphan scout Clint Belmet. They conspire to get him out of some sort of trouble in Independence, Kansas, by convincing a pretty young French woman, Felice, to pretend to be Clint's wife. She is setting out across the country with a wagon train to supply the California settlement, and the scouts go along, and pretty soon there's a romance, which Jackson & Bridger loathe and try to foil. Clint nothing more than a giant boy. The caravan is menaced by a war band of Plains Indians, egged on by an evil turncoat white man. The photography is sometimes nice, and the character actors chew the scenery admirably. Gary Cooper is very handsome, and his face more expressive than in some later films, and Lily Damita at times is quite lovely. The story depends on several stupid premises: Clint must grow up and settle down, because the old west is finished (especially when his two mentors die), and after a while he accepts it. Worse yet, the assumptions made by the story and especially the summary titles all rest grotesquely on the doctrine of manifest destiny, which renders Indians savage killers struggling futilely against inevitable progress, and the "pioneers" are heroes, of course. Still, the movie is worth seeing as a curiosity, a slightly embarrassing statement of the values of the 30s.

The motion picture was, in all likelihood, made in the year 1930 and released in 1931. I would surmise that talking motion pictures had great difficulty in making the transition from the silent era. Nevertheless, this particular Zane Grey plot appears to be very weak. Also, Gary Cooper was probably just learning to act. The result is something that would not be acceptable by today's standards. For 1931, maybe. For 2004, not acceptable. Some of the actors performed well. Sadly, the Indians always get the short end in these early westerns. They were living on the land long before the white man came, but according to twisted history, they had no right to defend themselves.

"The old time west is passing," says one of the characters in "Fighting Caravans." This early 'talkie' is also one of the earliest 'big budget' westerns from what I read. Unfortunately, this is a B Movie all the way, and not that entertaining either. A young Gary Cooper plays a scout of some sort who is working for a wagon train caravan carrying freight from Missouri to Sacramento, California in the 1860's during the civil war and right before the railroads had been built throughout the west. There is hardship, danger, Indians, romance and cornball humor in this vintage western. Somehow, when you mix them all up together, the recipe isn't all that tasty. The humor is obnoxious at times and the acting, even Gary Cooper's, is noticeably weak during some scenes. This movie tries to be several different types of movies all rolled in to one and it doesn't pull it off. Interestingly enough, there are moments in the film where it is evident that the style of acting and camera work from silent films is still being used. It is a bit fascinating to see how an early 1930's filmmaker portrayed the 1860's. I'd say pass on this movie unless you are a Gary Cooper fan or a hard core fan of early westerns. 61/100.