Broken Arrow (1950)

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General		Extras
Category	Western	Main Menu Audio Trailer-Forty Guns
Rating
Year Of Production	1950
Running Time	128:50 (Case: 90)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Delmer Daves
Studio Distributor	Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	James Stewart Jeff Chandler Debra Paget Basil Ruysdael Will Geer Joyce Mackenzie Arthur Hunnicutt
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	Hugo Friedhofer

Woody:

    You just gotta love a good Western. And Broken Arrow is a good Western. Not great, not one of the all-time classics of the genre, but definitely a d*** good Western. And no, this isn't the 1996 John Woo movie Broken Arrow where Travolta strangles his cigarettes to death instead of smoking them, and keeps beating up on poor old Christian Slater. This is the 1950 Western Broken Arrow, which tells the story of Captain Tom Jeffords (the loveable James Stewart). Jeffords is an Arizona ex-army Scout, a man of principle and an unpopular respecter of the Apache Indians. After an experience saving the life of a wounded Apache youth, Jeffords sets out on a mission to establish peace with the Apache leader Cochise (Jeff Chandler, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this role). Cochise isn't known for his tolerance of white Americans, but is won over by the bravery and respect displayed by Jeffords. Along the way, Jeffords falls for an Apache girl (Debra Paget), which presents nearly as many problems as the truce that he and Cochise attempt to enforce.

    For me, James Stewart is a cinematic icon on par with John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant and only a handful of others. Having said that, I generally like my Western heroes to be a little dirtier and tougher than Stewart plays Jeffords, and feel that his best work was his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (most notably Vertigo and Rear Window). But he is such an engaging presence no matter what movie he turns up in, and you just can't help liking the guy and that familiar drawl he always spoke in. As Jeffords, Stewart radiates such honour and respect that it makes his unlikely friendship with Cochise all the more believable. And despite the fact that he is quite obviously not a Native American, Chandler is also great as the stoic yet good-humoured Cochise.

    But the real value in this film is its surprising treatment of the Apaches. Many Westerns of this era presented Indians as no more than shotgun fodder. Broken Arrow, on the other hand, spends considerable time detailing the cultural beliefs of the Apaches, and, through Stewart, the respect we should have for them. The film is remarkably even handed - both whites and Indians display savagery in this movie, but both groups also display more redeeming qualities like love, bravery and tolerance. And there's some great Western dialogue, brought to life by Stewart and others.

   Jeffords: "Cochise can't even read a map, but he and his men know every gulley, every foot of every mountain, every waterhole in Arizona. His horses can go twice as far as yours in a day, and his men can run on foot as far as a horse can run. He can't write his name, but his intelligence service knows when you got to Fort Grant and how many men you got. He stopped the Butterfield Stage from running. He stopped the U.S. Mail from going through. And for the first time in Indian history, he has all the Apaches from all the tribes fighting under one command".

    There are a few glitches. The narration by Stewart doesn't always work. At times it even distracts you from the story, such as at the start when he says that the story happened exactly as you see it, expect that the Indians spoke in their native language instead of English. This is bit clumsy and it makes you wonder whether Stewart is speaking as his character or as himself. The frequent use of white American actors instead of native Americans is also a bit obvious at times, but it's probably silly to blame Broken Arrow for such a common problem of this era.

KC:

   Agreed, Woods. You gotta love a good Western, but I also like mine with more guns and arrows. This movie started off slow and I had trouble getting into it. Stewart was too soft a hero for mine, and that accent, welllllll, now it's got me drawling like him. The story of white men against Apache dominated the movie and it was getting too wholesome. The morals and pride of both Jeffords and Conchise, while admirable, gets a little too sickly sweet. But the longer it went the more it won me over. Cochise and Jeffords encounter some real difficulties and the encounters start to get nasty. There is foul play, ambushes and gun play as the movie heats up. The end comes suddenly.

   Cochise: "To talk of peace is not hard. To live it is very hard".

Video

   We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of this video transfer. OK, it's 1.33:1 and non-16x9 Enhanced. But unlike other discs we have reviewed from Umbrella Entertainment, there are no major problems with artefacts or other defects, colours were surprisingly good, and the picture is very sharp and clear at all times.

    Presented Full Frame at an aspect ratio of 1.29:1, Broken Arrow was originally shot in 35mm 1.37:1.

    The picture is very clear and sharp. There are only a handful of night scenes during the film but all showed an impressive lack of low level noise.

    This movie has some beautiful Western settings, and colours were represented well with the dirt, canyons and sky looking natural (especially considering that Technicolor films of this vintage often have that artificial pastel look to the colour palette).

    As with many older films, the frame does wobble slightly on a few occasions; whether this is a problem incurred during the Telecine process or a limitation of the old camera equipment, it's hard to say.

    There are no subtitles present on this DVD, which is unfortunate as we would have liked to see how some of the native Indian names and words were spelt.

    This is a single sided, single layer DVD.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    This is a single English Dolby Digital 2.0 (320Kb/s) audio track, and is clear and audible at all times.

    We detected no dialogue or audio sync problems.

    The music is typical of a Western of this period, reminiscent of the scores of the John Ford/John Wayne Westerns. It does its job without being remarkable. Music is clear and sharp, with the exception of some distortion when the trumpets and violins reach a crescendo, but this is obviously a limitation of the recording equipment used on the original source audio.

    Understandably, there was no surround channel usage or subwoofer effects detectable when surround encoding was used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     Broken Arrow unfortunately has no extras to speak of, with the exception of a trailer for another Western DVD available from Umbrella - Forty Guns (1957). Unlike Broken Arrow this movie seems fairly uninteresting and the poor quality of the trailer does not make us want to seek it out.

    This All Region version is the only one we have been able to identify. Strangely, the movie has not been properly released on DVD in America, with this Australian version being available on import.

   An enjoyable and interesting Western, with a surprisingly even-handed presentation of the Indian Wars, and another great performance by the legendary Jimmy Stewart. Also one of the best video transfers we've seen on a low-budget 1.33:1 DVD and a film of this era.

   The video is pretty good.

   The sound is acceptable.

   The extra is unremarkable.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall