| Product Summary | | Publisher: Foxvideo | | Format: DVD | | UPC: 00024543482765 | | Buy.com Sku: 205817833 | | Item#: V2LE67 | | Category Keywords: Adventure Indians War | | Rating: NR |
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| | | Directed by John Ford.
Features: DVD, Aspect Ratio 1.33:1, Spanish, Subtitled, Sensormatic
Lawless frontier. Indian attacks. Settlers protecting themselves the only way they know how - with guns and courage. In the years before the Revolutionary War, the East was as wild as the West would be one hundred years later. Henry Fonda delivers one of his most memorable performances ever as a young frontier leader protecting his family in the backwoods of New York state. Claudette Colbert co-stars as his spirited wife. With a fine supporting cast that also includes Edna May Oliver and John Carradine, this is one of John Ford's most exciting historical dramas.
"The audience quickly warms to the characters of this involving motion picture. Filmed in lush, vibrant color." At-A-Glance Film Reviews
"...Ford's first film in color and contains at least a handful of his most beautifully composed moments." Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
"Beautifully photographed historical drama from John Ford." Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress
Editor's Note
DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK is John Ford's first film in Technicolor (which recently perfected far richer shadings of color than had previously been possible), and the director uses it to stunning effect. The film stars Henry Fonda as Revolutionary War-era farmer Gilbert Martin, who, in 1776, has returned with his well-born wife, Lana (Claudette Colbert), to his rustic cabin in the increasingly dangerous Mohawk River valley. At first unaccustomed to the harsh physical challenges of frontier life, Lana adjusts to the work at hand and is soon able to help her husband in the fields. Shortly after they learn that the colonies are at war with the British, their farmhouse is attacked and burned to the ground by a party of Tory-led Indians. The feisty Widow McKlennar (Edna May Oliver) provides temporary shelter for the couple, but it's only a matter of time before the Indians launch a more brutal assault. Save for THE QUIET MAN, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK contains the richest passages of pastoral imagery in Ford's entire canon, the visual beauty nearly upstaging the spectacular and terrifying Indian battles. The performances, particularly Oliver (who garnered an Oscar nomination) as the vinegary widow and the superbly stoic Fonda, enable Ford to again demonstrate the heroism and limitations of rugged individualism. The scenes of an Indian prisoner spread-eagled on a wagon and Gilbert's escape are repeated almost exactly in the 1982 dystopian classic THE ROAD WARRIOR.
Plot Summary
The simple life of two newlyweds in the Mohawk River Valley is savagely disrupted by Indian raids.
| Features | Audio Commentary By Film Historians Julie Kirgo & Nick Redman | | Audio: English Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital Mono | | Audio: French, Spanish Dolby Digital Mono | | Dubbed: French, Spanish | | Interactive Menus | | Original Theatrical Trailer | | Scene Selection | | Still Galleries: Advertising (10 Stills), Lobby Cards (8 Stills), Studio Portraits (33 Stills), Behind The Scenes (75 Stills), & Production Stills (75 Stills) | | Subtitles: Spanish |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Foxvideo |
| Release Date: 12/4/2007 |
| Running Time: 104 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1939 | | Catalog ID: 2248277 | | UPC: 00024543482765 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Standard 1.33:1 [4:3] |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Nominee (1940) | | | Oscar, Edna May Oliver, Best Actress in a Supporting Role | | | Oscar, Ray Rennahan, Bert Glennon, Best Cinematography, Color |
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| | Professional Reviews | Variety 8 of 10
Having great sweep and colorful backgrounding, with the photography unusually good, the picture is an outdoor spectacle which highly pleases the eye even if the story [from the novel by Walter D. Edmonds], on occasion, gets a bit slow and some incidents fail to excite...While the backgrounding is beautiful, as photoged by Bert Glennon, it doesn't always look like the Mohawk Valley (upstate New York) region with wheat fields, evergreens, big birches, etc. as atmosphere...The story deals with farming pioneers of the Mohawk Valley sector at the time of the Revolutionary war, with Indian terror and English intrigue, plus hardship, testing the stamina of the colonists. Romance of Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert, who have married and are forging ahead to new frontiers, has pull.
FilmCritic.com 8 of 10
Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert star in this outdoor adventure taking place during the American Colonial period, playing a young married couple who try to make a home in New York's Mohawk Valley and end up having to brave bands of marauding Indians and John Carradine with a black eye patch as they struggle to form a nuclear family in a burgeoning frontier community (in upstate New York). As usual, Ford, the supreme purveyor of pictorial grandeur in American film, manages to place his camera in the most effective locations...The colors are rich and pop out at you like paintings in a museum, from Fonda's blue eyes, the lush green and blue outdoor landscapes, the evocative colors of the changing seasons, rustic brown interiors, and the bright orange-yellows of flame and fire. The most interesting shot is a scene in a dark, heavy downpour, the rain falling like silver nitrate bullets, anticipating the climax of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven by a good 50 plus years. - Paul Brenner
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