(Page 2 of 11) - Ford's Revolutionary America: "Drums Along the Mohawk" authored by Nichols, David.

John Ford’s Revolutionary Americans:

Drums Along the Mohawk

The American Revolution has not been a particularly fertile ground for American

cinema. Although George Bernard Shaw’s play The Devil’s Disciple was the subject of
two movies, even the first version starring Kirk Douglass, Burt Lancaster, and Laurence
Olivier is remembered only by serious movie buffs, and the second starring Patrick Stewart
is best forgotten. The casting of Cary Grant as a backwoods revolutionary in The Howards
of Virginia was a bold idea, but the film was, nonetheless, forgettable. And Revolution,
shot in Norway by a British director and starring Al Pacino, never quite found its audience.
Pacino did not appear in another movie for four years after its release. The film version of
the musical 1776 and Mel Gibson’s The Patriot are probably the best known of the genre,
and each does have its virtues. Who can forget Adams and Franklin signing and dancing
outside Jefferson’s window as he romances his wife, or Mel Gibson, who not only
outsmarts a British general, but also manages to alienate the affections of the general’s
dogs. But both films also have their limitations. 1776 is basically a filmed stage play, and
Gibson’s Patriot has a brave heart, but remains essentially an action picture.

Drums Along the Mohawk, however, deserves more serious consideration. It is not

the best of John Ford’s films; it is not even the best of the Ford films of 1939, the year in
which he also directed Stagecoach and TheYoung Mr. Lincoln.

But it is one of the best

films ever made about the American Revolution, and I will argue that it provides a unique
perspective on Ford’s understanding of the American character. In many of Ford’s more
famous and more critically acclaimed films, we find a lonely hero who serves and protects
a community of which he can never be a part. Rugged individualism leads to alienation,
and civilization is usually portrayed as a mixed blessing. These films were dominated by
men. As Tag Gallagher points out, Ford worked with major females stars in only six of his
one hundred and sixty films.

Drums Along the Mohawk, however, grossed $1.25 million in its first year, more than either Stagecoach

($1 million) or Young Mr. Lincoln ($750,000) It even out grossed Ford’s next film The Grapes of Wrath
($1.1 million). Tag Gallagher. John Ford: The Man and His Movies (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1986) p. 499.

Claudette Colbert in Drums Along the Mohawk is one of the six. The others were Arrowsmith (Helen

Hayes), 1931; Mary of Scotland (Katherine Hepburn), 1936; Tobacco Road (Gene Tierney), 1941;
Mogambo (Ava Gardner and a young Grace Kelly), 1953; and 7 Women (Anne Bancroft), 1965. Gallagher,
p. 312.