SANTA FE TRAIL: Blu-ray (Warner Bros., 1940) Warner Archive
Dashing Errol Flynn, coming off a banner year at his
alma mater, and, the Warner stock company of gallant young lads, to include
Ronald Reagan, Alan Hale, William Lundigan, Van Heflin and Raymond Massey,
attempt to retell the daring raid at Harper’s Ferry in director, Michael Curtiz’s
Santa Fe Trail (1940) – at the time, marketed as co-star, Olivia de
Havilland’s ‘most exciting role’ since Gone with the Wind (1939). A footnote here, as de Havilland, still under
the ever-tightening yoke of studio boss, Jack L. Warner was made to pay
recompense for going over his head, by appealing to Jack’s wife, to play the
part of Melanie Hamilton in Selznick’s southern magnum opus the year before. De
Havilland’s cheek/Warner’s revenge – effectively, to be put back in her place
as Flynn’s most amiable, though otherwise, utterly disposable damsel in distress
or gal Friday. It would be nearly 3 more years before the actress had had
enough, seemingly, to commit career suicide by taking the studio to task, and,
to court in a landmark decision, effectively to splinter the iron-fisted autonomy
all moguls once wielded over their roster of stars. The de Havilland Decree, as
it came to be known, liberated talent from their 7-year servitude, often
elongated through legal loopholes and suspension clauses. And while one may
argue, the win did nothing for de Havilland’s future at Warner Bros., she did
go on to have a legendary run elsewhere in Hollywood. But in Santa Fe Trail,
de Havilland is, yet again, playing the demure and desirable object of men’s
affections, herein as Kit Carson Holliday, momentarily to divide her interests
between Flynn’s irresistible James Ewell Brown ‘Jeb’ Stuart, and Reagan’s
George Armstrong Custer. One year later, Flynn would play Custer, opposite de
Havilland in their final pairing – 1941’s They Died with Their Boots On.
As for Curtiz’s rip-roaring adventure, Santa Fe
Trail is a charmingly fictious rewrite of history, Curtiz and screenwriter,
Robert Buckner, indulging in all the flag-waving patriotism and hardcore he-man
stuff Flynn in his prime could muster, seemingly, with effortless aplomb. The
real Santa Fe Trail was a transportation route connecting Independence, Missouri to
Santa Fe, New Mexico, first opened by the Indians, European trappers and
traders during the latter half of the 18th century, but later to
cater to that mass migration west after the Louisiana Purchase. Curtiz and
Buckner are only superficially interested in this history, just enough to
provide the connective tissue and backdrop in their free-flowing yarn of stouthearted
men charging up and down the barren west on their respective dates with
destiny. Fortune and glory – were there ever two more pronounced or distinctly
celebrated intangibles in the ever-evolving human saga? In re-crafting history
to suit cinema, Buckner has Jeb Stuart, George Custer and Gen. Phil Sheridan (David
Bruce) all graduating West Point as classmates. In reality, they did so with
honors, but separately in 1854, ’61 and ’53 respectively. And Custer and
Stuart, while enemies at the Battle of Gettysburg, were never otherwise ‘socially’
acquainted. Indeed, crafting a butch camaraderie
among fellow officers at the outset of this movie allows for the big build-up
of dramatic fatalism later on, as de Havilland’s Kit translates the fortune-telling
of an old Navajo woman gazing into the fire, astutely to foreshadow how these
men of tradition will sacrifice friendship, choosing sides after the secession
of the South.
Santa Fe Trail melds two
timelines into its seamless fiction; the first, concerning the aforementioned
raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859; the second, involving construction of the
railroad, achieved some 20 years thereafter, in 1879. The picture also infers
Jefferson Davis (Erville Alderson) as the Secretary of War under
Franklin Pierce, when in reality, it was John B. Floyd, a member of the
Buchanan administration, who held this post at the time of the infamous John
Brown’s (Raymond Massey) staged raid. The blood-shedding interception of Brown
and his men, in a blaze of glory, guns and canon fire, was not conducted by the
army, rather, the U.S. Marines, who only incurred two casualties. This movie also
suggests Brown’s own son, Jason (Gene Reynolds) betrayed his father to the US
Army and was later to die a victim of the rebellion in Kansas – hence, serving
as the personally invested crux for Brown’s Bible-spouting bitterness against
the U.S. army. In reality, Jason was a POW whose successful release was
orchestrated by his father. However, another son, Frederick (never mentioned in
the movie) was shot by Reverend White. But perhaps the most glaring
artistic license achieved by Curtiz and Buckner went into the creation of Carl
Rader (Van Heflin as the shifty-eyed, John Brown loyalist, expelled from West
Point), a divisive figure, but wholly fictionalized, and, deriving from no such
counterpoint in history.
Despite being top-billed, Flynn’s Stuart is really
more of a cog in Curtiz’s ensemble, ironically, to favor Raymond Massey’s
steely-eyed and monomaniacal zealot. Massey has some of the most potent and
stirring scenes in the picture, including John Brown’s ominous pledge to God,
photographed by torch light by the great cinematographer, Sol Polito, as Brown promises
to smite the union and crush all who would otherwise oppose him, under the guise
of divine retribution. No doubt about it: John Brown was a polarizing figure in
American history, convicted by the pluck in his principles, and condemned by the
methods by which he failed to achieve his marauding crusade. To solidify this
image of Brown as a madman, Buckner writes several scenes in which Massey delivers
dark and apocalyptic jeremiads about the ruthless and bloodthirsty dissolution
of this fragile union – blindly to perceive it as the root cause of slavery. On
the edge of WWII, America needed no more divisive difficulties on the home
front in 1940. Alas, Santa Fe Trail’s simplistic depiction of slaves
being liberated has dated rather badly. Herein they are portrayed as mindless
followers, duped by Brown’s rabble-rousing as the ‘great emancipator’ until,
after being trapped in a burning barn, rescued by Stuart, the slaves now regress
into a sort of naive plantation mentality – a rose-colored longing for the
master/slave relationship, and, perfectly willing to trade off their new-found
freedom for a hasty return to this checkered past.
Santa Fe Trail beings at West
Point, circa 1854. Jeb Stuart, George Custer and the rest are fast approaching
graduation day at the academy. Alas, Carl Rader vehemently opposes the Southern
gentry, denouncing one and all as crude and ugly slave owners. Eventually,
Rader’s goading gets the better of Stuart, who resents being lumped into this
mix simply because he hails from the South. And thus, a spirited brawl breaks
out in the barracks. In the resultant reprimand, Commanding Officer, Robert E.
Lee (Moroni Olsen) recognizes Stuart and his cohorts as morally right and
elects to ‘promote’ the lot with an appointment to one of the most violent
territories in the union: Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory. Afterward, Rader
is summoned alone to Lee’s office and dishonorably discharged, not only for
instigating the brawl, but also for disseminating anti-slavery literature to
his classmates, solidifying the U.S. Army's stance against favoring any
ideological causes while serving. On route to Kansas, Custer and Stuart are
introduced to Cyrus K. Holliday (Henry O’Neill), in charge of building the
railroad to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and, his charming daughter, Kit. Immediately,
a pleasantly playful rivalry for Kit’s affections is stirred between these two
ole friends.
Meanwhile, Kansas has been brutalized by John Brown's unyielding
campaign against slavery. An embittered Rader becomes a mercenary in Brown's
army. However, owing to privileged information, Custer and Stuart intercept a
raid by Brown’s men on a freight wagon, fatally wounding Brown’s son. With his
final gasps, the boy reveals to Stuart his father's hideout at Shubel Morgan's
ranch in Palmyra. Disguised, Stuart rides into Brown’s stronghold, his ruse
found out by the army brand on his horse. Captured at gunpoint, Stuart becomes
trapped in a burning barn, only to be rescued by Custer who drives Brown into
seclusion. We fast-track 3-years into the future - to 1859. Believing Brown's
threat has been successfully diffused, Stuart and Custer are recalled to Washington,
D.C. At a barbeque to celebrate their seeming victory, Custer makes one last
attempt to win Kit’s heart. She, however, confides, it already belongs to Stuart
who almost immediately thereafter proposes to her. However, in this ‘easy
come/easy go’ menage-a-trois, there are no hard feelings, as Kit introduces
Custer to Mary Bacon, the luscious young blonde to eventually win Custer’s heart
and become his wife. As all these former West Point pals gather, an old Indian
woman reads their fortunes by firelight, her words translated by Kit into an
ominous premonition – someday soon, they will all be bitter enemies. Her words
are never taken seriously. Instead, the men are recalled to intercept Brown’s
forces at Harper’s Ferry. Rader, seemingly betrayed by Brown, who fails to pay
him for services already rendered, now confides in Stuart the exact time and
location of Brown’s daring plot. The cavalry is amassed and Stuart, Custer and
the others charge Brown’s stronghold. Realizing Rader betrayal, Brown
assassinates him moments before being taken prisoner by Stuart. Hanged for
treason, Brown’s death is interpreted by Kit as a precursor of the coming Civil
War. Aboard a train headed to Washington, the men and their sweethearts observe
as Stuart and Kit take their vows – the train, bound at sunset, for a very
uncertain destiny.
Santa Fe Trial is another
patriotic send-up to an America that never was - except at the movies. Today, the hand-crafted foibles of old Hollywood get a lot of flack for not adhering to 'the truth'. But actually, I cannot see were such mythologized pride in one's nation has ever done anything destructive to the moral fabric. So, I really cannot fault the picture, Curtiz or Warner Bros. for their blatant
historical inaccuracies, learning long ago that to attend the movies seeking
truth from the exercise, rather than to merely indulge and bask in the medium
for its pure escapism apart from reality, is as futile as any attempt to peel a
turtle. Santa Fe Trail is another
marvelous Errol Flynn programmer made in an era when heroism - even the illusion
of it - was the most monumentally prized of all artistic endeavors; definitively
beyond any exaltation of ‘the truth’ for truth’s sake. For those seeking it, Flynn
– despite his many flaws as a human being, to include a rather frail physicality
well concealed by studio PR, plagued with the after effects of malaria
contracted while still in his teens, as well as to have suffered several ‘guarded’
heart attacks after becoming Warner’s biggest box office draw, to prevent him
from entering the war effort, and, finally, Flynn’s rather laissez faire predilection
for underaged female companionship – to result in his full exoneration from a
rather scandalous rape charge in 1942 – all this, was he to endure and emerge
from the fray with his reputation as a Hollywood he-man virtually intact. In
the end, it was Flynn’s addiction to pills and the bottle that prematurely
aged, then ended his reign, though, arguably, never to tarnish his image as the
most debonair rapscallion in a cod piece the movies has ever known. Though Olivia
de Havilland had deeply desired to Flynn, and, for sometime was, in fact, his
lover, she was never to look back, either in anger or sadness on their glorious
time together, nor the rift to ultimately end their affair. For de Havilland, Flynn
would forever remain the well-designed, and utterly charismatic ‘one that got
away’. Santa Fe Trail may not be as well-remembered or even as well-regarded
as some of Flynn’s other irrefutable masterpieces made by Curtiz. But it
remains a handsomely mounted, deftly directed, and exceptionally fine piece of
screen escapism nonetheless. Seeing the Warner stock company together is like
visiting an old friend, with the inevitable warm, fuzzy afterglow left behind –
respect paid to Jack’s seemingly indestructible film-making empire during its
zenith. In retrospect, Warner Bros. was one hell of a great studio. Their myriad
of treasures remains a legacy that is as inescapable as it is true.
Santa Fe Trail arrives on
Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC) in a 1080p transfer that will surely
please, though is not without its caveats. Warner has done its usual due diligence
here, eradicating age-related artifacts and performing the necessary clean-up
and restoration to ensure optimal viewing. They are, alas, at the mercy of less-than-perfect
elements. Intermittently, the image here is soft, with various inserts coming either
from dupes or second-generation elements in lieu of an OCN. Can’t be helped, folks.
In those good ole days, Hollywood’s history was never considered worth preserving. By the time the industry realized the
embarrassment of riches at their disposal, to be endlessly re-marketed to
future generations, the decade’s-long damage had already been done. The image
here will surely please, with excellent tonality in the grey scale.
Occasionally, fine details are lost and film grain gets amplified beyond what
is considered normal. But on the whole, this is a marvelous B&W presentation
of a great movie worth seeing again and again. The 1.0 DTS mono is solid,
showing off imminent composer, Max Steiner’s great score to its very best
advantage. Alas, apart from a badly worn trailer, there are NO extras. Bottom
line: Santa Fe Trail is a wonderful movie with a solid, if not perfect, video
presentation. Highly recommended for
both content and the effort WAC continues to pour into these hi-def video
releases! Buy today. Treasure forever.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the
best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
0
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