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The Wild North
In the Canadian mountains, a trapper goes on the run accused of a crime and is pursued by a rugged and determined lawman of the Royal North-West Mounted Police.
Release : | 1952 |
Rating : | 6.5 |
Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Art Direction, |
Cast : | Stewart Granger Wendell Corey Cyd Charisse Howard Petrie Houseley Stevenson |
Genre : | Adventure Western Romance |
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I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
An adventure movie from the early 50s, with dazzling locations set (according to the data) in the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming. Stewart Granger is a French trapper. If the producers knew what "grand tetons" meant in French, well, no movie would ever be made there. One of the locations is Jenny Lake in the National Park. I like Jenny Lake. I caught several cut throat trout there. I'm only adding that note because I knew you were dying to know.Buckskin-clad Granger visits the town to enjoy himself. He picks up a saloon girl, Cyd Charisse, a half-breed Chippewa, and takes her to the mountains in his canoe, as who wouldn't, along with an ugly and duplicitous roughneck whom Granger accidentally kills. Constable Wendell Corey is ordered by Segeant Preston of the RCMP to dogsled up into the snow-veined Rockies and bring back his man. Corey does find Granger and they begin their trek towards civilization but the journey is frought with every hazard that the thought of the untamed north Canadian woods brings to mind -- avalanches, wolves, rapids. Cyd Charisse has little to do. Her hair style is ill suited and makeup has turned her face and the face of all the other Indians purple. The Chippewa lived nowhere near Alberta's Peace River but no matter. Granger is the boistrous, hard living frontiersman, expansive, always cheerful and never overly sentimental. As the RCMP constable, Corey is his opposite. Quiet, deliberate in his movements, determined -- oozing unction and morality. Surprisingly, Corey does all right in what could have been an extremely pedestrian role.Overall, the film is typical of adventure movies of the period. Kind of fun, shot in alluring settings, and sometimes positively exciting.
A very fine adventures movie with a great Stewart Granger ,an actor so nice that even when he tries to become nasty we don't believe him.The fifties were his heyday,with such exciting works as "Moonfleet" "the prisoner of Zenda" or "the last hunt"."The wild north" shows Granger at the top of his game: with a mediocre actor,the character would have been trite.Wendell Corey's portrayal seems monotonous by comparison.Granger turns what could have been another cop-and-prisoner movie into an endearing absorbing story: it may have inspired Nicholas Ray for some of the scenes between Anthony Quinn and Peter O'Toole in "the savage innocents" .In the wild north, White is everywhere.This is white madness,says Jules Vincent ,a white madness which kills the minister and drives the constable crazy.Jules shows himself a real shrink who uses a real shock therapy: Pedley lost his reason in the snow,he recovers it in the white swirls of the river.Cyd Charisse is a dancer extraordinaire but as an Indian she is...well...Andrew Marton shows much tenderness in the scenes with the cat or when he films a boy's smile when he gets a chocolate bar.
In 1952, many "outdoors" adventure films would be shot on the studio back-lot, with fake-looking backgrounds and interior sets masquerading as exteriors. The Wild North benefits greatly from the fact that much of it was shot on authentic locations (the American state of Idaho standing in for northern Canada). The film also benefits from a clutch of strong leading performances from Stewart Granger and Wendell Corey, plus the ravishing Cyd Charisse (cast some might say miscast as a native Indian). The whole film is smartly presented by Andrew Marton, whose last film prior to this was another outdoor adventure with Stewart Granger, the 1950 version of King Solomon's Mines.Wise, handsome and resourceful fur-trapper Jules Vincent (Stewart Granger) is accused of a killing, and an inexperienced Mountie named Pedley (Wendell Corey) is the man who must bring him in. Vincent knows the rugged wilderness like the back of his hand, so he heads off into the snowy wastelands to hide from his pursuer. Pedley is determined to prove that he is suited to the dangerous Mountie's work for which he has signed up, so he chases his quarry into the frozen wilds regardless of the risk to his life. After a long and arduous chase, Pedley finds himself lost in the middle of nowhere, totally exhausted and half-mad after his hair-raising journey. As winter closes in, it looks like the Mountie is facing certain death but during their cat-and-mouse chase Vincent has grown to respect his pursuer. As a mark of this respect, Vincent helps Pedley to survive the winter, after which the mismatched pair make their way towards civilisation.MGM used to be able to knock out these stirring adventure flicks in their sleep, and this one is a pretty entertaining example of their output. Granger and Corey share a good on-screen chemistry, while director Marton successfully makes the scenery against which their adventures occur look suitably wild and beautiful. Within its 97 minute running time, the film is very fast-paced and crammed with incident. Amongst the more thrilling segments, Granger and Corey find themselves in one sequence attacked by a marauding wolf pack. Looking at the film nowadays, it has an old-fashioned style about it that viewers of a certain age and taste might not appreciate. And there have been so many films set in barren, far-flung corners of the world that some of us might no longer find the icy plains of Canada as fascinating as we once did. But, on the whole, The Wild North is a highly enjoyable chase adventure, worth watching for its nostalgic pleasures and its strong performances. As a wise man once said, they don't make 'em like this any more .
I saw this film when it came out in theatres back when I was a kid & when I saw it on TCM awhile ago, it still socked me right in the kisser with its breathtakingly beautiful cinematography, fast paced action, suspense, and wonderful characters. Stewart Granger is totally believable as the wanted fur trapper, Cyd Charrisse is as beautiful as I remember her, and Wendell Corey is fantastic as the stalwart Mountie who always gets his man. This movie is in my personal list of Top 10 favorite films...ever! I finally got to make a DVD of it from TCM the other night & I've watched it 5 times since then without ever getting tired of it. The closing scene...Wendell Corey in his RCMP costume with a tiny kitten on his shoulder & the snow covered mountains behind him is a picture that I will carry with me to my grave. Absolutely a film to be treasured by anyone who loves great movies!