Sat 23 Aug 2014
A Western Movie Review: SANTA FE TRAIL (1940).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western movies[18] Comments
SANTA FE TRAIL. Warner Brothers, 1940. Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Raymond Massey, Ronald Reagan, Alan Hale, William Lundigan, Van Heflin, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams. Director: Michael Curtiz.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but there is no scene in this movie that takes place any closer to Santa Fe than Kansas. If I had gone to see this movie back in 1940, I might have wanted my money back. But with dashing Errol Flynn in it, plus the beautiful Olivia de Haviland, I doubt that too many at the time actually did.
And for the most part, audiences in 1940 got their money’s worth. The aforementioned Errol Flynn as Jeb Stuart, the boyishly handsome “aw, shucks” kind of guy Ronald Reagan as George Custer, good buddies who graduated together from West Point, and sent on their first assignment in tandem to protect the construction of a yet-to-be-built railroad line from Kansas to Santa Fe. (OK, yes, so there you go.)
Problem: pre-Civil War Kansas was a powder keg of violence, mostly instigated by John Brown, the religious anti-slavery abolitionist played to perfection by jut-bearded and wild-eyed Raymond Massey, abetted by equally obsessed Van Heflin. For my money, it is Massey who walks away with star honors for this film.
The movie ends with John Brown’s defeat at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia, about as far away from New Mexico as you can imagine, with some romantic moments in between all of the spying, marauding and fighting, with both Custer and Stewart vying for the hand of “Kit Carson” Holliday, played by Olivia de Haviland.
Funny thing is, though, that Jeb Stewart and George Custer, although they both attended West Point, they did so seven years apart, and in real life they never met at all, nor did Stewart marry anyone by the name of Kit Carson Holliday. I could go on with a long list of similar flaws, and if you check out the IMDb page for the movie, I’m sure you’ll find that several other viewers already have.
Santa Fe Trail is a fun movie to watch, but if I were a history professor back in 1940, I’d not only want my money back, but I’d sue. How you do get kids to learn what really happened, when movies like this one subvert all of the hard work you’re trying to do?
August 24th, 2014 at 12:25 am
Well, everything is wrong with the exception of entertainment value — pure fun. History was raped and a child produced. The Van Heflin lead subplot was weak and it is hard to get around Massey’s performance, or the character he is playing, as something more worthy than madness.
August 24th, 2014 at 1:05 am
It’s a scenery chewer with as much relation to history as a serial, but then its a big serial of a movie and you either go along or you don’t. Ironic though that Flynn is Stuart when later he played Custer.
It’s still tremendous fun though the portrayal here and later in SEVEN BROTHERS of Brown is too one dimensional by half considering how famous Massey is for it.
Steve,
Like half the trails in the west the Santa Fe Trail starts in St.Louis. It ran right through the square in the North Texas town I grew up in and intersected the Overland Stage Route, Chisholm Trail, Goodnight-Loving Trail, and the old El Camnio Royale in front of the courthouse.
And to be fair the title doesn’t say anything about ever getting to Santa Fe, just being on the trail to Santa Fe.
Don’t even think of watching the new series MAHATTAN it all takes place in New Mexico.
By the way SANTA FE PASSAGE never actually gets to Santa Fe either if I remember right.
August 24th, 2014 at 6:30 am
Not only that, but many of these movies with SANTA FE in the title were actually filmed (hold onto your hats) in Hollywood!
Seriously,it’s a dumb movie and even offensive on certain levels, but still fun, and it’s good to see the gang from DODGE CITY (Flynn, DeHavilland, Hale & Williams) back together again. Auteurists tend to dismiss Curtiz because Andrew Sarris once said he had no personal style; actually he was one of the most stylish filmmakers to grace Hollywood.
August 24th, 2014 at 11:16 am
Andrew Sarris was a nice and interesting man — but who cares what he says about anything. Or, anyone else, for that matter, at least on the topic of film art. You know it ‘when you see it.’
August 24th, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Anyone who can do that wonderful opening shot (in both senses of the word) of MILDRED PIERCE can’t be dismissed as “having no personal style”. Curtiz, at least in his golden years at Warner, was one of the great Expressionists and his virtuosity saved many weak scripts. Sarris also objected to Billy Wilder, didn’t he? Tells us everything we need to know. 🙂
Barry, are you the Barry who wrote The Play of Light and Shadow?
August 24th, 2014 at 3:23 pm
Xavier,
Not only am I not that Barry but I do not know him. Thanks for asking, I guess.
August 24th, 2014 at 3:42 pm
I don’t see how a director responsible for CASABLANCA/MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM/CAPTAIN BLOOD/THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/YANKEE DOODLE DANDY and a score of greats can possibly be dismissed by any film critic. I think the idea that he has no style is more a case of him not being a slave to a set of directorial tics and habits. Once your sense of style begins to draw attention to itself, there is a danger that you are sliding into self-caricature, which I don’t think that he ever did.
The discussion about the historical accuracy is an interesting one. I recently heard actor/writer Mark Gatiss talking about another Curtiz movie, NIGHT AND DAY. The Cole Porter biopic is quite massively inaccurate and dishonest. He pointed out that although the more recent DE-LOVELY was more accurate, the Curtiz movie was the better one by a country mile. Is a movie about a real event better or worse depending on how far it sticks to the truth? Is it more important to tell an enjoyable yarn, or does the filmmaker have an obligation to stick to the facts?
August 24th, 2014 at 3:57 pm
One related question, before I hope others will reply. Does it have to be one or the other? I’m about 60 minutes into a World War II film called MIDWAY (1976) filled with all kinds of big name stars playing somewhat equally well known commanders and generals. So far it seems authentic enough, but at the center of the film is a fictional admiral named Matt Garth, played by Charlton Heston, who allows the action play around him, including a small offshoot plotline involving his son, a fighter pilot whose engagement to a Japanese-American girl is on shaky grounds. It seems to be a good way to tell an interesting story without deviating too far from the facts. (The list of goofs on IMDb — and there is a long list of them — are all small and rather minor.)
August 24th, 2014 at 4:34 pm
I like MIDWAY though I think the soap opera bull about the son’s Japanese American girl and the ‘lesson’ of Heston accepting her was unneeded, but it is Hollywood. The story was compelling enough without Romeo and Juliet crammed in.
It isn’t unusual to create fictional characters to tie a true story together or represent numerous other people such as Robert Mitchum in WINDS OF WAR or Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd novels and it is often useful to the viewer.
As for accuracy. In Hollywood? James Cameron doesn’t even get the way the Titanic sank right and portrays one of the most heroic officers on board as firing into the third class passengers which never happened. He is in fact the man who let them on the main deck. His family protested, and frankly it is the reason I won’t watch the film today entertaining or not. I draw the line at slandering heroes for the sake of story.
He also shows His Majesty’s Courier as forcing his way onto a lifeboat when in fact the Captain of the ship threatened to force him to save himself at gunpoint because he would not be the first British captain to lose a Royal Courier. There is a leeway you are not allowed to take in any kind of historical fiction, and that crosses the line offensively to me.
And too I thought it was an overrated bloated film too full of itself by half and like all Cameron’s films from TERMINATOR on ‘borrowed’ from other peoples ideas to the point of legal action.
Just saying, compared to TITANIC, SANTA FE TRAIL is a masterpiece of restraint.
August 24th, 2014 at 5:02 pm
Oh, I’m so glad that it’s not just me who hates TITANIC!
I think that generally it is better for a filmmaker to stick to some semblance of the truth. That said, some of my favourite historical movies commit some terrible sins of distortion. ZULU sticks fairly close to the detials of the actual battle of Rorke’s Drift but the character of Private Hooke played by James Booth is a terrible slander against the real man. In the film he is a malingering, boozy, chippy rule breaker. The real Hook was a teetotal who received a good service medal shortly before the battle. It’s vastly unfair and inaccurate, but I still love the movie.
August 25th, 2014 at 12:09 am
Xavier —
I have just found out something about the other ‘Barry’ and he is certainly someone I would like to know, but still do not. Thanks for asking, without a guess.
August 25th, 2014 at 1:31 am
Bradstreet
Everyone always wants to know why Nigel Greene’s Sgt-Major doesn’t get one of the 11 Victoria Crosses awarded at Rorke’s Drift in ZULU, and of course he is wholly fictional, a composite of every Sgt-Major in the British army.
Whatever else at least Hooke/Hook remains a hero, and dramatically his character represented a very real sort in the British army.
My objection with TITANIC is they took the character who is the hero of A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (still the best version of the story for my money despite recent discoveries about how the ship sank) and turned him into a brutal class snob so they could give DiCapprio’s moronic and ridiculously anachronistic character a heroic scene. That and his on again off again Irish brogue wore thin fast.
TITANIC is one of those films that
I doubt will wear well.
It’s not that Cameron is a bad director, just that he can’t distinguish between his ideas and those of others.
August 25th, 2014 at 4:00 am
“TITANIC is one of those films that
I doubt will wear well.”
It didn’t the last time I saw it. I loved it when I first saw it back in 1998, but a second viewing twelve years later failed to recreate that admiration. Robert Altman was a nasty man always ready to diminish other people’s achievements, especially when they were more successful than his (wasn’t hard) but he may have been right when he called it the worst catastrophe in film history. Still, I don’t think it means the movie will go the way of the real Titanic. The future (and to a large extent, the present) of movies rests on the shoulders of geeks, and to them Cameron is a genius who can do no wrong. So chances are Titanic will be seen in the future as an all-time great. A Night to Remember? They don’t know it, and will never see it. To them, film history starts with The Godfather…
August 25th, 2014 at 4:04 pm
Xavier
Point granted, but all I really care about is I know better, and there will be generations for whom TITANIC has no nostalgic glow who will watch it with a jaundiced eye.
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER still shows up, still gets watched, and quality has little to do with how many people like a film or know it.
I know BRINGING UP BABY is a thousand times better than HANGOVER, whether anyone else does is of little importance.
Cameron makes highly entertaining films, I just wish he would acknowledge his sources so they quit having to drag him into court as Harlan Ellison did successfully with TERMINATOR and someone else did for the drawings in TITANIC. Michael Crichton didn’t think the ABYSS was worth the trouble, Heinlien was dead when ALIENS came out, and ERB long gone when JOHN CART… sorry AVATAR came out.
Surely the man has one original idea.
August 26th, 2014 at 2:35 am
Cameron’s reaction to the Ellison settlement was characteristically classy:
“Harlan Ellison is a parasite who can kiss my ass.”
As far as I’m concerned, he hasn’t made a really good flick since True Lies twenty years ago.
August 27th, 2014 at 1:02 pm
He does seem to have fallen into the trap of assuming that making it big means making it good. The problem is that the passage of generations will cut anything down to size. What ultimately survives is writing,direction,performance. There is a hollowness at the centre of TITANIC that will finally be revealed when the high-tech gloss is rubbed away. The script for A NIGHT TO REMEMBER was by Eric Ambler. The script for TITANIC was by Cameron. ‘Nuff said.
November 6th, 2014 at 2:51 pm
I’m aware that this movie was made in 1940. I’m aware that Hollywood, other film industries, playwrights, novelists and painters tend to be historically inaccurate in their work. I’m also aware that Michael Curtiz had directed a number of great films. However . . . “THE SANTA FE TRAIL” was not one of those great films in my eyes. I thought it was crap.
September 19th, 2018 at 4:38 pm
The fact that this movie featured a scene in which Jeb Stuart saves a family of fugitive slaves from Brown is enough to want me to upchuck.
The historical inaccuracies did not help. This movie is pure crap.