Apache Drums (2021 restoration Universal Pictures)

Hugo Fregonese: Apache Drums (US 1951) avec Stephen McNally (Sam Leeds), Coleen Gray (Sally Barr) et Willard Parker (Joe Madden).

Quand les tambours s'arrêteront / Kuoleman rummut / Dödstrummorna.
Hugo Fregonese / États-Unis / 1951 / 75 min / DCP / VOSTF
D'après le roman Stand at Spanish Boot de Harry Brown [there seems to be no such novel].
Avec Stephen McNally, Coleen Gray, Willard Parker.
La Cinémathèque française : Rétrospective Hugo Fregonese
Ouverture de la rétrospective [announced: en présence de Jacques Lourcelles (sous réserve); Lourcelles could not attend] séance présenté par Jean-François Rauger
E-sous-titres français n.c.
La Cinémathèque française : Salle Henri Langlois, mercredi 29 mars 2023, 20h00 21h15

La Cinémathèque française : "Une petite ville est attaquée par les Mescaleros. Les villageois se réfugient dans l'église et résistent aux assauts des Indiens."

"L'un des chefs-d'œuvre de son auteur, qui porte autant la patte de Fregonese – art de la concision, précision du découpage, science du rythme – que celle de Val Lewton, producteur historique de la RKO et des séries B de Jacques Tourneur. Circonscrite dans un petit village d'Arizona, puis confinée dans son église transformée en camp retranché, l'action de ce western aux atours classiques se teinte peu à peu d'une violence baroque : la longue attaque nocturne des Apaches qui clôt le film le fait basculer dans un fantastique spectral, dont John Carpenter s'inspirera lors du tournage d'Assaut."

AA: In the Hugo Fregonese retrospective of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna in 2022 I already visited this 2021 restoration of Apache Drums but was too tired to focus.

Apache Drums starts from an Indian viewpoint: the desperation of the Mescalero Apache in the year 1880. Quoting AFI Catalog online:

" An offscreen narrator, presumably a Mescalero Apache, states as the film opens that his people can go neither north nor south: "The hunger wolf chews on our strengths. Soon the warriors will be too weak to fight. Then the white man will thrust us away from the earth, and only the empty sky will know the voices of the Mescalero." "

" This is followed by an onscreen statement: "A hungry people rose to fight. Their fury fell upon settled places where peaceful Americans carried on trade and Welsh miners dug for silver. One of these places was the town of Spanish Boot." The historical Victorio was a Chiricahua Apache leader who led his people from the hated San Carlos Reservation to their homeland, the Black Mountains. "

Although Apache Drums then switches to the white man's viewpoint (in the desert mining town Spanish Boot) for the rest of the film and although it is a brutal tale of the Indian wars, it does not belittle or demean the Apache. "Don't underestimate the Apache". There is an interlocutor, an Apache Cavalry scout, Pedro-Peter (Armando Silvestre) who explains the Mescaleros' behaviour during the final night. Sam has mortally wounded their chief Victorio, "prophet, priest and war chief all in one", and now the Indians are getting into a war trance by drinking and music.

" According to the pressbook for the film, Dr. Chris Willowbird, a "noted authority on Indian lore," supervised the recording of the authentic Apache music for the soundtrack. An orchestra of twenty Apache Indians was used for the recording, which was highlighted by an Apache religious chant sung in ceremonial preparation for going into battle. "

" The soundtrack also includes Apache drinking songs and "several warpath numbers." The Los Angeles Examiner reviewer commented that the "Indian drum work, tribal music and primitive customs are particularly well handled in this film, and the sets for once seem real." " (AFI Catalog online)

Pedro-Peter explains that after the death of Victorio, the Apaches are now set to kill and be killed in a final battle to turn into ghost warriors.

The Indians are ferocious but honorable. When an Indian's oath is questioned, Pedro-Peter answers: "Oath to an Indian means a great deal more than to a white man".

The metaphysical dimension, the presence of death, the sense of the supernatural and the ghost warrior theme link Apache Drums to Val Lewton's legendary cinéfantastique cycle for RKO. Apache Drums was the last film produced by Lewton who had started as David O. Selznick's story editor in the 1930s helping adapt Tolstoy and Dickens for the screen. Lewtonian touches here even include a cat (a kitten is helped to a bowl of milk in the opening sequence). Besides RKO Fantastique it feels also relevant to evoke Universal Horror, since Apache Drums was produced and distributed by Universal.

Hugo Fregonese brings vigorous energy to the low budget Western. His mise-en-scène is dynamic. His first shot in the desert mining town, inside looking out, framed by a door opening to the sun-drenched town square, evokes Ford.

In the beginning we witness the bordertown in transition. The gambler and the dancehall girls are evicted. The middle part takes place in the desert. Fregonese creates a sense of dread in visions of ominous hills. The last third is devoted to the siege in the church.

" The final siege sequence is one of the most remarkable passages in American cinema. ", states Dave Kehr, high praise indeed, as the siege narrative has a formidable cinematic legacy since D. W. Griffith. The siege is of course fundamental in epic narrative in general since Iliad and the Odyssey. Even in such a perspective, Apache Drums excels. 

The situation looks desperate. The threat remains mostly invisible, conveyed by the Apaches' chant. The white people are protected by high walls and exposed by elevated windows. They are also protected by a heavy gate, but finally the Apaches set it on fire. The whites respond by counterfire. They prepare to die and fight to finish. When children panic, Sam and Sally reassure them with magic tricks and a singalong of "Oranges and Lemons". To the Indian chant, they answer with the Welsh march "Men of Harlech".

Technicolor becomes a creative means of expression, culminating in the siege where fearsome Apache warpaint stands out. For Dave Kehr " their bodies painted in primary colors and bathed by matching pinspots" is "an audacious concept that looks forward to the bold stylization of Mario Bava".

In his introduction, Jean-François Rauger also asked us to pay attention to " la robe verte de Coleen Gray ". The green dress does highlight Coleen Gray's beauty.

Apache Drums is a moral tale but not a moralistic one. Betty Careless (Ruthelma Stevens) the dancehall madam is proud of her mission. Sam Leeds (Stephen McNally) is a quintessential Fregonese protagonist: a gambler and a tramp. The Puritan Reverend Griffen (Arthur Shield) is a moralist who undergoes a transformation. The turning-point is when Sam and Griffen fight marauding Apaches in the desert together.

The subtitle of Bologna's Fregonese tribute was "A Drifter's Escape". Fregonese's movies are studies of freedom and its limitations. In Sally Barr (Coleen Gray), Sam meets his match. "It's a kind of pity that I only like bad men and want to make them good", says Sally. Sam wants both Sally and his freedom but cannot have both.

Sam is a tramp and a daredevil, a man in search of himself, in a loose sense in the William S. Hart tradition of the "good bad man". In combat he is fearless, but Sally tells him that "sometimes it's easier to be brave than honest."

Although introduced as an "every man for himself" type, Sam grows into a leader of the community, first in the water search party and finally in the siege where also the question of morale (as in esprit de corps) is dramatized both in matters of a fighting spirit and questions of honesty (preparing to what seems certain death).

Apache Drums is a B movie with an A spirit. The weakness of the movie is the casting. One could imagine alternatives: Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Joel McCrea (as in The Saddle Tramp)... Apache Drums is often called Fregonese's greatest movie, but I prefer The Raid and Black Tuesday because of the casting.

A brilliant 4K restoration from 2021 by Universal Pictures in collaboration with The Film Foundation at NBC Universal StudioPost laboratory, from a 35 mm nitrate 3-strip original negative preserved by UCLA. It is difficult to sustain sharpness in three-strip Technicolor, but the result is so perfect that I wonder whether it might be even sharper than the original.