A famous old-style movie mogul from the Golden Age of Hollywood is famously quoted as saying “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” Translation for younger readers: movies are for entertainment, not “saying something important.”
Broken Arrow is a western that seeks to send a message. More than that; Broken Arrow is the first western to try tell its particular message. The year was 1950; movies had existed more than half a century, Hollywood had been big business thirty years and the western had established itself as a serious genre for than a decade. Until the release of Broken Arrow, no theatrical “talkie” had ever presented Indians—especially Apaches—as more than anything than bloodthirsty savages only slightly more humane than African cannibals.
Though based on a novel, the film tells a true enough story based on historical fact using the real names of the principal players. There really was a former military scout named Tom Jeffords who really did go into the Apache stronghold to meet with a legendary leader the white men called Cochise. As to how much of the film mirrors the actual events; it’s not a documentary. Broken Arrow exists not to document a series of factual events, but to tell a larger truth upon a broader canvas.
The story of Jeffords is not the only one from American history in which white men and “Indians” try to find mutual space for significant change. The story of Jeffords is merely one that presents this story within surrounding framework of action and character. The truly amazing accomplishment of the film is that it is successful in sending a message while also managing to be one of the most entertaining western films ever.
Jimmy Stewart teamed up with director Anthony Mann to make a series of westerns that rank among the strangest films of the 1950’s. They are really less “westerns” than psychological dramas that just so happen to be set in the west. Stewart turns in a series of performances that belie any reputation that he was a one-note actor only capable of playing various versions of himself. His characters in the Mann films are tortured, twisted psychological hot messes; it’s easy to see why Hitchcock cast him as his most perverse character ever in Vertigo.
Broken Arrow is not in the same league as the Mann film because the keynote there is psychological complexity. Broken Arrow is a message film and in a message film there is simply not enough space for the kind of emotional ambiguity on display in Stewart’s psycho-westerns. And yet, today, what really resonates about the film is not its message—which, ultimately, comes down to something we all recognize today: Apaches are people, too. What is astonishing, however, is that while today that message hardly even makes the film worth watching, when released in 1950 it was a truly revolutionary thing to see in a splashy Technicolor western. (Today, the most revolutionary thing might be seeing a blonde actor from Brooklyn playing the legendary Apache, Cochise.)
What makes Broken Arrow worth a view today is Jimmy Stewart. While not nearly the tortured soul he would later play to such devastating effect, his performance here foreshadows the greatness to come. Jeffords is a man caught in the middle—a white man who honestly wants to forge an understanding and broker a peace with the Apaches—who is trust by neither Cochise nor the white men. At one point, Jeffords comes within a minute or two of being strung up and lynched---by the white bar patron in the saloon back in the town. Jeffords must carefully tread a dangerous line while working within an ominous—but discreetly underplayed—sense of paranoia. Where the film most definitely separates fact from fiction is the subplot of Jeffords falling in love with a young Apache maiden. The consequences of this lends further psychological turmoil to the character for dramatic effect and while it is a screenwriting decision that does not benefit the message, it most assuredly increases the tension, thus revealing more of Stewart’s capacity to do so much more than play the good-natured, good-intentioned, uncomplicated hero.
The message that Apaches are people too makes Broken Arrow stand out above the sound-era theatrical westerns which preceded it and it is be commended, but it is not what make the film worth watching today. That honor belongs to Jimmy Stewart in what can now retrospectively be appreciated as a sort of dress rehearsal for the most complex and satisfying period of his career.
