This film is an unlikable mess and somehow I got suckered in to watching the whole stupid thing. No well-ordered review here; I'm just going to list things about the movie I hated (which is just about everything).
At the beginning of the movie, there is a weird old man who wanders in. He knows a scandalous secret and comes to tell it. The secret is that one Rachel Zachary, living amongst her adopted white family for all her life, is not white herself but an Indian.
That's right, the film would have us believe that Rachel Zachary (Audrey Hepburn) is a full-blooded Indian (of the Kiowa tribe) somehow living amongst her adopted white family for a number of years before the secret is out. I could accept that she is a "half-breed" (and indeed I was under that impression for most of the film), which would go a long way towards explaining how the secret could be kept for so long, but, really, to reveal that she is a full-blooded Indian (and that she needs to be stripped down in order to confirm this) is simply an insult to the intelligence. BTW, the weird old man ends up getting hung, but I couldn't for the life of me say why.
This movie is making some sort of statement about racism. Well, if it wanted to give the idea that whites were racists against Indians, mission accomplished. Everybody in this movie hates Indians, and that includes Rachel, even after she finds out she is Indian. And at one point, after she makes the point that she is a Kiowa, her adopted brother, Ben (Lancaster) declares "only in blood, not in anything else." Let's just say my sympathies were not with the Zachary family from this point.
Actually, they had already lost my sympathies when Ben orders his youngest brother to kill a Kiowa who had come in peace. The Indians also learn Rachel's secret and want her back into the tribe. They're willing to barter for her and come to the Zachary home under a flag of truce. Then Ben gives his order, which effectively ends any peaceful negotiation. The Indians then besiege the Zachary home. But here I find even if my sympathies somehow were with the Zacharys, I would have little need to worry. Because every single shot the Zacharys fire, hits and kills and Indian. Every. Single. Shot. Even Rachel, conflicted over her heritage and loyalty to her family, manages to kill one without even trying. The Zacharys meanwhile, suffer one fatality, Mother Zachary. And the Kiowas don't seem to have a single firearm. Later, when the Zacharys are cornered in their cellar by a fair number of Kiowas, another brother of Rachel's comes to the rescue and turns the tide all by himself. It's another insult to the intelligence.
The reason Ben orders his brother to kill an Indian is because Rachel intended to go to the Kiowas willingly and Ben did as he did to prevent this (also, his family became ostracized after Rachel's secret was revealed, so Ben felt there was no way out in any case). But Ben's love for his sister is revealed to be more than fraternal, which is disturbing despite the obvious fact that Rachel is not his biological sister. Rachel, meanwhile, ends any doubt that she hates Indians when she murders one (who turns out to be her own, biological brother) at point blank range.
There is happy music at the end of the movie, when the Zacharys (sans Mom Zachary) walk out of their house and stand awkwardly in the sunshine, beholding all the dead Indians and a flock of birds flying in V formation, symbolizing...something...
Anyway, I detest this film. It makes me feel ill just thinking about it. I can completely understand why director John Huston didn't like it either.
