I watched this after having so much fun seeing Reap the Wild Wind, but it’s not as good, despite being another period adventure in colour starring Paulette Goddard from Cecil B de Mille. By now Goddard was getting a tinsy-winsy bit old to play young hell cats by now – also her character here isn’t as active. She gets convicted of a crime and sent into basically slavery to North America, where she’s again pursued by two men. In Wild Wind both men were potential mates, but here it’s obvious that Gary Cooper is Good and Howard da Silva is Evil (da Silva is gives a strong performance as always but a more attractive, complex character played by a better-looking actor would have made more of the triangle). Cooper buys her to annoy da Silva but she gets sent back to da Silva- it got a bit complicated with all the chopping and changing but basically they all wind up in Fort Pitt in time for Pontiac’s Rebellion.
The studio jungle here is distracting (I didn’t mind the studio boats and sets in Reap the Wild Wind, but for some reason the falseness got on my nerves here). The action stuff seems muffed, and the story contrived (i.e. Cooper getting in trouble and people believing in da Silva when it doesn’t seem they would).
It is fun to see Boris Karloff as an Indian, Ward Bond as a farmer, and cameos from characters like George Washington and Mason and Dixon (the latter two aren’t very sympathetically portrayed)
The film is basically anti-slavery with lots of talk about how no one should own Goddard, although Cooper is Virginia planter (presumably a slave owner) and one character comments on how his wife and lots of friends are former indentured servants and the experience turned out good for them.
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