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The Squaw Man (1914)
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Overview
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Release Date:
15 February 1914 (USA)
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Plot:
A chivalrous British officer takes the blame for his cousin's embezzlement and journeys to the American West to start a new life on a cattle ranch. full summary | add synopsis
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DeMille Shows No Promise
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Cast
(Complete credited cast)| Dustin Farnum | ... | Captain James Wynnegate - aka Jim Carston |
Additional Details
Also Known As:
The White Man (UK)
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Parents Guide:
Runtime:
74 min (2004 alternate version)
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Color:
Aspect Ratio:
1.33 : 1 more
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Fun Stuff
Trivia:
The musical composition "Nat-u-ritch: An Indian idyll. Intermezzo from The Squaw Man" by Theodore Bendix was published to promote the picture.
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Quotes:
Captain James Wynnegate:
I'm broke. Tell the boys I'll pay 'em somehow.
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Movie Connections:
Referenced in Stopover in Hollywood (1963)
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This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (7 total)
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Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for The Squaw Man (1914)| Recent Posts (updated daily) | User |
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| Music to the DVD Feature | georgestrum |
| Some Interesting Sidelights | georgestrum |
Recommendations
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| The Squaw Man | Custer's Last Stand | Mark of the Spur | Gone with the Wind | The Phantom Rider |
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This is an adaptation of a stage play, an awful melodrama, which incorporates the Western and flirts with taboo love--adultery and miscegenation. Apparently, Oscar Apfel was doing poorly at teaching Cecil B. DeMille how to direct; there's plenty of outside filming, which is supposed to be a benefit of California, yet this movie is remarkably inept in how the framing of outside scenes is as theatrical as the scenes inside. Of course, it was a commercial success, leading DeMille to remake it twice, and is now a footnote in film history. Probably of more consequence than it being a feature-length film made in Hollywood, unoriginal reinforcement though it was, is the movie's soap opera histrionics coupled with a Caucasian playing a Native-American.
The actors of this movie protrude what their characters would be doing or feeling via gestures, staring at nothing and other magnified histrionics; they're trying to communicate the plot to the audience despite silence and a distanced camera. There's no realism, subtlety, nor, even, characters. The directors and actors of 'The Squaw Man' blunder further by misunderstanding the silence concept. Silent films are silent to us, but the fictional world within a silent film is usually not silent. (Likewise, we still hear the music scores in modern films while the characters in the fictional world don't.) In this film, there are some awkward moments when a character lingers behind unnoticed, or is transparently suspicious-looking, but that happens to be when everyone is looking at something else. Yet, I suppose they still do that in soap operas.
In defence of DeMille, it was his first film, and senior director Apfel surely deserves more blame. One learns from imitation, and there weren't many worth imitating then. There was no indication in 'The Adventures of Dolly' that Griffith would become the best director in the world. To see DeMille's potential, watch the subsequent year's 'The Cheat.' Its story is also wanting, flirts with adultery and miscegenation and is driven by embezzlement from charity, but, otherwise, the films couldn't be more different.