The Chechahcos (1923) User Reviews

Surprisingly good and interesting for 1924

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 24 October 2006]

This was the one and only film made by this Alaskan film production company and it's very surprising how professional the film looks with this pedigree. Much of the camera-work is excellent. In fact, one scene was good enough to be lifted from this film and used in the Chaplin film, THE GOLD RUSH, just a year later (the film of the long column of pioneers trekking up the steep hill to look for gold near the beginning of the film).

The story is a bit hard to believe at the beginning, but bear with it. The tough to believe part involves a mother and child who were separated after their boat bound for Alaska sinks. Considering the nearby town was awfully small, as was the boat, it boggles the mind to think they they kept missing each other! Eventually, they both moved on--Mom with an evil gambler and the kid with a couple of very decent prospectors. At one point, one of the prospectors DOES find Mom with the evil gambler and decides the kid is better off with them--but Mom really didn't seem too interested in finding the kid until many years later.

From here on, the film vastly improves and takes up a dozen years later. The kid is grown and quite lovely but doesn't know her Mom is now a vivacious barroom singer in a town 8 hours away by dog sled. Well, to make a long story short, there is a wonderful final showdown and the family is, of course, reunited. And despite the simplicity of my description, the film is excellent for the time it was made. The acting was excellent and the story was very interesting and well-written (with a couple lapses only).

The bottom line is for lovers of silent films, this is almost a "must see" film, though for the average person reading this, it is probably not something you'll instantly love. Try watching THE GOLD RUSH first, then this film--they are excellent companion pieces.

An early, home-grown look at the Alaskan gold rush

[psteier · 6/10 · 8 September 2000]

Quite well done when you ignore the melodramatic aspects of the plot. Interesting as an almost contemporary look at the Alaskan Gold Rush culture. The crossing of the Chilcoot pass scenes probably were borrowed from by Chaplin in 'The Gold Rush 1925)' and by other directors as well.

Supposed to be the first feature shot in Alaska. Chechahco means tenderfoot or greenhorn in one of the Alaskan native languages.

Them films certainly add a nice flavor to the shots

[B1gBut · 6/10 · 21 February 2024]

Quick setup: a mother and child are separated in a shipwreck during the Alaska gold rush and two guys end up raising the kid.

The story was surprisingly interesting. Pretty atypical of Hollywood pictures of the time. A bit slow paced for my taste but that's nothing to complain about since the duration wasn't long and the editing was more than adequate.

The best aspect of this film is the setting. The Alaska moving pictures corporation (which i can't say I've seen any other films from) really used Alaska to great benefit and chose to tell a story that is greatly enhanced by it. There are many beautiful shots here that justify watching the film alone. Just don't go in expecting The Great White Silence (1924) or Nanook of the North (1922) since this best aspect of the film is dampened a bit by the worst criticism I have with it which is that for 99% of the run time, the camera is moving at speeds reaching as high as approximately 0.00 meters per second.

Depending on who you talk to this static camera should be considered weak and outdated after 1914 or 1919 or 1927. The film was released in 1923, so pick for yourself whether contextually this is a valid criticism or not. I personally fall into the "i watched it now, I'm (dis) recommending it now, i find it (bad) good by my standards, not what i think it'd be like in 1920s" group.

Thanks for reading.

Well Worth Seeing For the Scenery & Photography

[Snow Leopard · 27 October 2005]

The high quality scenery and photography in themselves make "The Chechahcos" well worth seeing. It was shot entirely on location in Alaska, and there are many sequences featuring beautiful and austere Alaskan scenery. All of the production end is of very good quality, down to the artistically detailed inter-titles that were clearly made with some care. It's especially impressive to see such attention to detail in a small-studio production.

The story is somewhat interesting, if overly melodramatic at times. While the setting is unusual and very interesting, the plot simply pulls together a number of stock elements that were well-worn even in the 1920s, from an orphaned girl to a dishonored woman to a villainous gambler and his henchman. In another setting, it would have gotten old quickly, but the background of nature's unforgiving forces and the frenzy of the gold rush usually help to keep the more hackneyed elements from becoming too obtrusive.

The cast consists of performers that were largely little-known even at the time, but most of them give creditable performances. Gladys Johnston is charming as the young heroine, and William Dills does a solid job as a crusty old codger who starts to care in spite of himself.

Overall, this is a good movie and worth seeing for anyone who enjoys silent films. The photography and scenery are especially worthwhile, and while this was supposed to have been a financial flop, several of the sequences anticipate scenes in Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" of the following year. Not to put it quite on that level, but "The Chechahcos" does have as much to offer as do a lot of other movies that are better remembered today.

An unexpectedly strong, well-written film - brought low by one confounding flaw

[I_Ailurophile · 7/10 · 16 November 2022]

All silent films are part of a rich cultural heritage that's well worth preserving in and of themselves. This picture especially feels like a bit of a time capsule as it shows us the beautiful snow- and ice-laden landscapes of Alaska that almost 100 years later are at risk of all but vanishing owing to human mismanagement, and moreover a lifestyle and practice that is far removed from our modern experience. 'The chechahcos' also bears intertitles of dialogue with such colloquial slang and outdated language that some of it is almost a little hard to parse. All this is to say nothing, of course, of being another prime example of bygone sensibilities of film-making: exaggerated body language or facial expressions in lieu of sound or verbal dialogue, or of the more nuanced acting that would become dominant over time; hair and makeup work that gave the predominantly if not entirely white casts an uncanny, somewhat ghostly pallor, and made most men and most women, respectively, largely indistinguishable from one another; and still more, including discrete divisions between shots and scenes that amplify the sense of events having been staged for the camera. All these are reasons why, in one way or another, the silent era can be difficult to abide for some viewers, and this is unlikely to change anyone's mind in that regard. For those who appreciate older features, however, 'The chechahcos' is an enjoyable cinematic vestige that remains worth exploring on its own merits.

I commend the readily evident care put into the production in every regard, not least the sets and costume design. The use of lighting also seems gratifyingly thoughtful in any interior scenes, and the cinematography strikes me as especially swell in outdoor sequences, not least given some of the apparent conditions. Meanwhile, Lewis H. Moomaw demonstrates a firm command of the medium as director, with a strong guiding hand and some finely arranged shots. And Moomaw's writing, too, is splendid. In no small part the movie is simply a portrayal of the Yukon Gold Rush and all the challenges and types of people that came along with it. 'The chechahcos' also, however, boasts a distinct narrative to play out amidst a select few of those figures that are introduced to us - some virtuous and some less so, all transformed in one way or another by their relocation to the Yukon. To Moomaw's credit, I wasn't actually expecting an especially robust sense of story, but the feature undoubtedly claims a worthwhile plot that's compelling and satisfying.

Well, maybe I should say - Moomaw's writing is mostly splendid. One may well discern other faults with the picture: casually racist treatment of the one indigenous person to appear on-screen; a certain curtness to the scene writing that means one moment a little before the one-hour mark, that should carry suspense, thrills, and impact, is played out so brusquely that one risks missing it if they blink at the wrong time. More than anything else, however, there's one abject flaw that's glaring, and so downright awful as to significantly diminish the overall value. I don't generally like to betray spoilers, but since this one coincides with a content warning, I am only left to ask: What are we supposed to make of the fact that Ruth, having grown into a young woman, and Bob, one of the men who emphatically raised her like a father since she was a young child, are romantically invested in one another? This singular story beat is awkward, uncomfortable, and profoundly problematic to the point of being nonsensical. I don't know what Moomaw was thinking, but 'The chechahcos' would actually have been all but perfect if not for this astounding inclusion that defies all good reason. Few are those titles that have faltered in such a specific and significant way.

If we can put aside Moomaw's flummoxing fumble, by and large this is well made, entertaining, and far more worthwhile than I'd have given it credit for sights unseen. Substantial hard work, intelligence, and mindful craft went into the making of this movie in every regard, and all involved are to be congratulated for their contributions. So how did 'The chechahcos' go so wrong in the one way that should have been the easiest and most obvious to avoid, and surely the easiest to remedy? So sharply written and executed is this otherwise, including a genuinely fantastic climax, that I think the feature is still very much worth watching, a testament to the skill of filmmaker, cast, and crew and the enduring value of the silent era. So bewildering is its chief weakness that an asterisk must necessarily be appended to the production in the annals of cinema history, the overall value is reduced thusly, and however blithely and minimally the topic is approached, a content warning is required. 'The chechahcos' deserves remembrance and recognition, even almost a full century later - yet it also deserves to be discussed as a peculiar teachable moment when this shouldn't have been the case in the first place.

I want to like this more than I do, but that one character relationship is going to bug me for a long time.

THrilling!

[JohnHowardReid · 9/10 · 12 January 2018]

The most famous of the silent movies on the snowy frontier front is undoubtedly Clarence Brown's The Trail of '98. But before moving into a discussion of that epic film, it's necessary to consider an earlier feature on the same subject (and with much the same storyline and characters), The Chechahcos (1924), directed by Lewis S. Moomaw, and filmed entirely in Alaska under the direct supervision of Captain Austin E. Lathrop. The similarities to Robert W. Service's 1911 novel are so remarkable that I would hazard a guess that Service used "Cap" Lathrop as source material.

Fortunately, this movie is available in a beautiful 10/10 print on Disc 3 of "Treasures from American Film Archives". Photographed by Herbert H. Brownell and Raymond Johnson, it features an unknown but extremely competent cast led by William Dills as the hero, and stage actor, Alexis B. Luce, as the villain. The lovely heroine, as played by Gladys Johnson, impressed Variety's reviewer who felt that, compared to Marguerite Clark, Miss Johnson was far and away the most superior adolescent on the screen. Needless to say, she starred in only one other movie, North of Nome (1925), and that Alaskan feature seems to be lost.

The Chechahcos (an Inuit word meaning tenderfoot, pronounced "chee-chaw-koz") is an amazingly polished, well-paced and thrilling production

Chechahcos is an Alaskan word meaning "tenderfoot"

[jamesjustice-92 · 10/10 · 12 March 2022]

I just love when a movie with a prefix "the first ever to" turns out to be not only that but also a great movie after all. 1924's "The Chechahcos" was the first movie ever to be shot in its entirety in Alaska, even the indoor scenes. Before having watched it I thought it would be just another movie about those gold diggers who came to Alaska hoping to get rich but boy was I wrong. This is a tender story of a girl who loses her mother in an incident and the two men who saved her and became her guardians as she grew up. This silent movie is everything it's supposed to be: heart-warming, romantic, adventurous, thrilling, at times brutal and, of course, kind. It is one of a kind!

I was so surprised when I found out there are like only two sentences about this movie on Wikipedia - it deserves so much more than that. In fact, the shots of Alaska were so beautiful and unique that Charlie Chaplin himself used a couple of them for his well-known hit "The Gold Rush" a year later and that says something.

I love silent movies. There's something about them that a talkie doesn't have and it isn't sound. It's the soul. We experience a new spectrum of emotions by absorbing what's happening on the screen - we see the actors live through their roles not getting to hear a word from them. Pure emotions. Isn't it worth turning the sound off?!