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| Courtesy of MVD Visual |
Starting out a bit like Robert
Flaherty’s stagey Nanook of the North as a quasi-documentary portrait of
Native American life, focusing on Son of the Hunter (Francis Kee Teller) before
taking on the shape of a scenic chase thriller involving American Indian
boarding schools set on separating children from their biological families and
forced to conform to the white man’s way of life.
Among the only Hollywood films about
the erasing nature of the boarding school system determined to eradicate
preexisting cultural norms in Native Americans, the film is largely told
through voiceover narration from the perspective of Son of the Hunter, played
brilliantly by then seven-year-old Francis Kee Teller.
Unlike Nanook of the North which carefully
hid ordinary Eskimo customs from the cameras to make them seem more
westernized, Navajo offers clearer but still somewhat censored insight
into Native American life for the first half of the picture before shifting
gears to a traditional thriller when Son of the Hunter finds himself separated
from his mother and abducted by white men who assign him to a boarding
school. From here, Son of the Hunter
plots his escape, all set to the stunningly beautiful canyon backdrops of
Arizona.
From top to bottom, Navajo is
visually striking with some jaw dropping wide angled vistas near the third act. Shot on location at the Canyon de Chelly by
Virgil Miller whose work was nominated for Best Cinematography despite having
limited means and only one camera to his disposal, Navajo at times
functions like a silent picture where you needn’t be able to hear the dialogue
to determine the nature of this story.
With
his camera, Miller and director Foster all but pave the way for seven-year-old
Indian actor Francis Kee Teller who carries the film on his shoulders despite
never having seen one in his life before.
Filmed under the working title The Voice of the Wind with a
miniscule $30,000 budget amid threatens of bans by the Indian Service coupled
with inclement weather conditions, Navajo for all its accomplishments
seemed to have the world against it.
In the end however, Navajo earned
almost universal acclaim from critics and audiences alike, copping two Academy
Award nominations. Seen now, certain
elements of the film (revealed years later) date the film such as child actor
Sammy Ogg doing a Native American accent in the voiceover narration instead of
Francis Kee Teller. Also, despite
running just over an hour the first half of the film tends to meander somewhat as
Son of the Hunter and his family are on the move hunting for a new home.
While not necessarily an unearthed classic eagerly
awaiting rediscovery, Navajo nevertheless takes its place in movie
history as among the very first times Hollywood tried to tell the Native
American life story using real Native Americans instead of professional movie
actors. A curious if not beautiful cinematic
docudrama object that hasn’t completely aged well but is still a fascinating
time capsule.
--Andrew Kotwicki
