Drums Along the Mohawk was shot in Technicolor, a surprise to me that makes the movie look more modern than it is. The image is crisp and deep, the colors super-saturated in brightness and contrast. Henry Fonda plays the lead, Gilbert Martin, a pioneer type that marries his sweetheart Lana (Claudette Colbert) in 1776 Albany, and moves her immediately to the countryside, which is under threat of Indian and British invasion during the Revolutionary War. It is the first time I have seen Fonda in color at his early stage in film; at this point he is just four years into his acting career, 34-years-old, and still a baby-face.
The movie establishes a lot of John Ford's regular players, Fonda, of course, who he worked with twice in 1939 for this and Young Mr. Lincoln, and John Carradine who appeared in Stagecoach (1939) and a year later in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), also with Henry Fonda. Ward Bond is around for secondary roles in this, and also Young Mr. Lincoln and The Grapes of Wrath, but his earliest Ford acquaintance was in Born Reckless (1930), a film I have never heard of, but is co-directed by John Ford and Andrew Bennison. From 1930 onward it seems like Bond had bit parts in all of Ford's films, including the recently discussed Arrowsmith (1931). He also played the bus driver in It Happened One Night (1934), the film that headlines Drums Along the Mohawk's other star, Claudette Colbert. More research will tell me of Colbert's previous and subsequent collaborations with Ford, but for now this is the only Ford flick I know of her contributing to.
There are other actors, mostly smaller names that hold parts regularly in his films in addition to the ones listed above. There is a sense of family in Ford pictures, the recurring faces become familiar; in later films, scenery recurs, as well, namely the movies set in Monument Valley. The result of this repetition of space, faces, and the similarities in story combine to make the picture people remember when they think of the American West. Ford does more than comment on or perpetuate the history and myths of the West in this regard, but creates it with his own brush strokes.
Next up in the Ford Marathon: The Lost Patrol (1934).
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