The Indian Fighter

Kirk Douglas and Elsa Martinelli ponder jumping the fence in The Indian Fighter

Andre De Toth's  The Indian Fighter, from 1955, is a superior Western, relatively thoughtful and sensual for the period. The film is of a liberal and tolerant bent, reflecting the persona and avowed commitment of its star, Kirk Douglas. The story was concocted by a blacklisted writer and ends as a paean to miscegenation. Douglas woos Indian maiden Elsa Martinelli with Cro-Magnon fervor. Their mating is evoked with liquid imagery. Martinelli is introduced skinny dipping and soon she and Kirk are having their first tryst in the same river. They grapple violently and Kirk, as was his want, gets as naked as Elsa. They have chemistry whether or not anything was going on offscreen. They end the film swimming together, love having triumphed over greed.

This sense of fluidity extends to the casting: Hank Worden and Harry Landers both play dual roles: injun and paleface, brothers under the greasepaint. The villains are whites lusting for gold, Lon Chaney Jr. and Walter Matthau, before Hollywood figured out to do with him. The Bend, Oregon locales are gorgeous, though I wish cinematographer Wilfred M. Cline would have slowed down some of the pans. This is De Toth's first Cinemascope feature, there are parades and snakes, and while he had worked with a rectangular frame before, The Indian Fighter feels clunky at times. However, De Toth's pessimism seeps through. His characters here, to paraphrase another De Toth film, play dirty. The venality of men lurks beneath the Technicolor surface of The Indian Fighter.