What to expect
DeMille and Apfel’s feature is important to early Hollywood history, but its status cannot be separated from a story that grants its white hero mobility while denying equal narrative value to its Indigenous heroine.
How to ease in
Watch with the unequal choices in view. The film presents sacrifice as romance, so ask who is allowed a future and whose loss makes another person’s return possible.
Heads-up
An English aristocrat begins a new life in the American West, where his relationship with an Indigenous woman is trapped by racial and social hierarchy.
The hero crosses borders and classes; Nat-u-ritch is made to pay for that freedom. I cannot treat her sacrifice as decorative pathos when it is the structure holding his second chance together.
Open the note ↓
The hero crosses borders and classes; Nat-u-ritch is made to pay for that freedom. I cannot treat her sacrifice as decorative pathos when it is the structure holding his second chance together.
— Momo
Credits & versions
Version map
Where to go next
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