Northwest Passage

It is 1759 in colonial America. After Langdon Towne is expelled from Harvard, he returns to his home in New Hampshire. He plans a future as an artist. But when he gets into a fight with British officials, he is forced to flee and make his way through the forest. He joins up with the famed rangers led by Major Robert Rogers, as they mount a punitive expedition against the Abnaki nation, who are aligned with the French. The long journey through swamps and wilderness is full of hardship, but they are still able to carry out a massacre. Injured during the battle, Towne endures additional suffering during the rangers’ retreat … King Vidor’s first colour film spent three years in development and was not without hardship for its crew. Shot over twelve weeks on location in Idaho, Northwest Passage is a masterpiece of plein air painting on film, for which Vidor specifically explored paintings in oil. The racist atrocities depicted in the film are of a piece with the Robert Rogers character, portrayed by Spencer Tracy as a ruthless warrior. The dubious hero’s unscrupulousness is fully revealed in the second part of the novel, which – to King Vidor’s regret, he never received financing to film.