Unconquered

1947 "I bought this woman for my own… and I'll kill the man who touches her!"
Unconquered
6.9| 2h27m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 10 October 1947 Released
Producted By: Paramount
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

England, 1763. After being convicted of a crime, the young and beautiful Abigail Hale agrees, to escape the gallows, to serve fourteen years as a slave in the colony of Virginia, whose inhabitants begin to hear and fear the sinister song of the threatening drums of war that resound in the wild Ohio valley.

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Robert J. Maxwell It's 1763 in and around Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania. Gary Cooper is an amiable captain in His Majesty's First Own Monongahela Fusiliers or something. Trouble is brewing with the Indians, called "savages." The savages speak a made-up language, unless "iksa" is a prominent part of their Algonquian dialect. When they speak English, they say: "You burn white woman at stake." Paulette Goddard is a slave whose ownership is in question -- a tug of war between the honorable Cooper and the villainous Henry da Silva. The legitimate owner, of course, is Cooper, who soon takes to romancing his slave. "The moonlight has turned your dress into emeralds." And "The starlight is dancing in your eyes." Now, lines like this don't come easily to Gary Cooper, nor does his dress uniform. Comfortable in fringed leather, he has to wear this garish outfit to the governor's ball. An absurd three-cornered hat. A bright blue jacket with scarlet facings and bright brass buttons. But BOOTS -- no white stockings for Gary Cooper. Real men don't wear white stockings. It's just one step away from fishnet and garter belts. All together, he carries on like a man with long, jointed sticks instead of limbs, but always honorable. Cooper bamboozles a tribe of savages about to burn Goddard alive by playing tricks with a compass. The Indian chief, Boris Karloff, is stupefied by the unerring arrow of the compass. It's a scene out of Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." Karloff's character -- Guyasuta - Chief of the Senecas -- was a real historical figure, an early pal of, and guide for, George Washington. Paulette Goddard is an attractive women, even though she is no longer the sprightly nymph with the pretty legs from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." And she's superb as a slave whose dress may be torn to shreds, who may be rough-housed by the villainous, cheating, thieving, lying, murdering, rapist Howard da Silva, dunked in a rapidly flowing river, and tortured by Indians, and who must scrub floors in a filthy tavern, but who never loses a false eyelash or is without lipstick and rouge. She was never a bravura actress but evidently a nice woman. When she died, she left most of her estate to New York University.Those taverns, by the way, look convincing as all get out, like the other interiors. Production design and set dressing don't usually get their due but they should because they add so much texture to the images. That tavern is stuffed full of sacks of grain, hewn tables, simple rickety chairs, piles of corn, long rifles hung on racks, trenchers, pewter tankards and unidentifiable bits of feathered artifacts. The direction is by Cecil B. De Mille so don't expect nuance in the acting. When a woman is frightened, she doesn't just scream. She puts her clenched fists against her cheeks, pops her eyeballs, and shrieks in horror -- if she doesn't faint outright.The movie has its merits. It's as colorful as a peacock's tail. The interplay between the characters is old fashioned but classic. We get to see George Washington when he was a mere colonel. And there is a genuinely exciting scene in which Cooper and Goddard escape from the pursuing Indians in a canoe. Their canoe plunges over a waterfall the size of Niagara and their escape is a miracle. At the end, Fort Pitt is besieged by whooping savages, scaling the palisades using canoes as ladders. The white defenders shoot them down by the hundreds, but savages are as many as needle on pine tree, mosquito in swamp, fish in Lake Erie, flea on hound dog, snake on head of Medusa, pigeon on statue, dollar in Trump wallet, fly on picnic table, illegal at border, gun in NRA closet.The climax involves a shoot out between two enemies. "I know you can draw faster than me," says one of them, drawing a line quickly from a thousand and one scenes in cheap Westerns. Well, Fort Pitt is under siege and hopelessly outnumbered. And the outcome? The cavalry arrives and saves the day. Salutem ex mortuis.
helpless_dancer I enjoyed this film, but the acting was so overblown, especially by Paulette Goddard, that I had to laugh during many of the more tense situations. Hollywood really did a number on pre-revolutionary America when they cast Karloff as the Chief of the cutthroat redskins out to relieve Coop and crew of their freshly styled coiffures. However, I did like De Silva's hammy portrayal of the villainous gunrunner intent on getting the girl and a large portion of land. Entertaining show, but very little history or realism, but then, that is not what I was after or expecting.
Ted Wilby (tfiddler) Only DeMille could manage, or would even dare, to have George Washington, and a Slave Girl Bathing Scene in the same movie. Boris Karloff is a hoot as the Indian with a weird accent. It's great politically incorrect fun from start to finish. In this picture, the only Good actor is a Dead one...
guil fisher Cecil B. DeMille,once again, takes a simple plot outline and then glorifies his attempt to tell the story. Put British soldiers, American settlers, Indians, Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard in the same film, add Technicolor,and you have fine entertainment.Story begins with Abby Hale (Goddard) being sentenced to the noose or white slavery in America for an unjust crime. On ship towards America she meets and is won, in an impromptu slave auction, by Chris Holden (Cooper) who outbids the villain (wonderfully played by Howard DeSilva) to get even with him because of his shady dealings in selling guns to the Indians.Holden releases Abby (he has a fiance, you see) as it wouldn't look proper with her trailing behind him as his servant. Abby, thinking she was set free goes to collect her papers only to discover DeSilva owns her (a trick he played with auctioneer).Once in America, it is soon discovered that Abby was not given her freedom and Chris (having lost his fiance to his own brother) goes about to get her back. Along the way they run into Indians and rapids. Abby is captured by Indians, set up by DeSilva's wife,the daughter of the chief (played beautifully by DeMille's daughter, Katherine).Of course, Chris, pursues his lady fair. This includes arriving at the Indian camp where she is at the stake being tortured, getting her released from the Indian chief (played by Boris Karlof) through a trick with a compass. Thus the chase begins which includes Chris and Abby going over a huge waterfall in an Indian canoe. Many critics called the movie "The Perils of Paulette" because of all DeMille put her through to make the picture. She rebelled several times, walking off the set, only to have DeMille refuse to use her again (this was her third picture for him). She lost out to Gloria Grahme in the role of Sugar (a name she used to call all her leading men) in DeMille's GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.In the end, after the confrontation of Cooper and DeSilva, he wins his lady fair and all ends happily ever after.Cooper and Goddard still have the ability to draw your attention in spite of the fact they are in their latter years. Paulette, still the red-headed beauty, does some decent acting for a DeMille film and Coop can still play the hero. Only time they appeared together prior to this film was another DeMille film years earlier, NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE. However, in that film they weren't lovers.Look for several good character actors in this one, among them Ward Bond, Cecil Kellaway, Henry Wilcoxen and, in a cameo role, C.Aubrey Smith along with Raymond Hatton.