Phenomenal!
Despite having a white actor play an Indigenous role, Devil’s Doorway subverts the usual racial politics of the Western, depicting American homesteaders as aggressors against Natives. Mann brilliantly emphasizes the state’s culpability in it all, even having a Karen call in the Army, hoping they would help protect the Indigenous people! Alton’s noir-honed cinematography casts Taylor as a man stuck at the wrong end of an immoral expansionary force, with no possible recourse. The two sides come to an explosive meeting, with the immoral triumphant and the moral erased. The final two shots brilliantly remind the viewer that the story of the American West isn’t the story that America remembers it as.
The film’s subtext also draws attention to the experience of Black WW2 veterans, who, similar the film’s protagonist, fought alongside white Americans in Europe, but returned to segregation and violence.
We stan Anthony Mann in this household!!!
Phenomenal!
Despite having a white actor play an Indigenous role, Devil’s Doorway subverts the usual racial politics of the Western, depicting American homesteaders as aggressors against Natives. Mann brilliantly emphasizes the state’s culpability in it all, even having a Karen call in the Army, hoping they would help protect the Indigenous people! Alton’s noir-honed cinematography casts Taylor as a man stuck at the wrong end of an immoral expansionary force, with no possible recourse. The two sides come to an explosive meeting, with the immoral triumphant and the moral erased. The final two shots brilliantly remind the viewer that the story of the American West isn’t the story that America remembers it as.
The film’s subtext also draws attention to the experience of Black WW2 veterans, who, similar the film’s protagonist, fought alongside white Americans in Europe, but returned to segregation and violence.
We stan Anthony Mann in this household!!!
