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Article Excerpt
"Scholars have traditionally regarded the study of motion pictures as a notch above the frivolous," writes James V. D'Arc, editor of The Register of Cecil B. DeMille Archives. D'Arc adds that "Viewing films can reveal much about the inner vibrations of an era, but without documented evidence of the production, distribution, and audience reception, broader determinations, such as a film's impact on culture are impossible" (XIII). New types of film histories and studies have emerged since the 1970s, many being archival-based studies of the business aspects of the film industry (27). This paper utilizes an ethnographic approach to film studies, what David Bordwell calls "middle-level research." According to Bordwell, "the most established realms of middle-level research have been empirical studies of filmmakers, genres, and national cinemas" (27). Noel Carroll (58) has argued that film studies, and more specifically film theory, needs to develop a more integrated research methodology, an approach that he refers to as piecemeal theorizing. Such an approach suggests a pragmatic and dialectical analytical perspective that involves an examination of a variety, of primary sources that might include political science, economics, sociology and history (Carroll 40). Both Bordwell and Carroll suggest an approach that, at first glance, appears to lack any systematic methodological or theoretical framework. On closer examination, however, such notions are well suited to the study of cinema and culture.
This paper provides readers with all opportunity to "sit in" on the story and planning meetings that created the distorted images in Cecil B. DeMille's film Northwest Mounted Police. The validity or credibility of a study of this kind is based on what some researchers call "thick description." John Creswell and Dana Miller (par 34) have captured both the spirit and intent of this investigation by noting that "the purpose of a thick description is that it creates verisimilitude, statements that produce for the readers the feeling that they have experienced ... the events being described in the study." The paper also reminds readers that film has, for some, become a questionable source of historical knowledge, and that perhaps there is an ethical responsibility on the part of filmmakers, both past and present, to be truthful.
Contemporary Canadians might feel at times that they are a culture forgotten by their American neighbours. Canadians rarely hear their news or issues reported in the American media. That same neglect holds sway in the realm of popular culture. Current Hollywood films, for example, virtually ignore the "Great White North" in their cinematic stories and adventures. But it hasn't always been that way. Canadian author Christopher Gittings notes that Canada was featured in 575 Hollywood films between 1907 and 1956. Most of these, however, "portrayed Canada in a stereotypical fashion" (par 2), many of them involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Geoff Pevere and Greig Dymond (183) state that AMericans have made many more Mountie movies than Canadians have, noting that "the inadvertent or intentional kitsch value of these is almost always rooted in the image of the Mountie's impossible purity or sense of duty." Michael Dawson, in That Nice Red Coat Goes To My Head Like Champagne: Gender, Antimodernism and the Mountie linage, points out that "Mounted Policemen appeared as central characters ill over 250 feature films" (par 54). Pierre Berton notes that by 1922 Hollywood had made 188 Mountie Movies, forty-eight of which were in the feature-length mode that became popular after 1914 (112). Most of these films were fictionalised accounts of the Mounties, but a few directors attempted to convince audiences that their films were true stories of Mounted Police exploits in the Canadian West. Cecil B. DeMille's film Northwest Mounted Police (1940) was one of those questionable adventures.
Northwest Mounted Police and other films about the Mounties, such as Raoul Walsh's Saskatchewan (1954), attempted to convey authenticity by claiming that the events depicted in the films actually took place. In doing so, they left themselves open to considerable historical criticism. Hollywood filmmakers such as DeMille and Walsh filled their Mountie stories with a mish-mash of misplaced eyelets and places that might have been tolerated by film critics and audiences except for one simple fact--they were being presented as events that actually happened. In terms of material history (replicating forts, uniforms, military music, and rules and regulations), DeMille, for example, was able to provide some glimpses of historical reality. His film, however, did not provide an accurate account of historical events associated with the North-West Rebellion. DeMille altered the historical representation of the Mounted Police and Canadian history by changing, eliminating, condensing, or fabricating historical events in order to fashion a story--a yarn that was intended primarily for American audiences. In most cases, the lack of historical scrutiny associated with the film made it a questionable chronicle of Canadian history and the Mounted Police. Critics of DeMille's epic such as Pierre Berton have been harsh on the historical representations in the film, but in most cases the weak cultural insights about Canada and the Mounted Police ill DeMille's film and others were not intentional, but rather the result of a suffocating cultural process that prohibited filmmakers such as DeMille from venturing outside their own cultural cocoon.
Historian Mark Carnes argues that the impact of film as a socialization agent has had a profound impact on movie audiences and continues to be a unique instructional tool. In contemporary terms, he notes "television's continuous old movies function as a night school, a great repository of historical consciousness ill these United States of Amnesia. For many, Hollywood history is the only history" (9). It might have been that way for Mabel Beckman of South Branch, New Jersey, who, on January 12, 1941, wrote DeMille about Northwest Mounted Police, noting "What a great opportunity you producers have to teach our young Americans the great fundamentals of clean living, truth, purity, and love. Your influence is greater than schools and homes." It was the type of praise that must have inspired the historical "gospels" of Cecil B. DeMille.
This notion raises the question, of course, about the usefulness of film as a pedagogical tool. Such concerns have raised key questions about films as a source of historical knowledge. Carnes observes that
Like drama and fiction, movies inspire and entertain. They often teach important truths about the human condition. They do not provide a substitute for history that has been painstakingly assembled from the best available evidence and analysis. But sometimes filmmakers, wholly smitten lay their creations, proclaim them to be historically "accurate" or "truthful," and many viewers presume them to be so. Viewers should neither accept such claims nor dismiss them out of hand, but regard them as an invitation for further exploration. (10)
The Hollywood Mountie film genre requires such exploration. Cinematic stories about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have often been ridiculed for their American-like qualities. The Mounties appear to be quick on the trigger and forever protecting the Dominion from rampaging savages. Throw in a few covered wagons and wandering US Marshals, and film audiences might think they were in Kansas. What factors, therefore, contributed to DeMille's Americanizing the Canadian West? While much has been written about this aspect of DeMille's film (see Berton's Hollywood's Canada, 1975), very little research has been done on the production legacy that DeMille has left cinephiles that explains how he created this "masterpiece of misinformation" (Berton 166).
Northwest Mounted Police, produced and directed by DeMille in 1940, might have established a benchmark for historical research on films about the Mounted Police. Compared to Walsh's historically fraudulent Saskatchewan, Northwest Mounted Police strove for cultural accuracy. DeMille's production associates, including Research Secretary Frank Calvin, had carried out extensive preliminary research for the film, and as DeMille's papers and correspondence suggest, this film was to be a testament to historical accuracy. A May 18, 1939, checklist provided to Calvin indexed a series of historical and police items to be investigated as part of the research for the film and included bugle calls, meetings between RCMP and Texas Rangers, various ranks, and weapons carried lay the Mounted Police. With so much research time and expense devoted to Northwest Mounted Police, it is surprising that so little actual history found its way into the film. What did find its way into the film were the familiar stereotypes associated with the northern Dominion, frozen in a memorable but corny line from the film: "What do you expect Canadian women to look like?" "Oh, kind of like the scenery. Good to look at but kind of frostbitten"--Nurse April Logan (Madeleine Carroll) to Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers (Gary Cooper) (Northwest Mounted Police, Paramount Films, 1940). The cliche-ridden script and stage-like sets would deny film audiences an accurate historical picture about Canada and the Mounted Police. Much of the extensive research collected for the film would be left on the production and story meeting tables, so that this would be a film story about Canada and the Mounties in name only. DeMille could have called his film Southwest Mounted Police.
Research for the film commenced in earnest in the spring of 1939. DeMille sent brother-in-law Calvin to Regina to undertake preliminary study on a DeMille idea for a film on the North-West Mounted Police. A July 5 Canadian National Telegram to Calvin shows that DeMille had not sorted out an historical time frame, or a clear story line. He mentioned: "I understand in eighteen eighty five it [trapping] was extremely prevailent (sic) I am still laying the story about nineteen hundred five." In correspondence dated July 10, DeMille...
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