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Based on a story by one of John Ford's regular screenwriters, Frank Nugent,
North West Frontier was seen by some contemporary critics as a sort of British
Western about a group of disparate individuals heading for civilisation across a
wilderness full of rampaging savages out to destroy them. In fact, it is closer
in outline to J. Lee Thompson's war film of the previous year, Ice Cold in Alex
(1958), which also involves a perilous journey across a hostile landscape and in
which the danger might stem either from the enemy without or a traitor within
the ranks. Like Alex, the film blends exciting action with a vitality of
characterisation that allows for an exchange of ideas as well as
hostilities.
Robin Estridge, brought in to stiffen the screenplay, skilfully allows all
the main characters to have their say. The achievement of Empire is extolled by
Ursula Jeans' Lady Windham, while Kenneth More's Captain Scott is the epitome of
English fair play, a Kipling-quoting soldier apt to burst into a chorus of the
'Eton Boating Song' and dedicated to the maintenance of peace and orderly
British rule. A lively counterbalance is provided by Lauren Bacall's feisty
governess, who challenges British obeisance to political and patriarchal
authority; she even has the effrontery to dislike tea. Eugene Deckers' Peters
puts the pragmatic rather than patriotic case for the selling of arms ("Men make
war, not guns"), but is eloquently opposed by Herbert Lom's half-breed
journalist, whose fanaticism springs from personal conviction about the justice
of his cause. Without endorsing his actions, writer and director give due
seriousness to Van Leyden's point of view, and Lom's moving as well as menacing
performance provides much of the film's dramatic weight.
Still, for all the thoughtfulness of its political argument, shrewdly
balancing nostalgia for Empire with recognition of the necessity and
inevitability of change, the film's resounding success was surely due to its
expertly constructed suspense and the bravura of its action scenes. North West
Frontier has a sense of spectacle and swagger that had scarcely been seen in
British cinema since Alexander Korda's Imperialist epics of the 1930s. When
Gregory Peck saw the movie, he recommended Thompson as a suitable replacement
for Alexander Mackendrick when the production of The Guns of Navarone (1961) had
stalled. What followed were international success and the lure - and loss - of a
distinctive native talent to Hollywood.
Neil Sinyard
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1. The train massacre (6:51)
