Hombre

The opening shot of Hombre is risky, because some could find it highly amusing, and this is not a comedy. We open on a closeup of Paul Newman's face, highlighted by those legendary blue eyes. He is also wearing a wig and Indian garb, making him look like Tonto. This film was released in 1967--was it another example of casting Anglo actors to play Native Americans?

No, not really. It turns out that Newman is playing John Russell, a man who as a child was kidnapped and raised by Apaches. For a time he was taken in by a white man who gave him the name, but he preferred the Indian ways and went back to live and identify with them. But he learns, at the beginning of the film, that his foster father has died and left him a boardinghouse, so he cuts his hair and makes a stab at living among the whites.

He ends up on stagecoach with a group of travellers who treat him indignantly (one woman insists he ride on top with the driver) but when this group is beset by bandits they rely on his skills to get them out of trouble.

Hombre, based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, is one of a string of films in the sixties and seventies that were revisionist histories of the Indian conflicts of the Old West. Casting a matinee idol like Newman in the role of an Apache was a not so subtle way of calling attention to their plight. The noble savage depicted in earlier Hollywood films was not acceptable anymore, which of course was a good thing, but at times we got lectured in a patronizing fashion. Hombre, though, doesn't lecture, and tells a strong story with some good characters.

Also in the cast were Richard Boone as a ne'er-do-well, Martin Balsam as the Mexican stagecoach driver (interesting that this film was so sensitive to racial identity but didn't use a Hispanic actor for the part) and Fredric March as a professor and Indian Agent. The director was Martin Ritt, Newman's director on Hud. This was the last of six films that Ritt and Newman collaborated on.