Product Details

• Actors: Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Sal Mineo, Ricardo Montalban
• Directors: John Ford
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Restored, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.20:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: February 13, 2007
• Run Time: 156 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000G6N0HI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,015 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Cheyenne Autumn" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Cheyenne Autumn is a beautiful title to grace John Ford's final Western, an earnest attempt at long last to "tell the story from the Indians' point of view." The film has moments of grandeur, thanks especially to William H. Clothier's majestic Technicolor compositions--restored to their proper Panavision dimensions on the DVD release--and moments of graceful action thanks to that peerless horseman, Ben Johnson. In other respects, the film falls short of the occasion. Ford is unambiguously supportive of the Cheyennes' resolve to bolt their assigned reservation in the desert Southwest and trek north to their ancestral lands. By emphatic contrast, most of white society, the military, the bureaucracy, and the sensationalist press are portrayed as insensitive, foolish, or downright hateful. Unfortunately, the Cheyenne are nobly wooden and, apart from some Navajo extras, played by non-Indians: Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Sal Mineo, Victor Jory (who's pretty magnificent, actually), and Dolores Del Rio (who's breathtakingly beautiful as ever). As for point of view, it's sympathetic cavalry officer Richard Widmark and Quaker missionary Carroll Baker through whose eyes most of the epic narrative unfolds. A scabrous Dodge City interlude in midfilm, featuring James Stewart as a thoroughly disreputable Wyatt Earp (as opposed to the noble figure Henry Fonda played in My Darling Clementine), was chopped in half after the New York roadshow opening in 1964; it's all there on the DVD. Add to the list of sympathetic whites U.S. Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, played by Edward G. Robinson, who replaced an ailing Spencer Tracy. --Richard T. Jameson

Product Description

This last Western from director John Ford ranks as one of his most ambitious and moving works. Ford outfits his Trail-of-Tears-like saga with a strong cast, stunning cinematography by long-time collaborator William Clothier and a stirring Alex North score. To play the Cheyenne nation desperately struggling to return to the Yellowstone homeland across 1,500 treacherous miles, Ford recruited hundreds of Navajo tribesmen, many of them veterans of Ford movies dating back to 1939's Stagecoach. The location (which Ford used for the ninth time) is "John Ford Country" - the canyons, buttes and mesas of Monument Valley. And Cheyenne Autumn is compassionate, epic artistry from one of Hollywood's most revered filmmakers.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Northern Cheyenne rates this movie! July 2, 2003

By Judith Kovar

Format:VHS Tape|Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought this vcr tape a few months ago. Sure the movie is NOT all correct for Cheyenne dress and habits but John Ford did bring the Cheyenne's plight and disgraceful treatment to the big screen. I view the movie at least once a month and never get tired of it. Excellent movie and beautiful scenes in the movie. Wish John Ford was alive to direct another such movie!
This Northern Cheyenne give this movie 5 stars and a thumbs up.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a classic, but worthy of a look-see! July 19, 2001

By Reginald D. Garrard VINE™ VOICE

Format:VHS Tape

Legendary director John Ford's last film, while not as good as earlier efforts, does possess some striking photography, a brilliant Alex North score, and good acting. Stalwart Richard Widmark does well as the cavalryman with a conscious; Karl Malden is fine as the duty-bound fort commander; and Edward G. Robinson does his patented perfection as a politician who tries to placate the situation. Even the politically incorrect casting of non-Indians Ricardo Montalban, Delores Del Rio, Sal Mineo, and Gilbert Roland can be excused as a sign of the film making times. Veteran character actor Sean McClory is also quite memorable as the fort doctor who confronts Captain Malden about the mistreatment of the Indian prisoners.

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars The picture was handsome, shot in Monument Valley and Moab, Utah, but considering its genre it was slow, even tedious... November 5, 2006

By Roberto Frangie

Format:DVD

John Ford dealt with one of the long-lasting Indian tragedies in his "Cheyenne Autumn," the wasting away of a tribe in an uncongenial pen called a reservation and its efforts to take matters into its own hands...

Indians, to use a modern term, had become redundant; that was their true tragedy... They were unwanted in what the whites wanted to make of the West and so they were 'placed' and disposed of, thereby suffering the usual 'superfluous' maladies of physical and moral debilitation... Here they are portrayed as the victims of insensitive herding...

The Cheyennes--1,500 miles away in Oklahoma from their Yellowstone home--had seen their numbers depleted from one thousand to less than three hundred in the course of a disease-ridden year... With these sorts of statistics it was as much a matter of simple logic as an act of desperation when they upped and left one night, bound on foot for their old hunting grounds, probably knowing full well that the cavalry would make them hurry, as they did, all the way... An epic in real life. Would the master epic-maker match it? In purely visual terms the answer was 'yes'. Ford vivid1y depicted the starvation and disease plaguing the Cheyenne trek... But somehow Ford never wholly got to the heart of the matter although the intent was there and at times this is a most impressive and moving film...

Carroll Baker appears as a Quaker teacher who tries in vain to he1p the unfortunate migrants... Richard Widmark is the army captain who is as sympathetic as uniform allows, and Arthur Kennedy is razor-sharp in his impersonation of Doc Holliday, who, with Stewart's Earp, is drafted into leading a posse against the Indians... Stewart deliberately re-routes them and the Indians get away... Edward G. Robinson plays a humane and kindly Secretary of the Interior who helps bail out the unlucky Cheyenne.