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Seven Cities Of Gold (Fox 1955)... it's known in these parts for the great Hugo Friedhofer score.
An excellent score, if somewhat influenced by Newman's 'Captain from Castile' and Steiner's 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre'.
A quick flick through Goog says it's set in 1796 though ....
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But all these years later, are there any other films about colonial North America, i.e. that take place in the 1500s and 1600s, that I should check out?
Tough sledding asking for that era and place. Notta lotta goings-on back then/there except scrabbling hard to put food on the table and not freezing solid in winter.
Not exactly something you'll find JW, the king of the fantasy franchises, scoring! 
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There are really only THREE films that I keep coming back to, that fit my criteria..... THE NEW WORLD...
I have not seen this but was interested. I struggled to get through Malick's last one, about the Swiss guy, owing to its relaxed narrative style. Do you think I'll have the same trouble with THE NEW WORLD?
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Posted: |
Feb 19, 2021 - 4:25 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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But all these years later, are there any other films about colonial North America, i.e. that take place in the 1500s and 1600s, that I should check out? (I have to reiterate that I'm not really interested in films about revolutionary America at the end of the 1700s at this point).
I don't really know why you think there should be any dramatic stories from that period. All you have on continental America from 1500 to 1700 are various Native American hunter-gatherer and nomadic tribes and some early attempts at European settlements.
The tribes spend their time hunting for food, moving from place to place in search of food, and occasionally making war on other tribes with whom they come into conflict (over food, most likely). This does not make for scintillating cinema. Maybe there were great tribal alliances, multi-tribal political movements, or huge conflicts spanning the continent. But no tribes had any written languages, so those incidents (if they ever occurred) are lost to the ages. Of course, we could just fabricate some stories about those kinds of great tribal historical events and make films about them, but who would go to see them? And in these politically correct times, who, other than Native American filmmakers themselves (are there any?), would dare to make them? Can you imagine the outcry if some white filmmaker would presume to tell some fictional historical tale of Native Americans?
As for the settlers, as you mentioned in an earlier post, the earliest ones came from Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, and France. Perhaps you need to look to those countries' national cinemas for films about their experiences in North America, just as you would look to the British cinema about their country's experiences in India or Africa. Whatever those countries did in the U.S. in those two centuries left little lasting impression; England ended up winning the day. Although we did produce CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE about Cortez and the Aztecs, our cinema generally doesn't deal with Spain and Mexico until the 1800s--the Alamo and the annexation of Texas, the taking of California from the Spaniards, and the Mexican War.
Britain's history in America starts in 1607 and the the first 150 years are spent in scratching out a living in a forbidding new land, fighting with the Indians, and setting up commerce with the mother country--which was the primary purpose of having the colonies, after all. Some of the films regarding the Englishmen who settled here come from Britain (e.g., William Penn in PENN OF PENNSYLVANIA), but there are U.S. films too (Sir Walter Raleigh in THE VIRGIN QUEEN and the previously mentioned THE PLYMOUTH ADVENTURE). Things of historical importance don't start happening until Britain and France start competing for supremacy in North America in the mid 1700's. Britain wins that contest in the 1760s in the French and Indian War (covered in a number of films), and then we're on to the Revolution within a decade.
Those are the primary subjects around which historical films of the period can be made. Of course, you can always make a domestic drama set during the period--a love story, marital infidelity, kids rebelling against strict parents---or some action pics--the robberies of a notorious highwayman--but what's the appeal over a present day story? THE NEW WORLD is your love story. The historical record of the events at colonial Jamestown first appeared in John Smith's book Generall Historie of Virginia, which was published in 1624. And if it wasn't for Arthur Miller looking to tell a historically-based parable that he could connect to the U.S. Communist "witch-hunts" of the 1950s, we wouldn't have THE CRUCIBLE.
People want historical events--big ones-- to be covered in historical films. Either that, or it's got to be based on a known property (e.g., THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS). Even American literature doesn't get going until the Revolution (although set in 1757, MOHICANS was published in 1826).
Bottom line, until Columbus arrived in the Western Hemisphere, there was little recorded history upon which to base historical films. And the first 200 years of Europeans on the continent did little to change that, particularly as it related to what is now the U.S. Compare that to what was going on in Europe during those two centuries. Kings live and die; empires rise and fall; religious and secular wars sweep the continent; great cathedrals are built; art and literature flourish (Shakespeare, Cervantes, Martin Luther, Francis Bacon). And it's all set down in writing. Just the number of American films about what was going on in Britain alone during that period is legion--Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Mary, Queen of Scots, Cromwell, Sir Thomas More. Meanwhile, Americans during those centuries are hacking log cabins out of the forest, clearing rock-strewn fields to try to grow meager crops, and engaging in everyday commerce. And our cinema (or lack of it) reflects that dichotomy.
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