The Silent Enemy

1930 DocumentaryDrama Directed by H.P. Carver

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About The Silent Enemy

Chauncey Yellow Robe speaks to the audience before the story starts, on the Ojibwe past and on what he hopes for the people. The film then stages a famine among the Ojibwe, called Ojibway on the titles, and a fight for authority between the hunter Baluk and the medicine man Dagwan.

Cast & crew

More about The Silent Enemy

H. P. Carver directed. W. Douglas Burden, Richard Carver, and Julian Johnson wrote it. Marcel Le Picard photographed it. It is a part-talkie: spoken scenes, a synchronized score and effects, and English intertitles. The premiere was May 19, 1930, at the Criterion Theater in New York. Paramount distributed it in August 1930. Motion Picture Daily of December 26, 1930, placed the shoot in the timber limits outside Arnprior, Ontario. Another account names Lake Temagami. About 200 Indigenous people were employed.

Themes

  • Hunger before winter
  • A hunter against a medicine man
  • A spoken address to the audience
  • Ojibwe
  • famine
  • Baluk
  • Dagwan
  • prologue
  • Ontario

Background

It opened in New York in May 1930, while features were still being issued both as silents and as part-talkies. Paramount put it into general release that August.

In film history

An American feature of 1930 that centers an Ojibwe famine and casts Indigenous performers in the leading roles, with Yellow Robe addressing the audience in his own voice before the plot.

Making

The company recorded Yellow Robe's spoken prologue and then staged the famine story with a large Indigenous cast in the Ontario bush, rather than on a backlot with Hollywood extras.

Look

Marcel Le Picard shot the company in Ontario, in timber country outside Arnprior and, by another account, at Lake Temagami.

Music

Some scenes have spoken dialogue. The rest uses English intertitles with a synchronized score and sound effects. Yellow Robe's opening speech is recorded.

Preservation

Prints survive, including a copy posted for viewing and a file on Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • Yellow Robe is billed as Chief Yellow Robe. Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, Chief Akawanush, and Mary Alice Nelson Archambaud (Molly Spotted Elk) are the other leads named in the credits.
  • The tribe's name is spelled Ojibway in the film and Ojibwe in later accounts of the story.
  • Long Lance was a widely published figure whose claim to Indigenous identity was disputed in his own lifetime.
  • This is not the 1934 picture of the same English title that stars Tom Keene.
  • Paramount, not a Canadian studio, handled the release. The exteriors were shot in Ontario.

Scenes

  • Yellow Robe speaks directly to the camera before the story begins.
  • The band faces a failed hunt, and Baluk and Dagwan contend for who will lead.

Also available

  • Internet Archive (the-silent-enemy-1930-1992)