Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn star, and that makes this a brownface movie because Hepburn plays a Kiowa girl raised by whites. The father of the family brought her to them; he is dead, and all her life they have believed that she is white. Toward the end they get a wakeup call.
John Huston directed and he and Lancaster had a major falling out because Huston wanted the hatred against the girl made more explicit. Lancaster dug in his heels. Nine months before they started filming, Playhouse 90 did a TV broadcast of Abby Mann's play Judgment at Nuremberg. If you know anything about Lancaster's career, you probably know that he was in the movie version, but that was two years later.
So what does that have to do with anything? Watch the Playhouse 90 version free on Internet Archive (no ads). Notice the end where people tell Haywood that the Germans are getting tired of the Americans shoving it down their throat that they were all living in Germany when the Nazis started committing crimes against humanity. When somebody shoves something down your throat you puke. Lancaster was not about to let Huston shove white hatred of Native Americans down audiences' throats.
So OK, each had his own opinion about how to do the movie, so what? Well, even if Huston made his push while Hepburn was recovering from a broken back, substantial parts of the movie would have to be reshot, blowing the schedule and costs even more. And that's also what Lancaster was fighting against.
Now go back and rewatch Unforgiven and when the Kiowa come to take their girl back, pay attention from then on. What does it mean that a Kiowa girl was raised as white?
It's cultural genocide. Did Lancaster realize that? He might have. It's not on IA yet, but in 1950 he starred as Jim Thorpe, who got into athletics at the Carlisle School for Indians in Pennsylvania, went to the Olympics, and had his medals revoked because he played baseball for living expenses once. Those medals have now been restored, but that doesn't change the fact that he was treated differently than other Olympians -- because although he was mixed race the IOC didn't view him as white.
The Carlisle school was also about cultural genocide. So were the Canadian schools for Native Americans, as well as being hotbeds of sexual abuse.
If Burt gave John Huston his way, the message of hate would have drowned out the message of cultural genocide. If Huston was right, then why have two messages in there? Why have the Kiowa try to take the girl back? I didn't get that part of the movie either -- until I had this epiphany.
You don't sign on to use a script and then try to drown out an important issue. Only a white-eyes wouldn't understand that stealing children and erasing their cultural identity is wrong, and if it's in the script you have to honor it, not drown it out. He could have quit and forced Hecht-Hill-Lancaster to find another director at the last minute. It happened all the time in Hollywood, such as replacing George Cukor directing Gone with the Wind. It could have been less expensive than the reshooting to pamper Huston's viewpoint -- which was objectively wrong for two reasons.
So what's the connection to Ukraine? Maybe your news outlet doesn't talk about it, but Russia is using cultural genocide by kidnapping Ukrainian kids and abusing them if they speak Ukrainian or don't hide positive feelings they have for Ukraine. They're even training them to make war on Ukraine.
It would be stupid to say that everything in the last 80 years of history, from the start of his career, is related to Burt Lancaster's work, but he continually tried to do message films and some of his messages have importance for today. This is one of them.
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