Northwest Passage
film by Vidor [1940]
Also known as: “Northwest Passage: Book I—Rogers’ Rangers”
- In full:
- Northwest Passage: Book I—Rogers’ Rangers
Northwest Passage, American adventure film, released in 1940, that deals with events of the French and Indian War, a theme rarely explored in film. It was based on the first part of Kenneth Roberts’s 1937 novel of the same name. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.) The story follows Langdon Towne (played by Robert Young), a young man recently expelled from college who aspires to become an artist. Towne and his friend Hunk Marriner (Walter Brennan) get drunk in a pub and are nearly arrested. They escape and encounter frontier soldier Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) and subsequently join ...(100 of 280 words)