The Silent Enemy, a documentary-style transitional sound film from 1930, has finally come to Blu-ray, and that is exciting news for film enthusiasts interested in the first half century of filmmaking. Restored ten years ago, following its original preservation by The American Film Institute in the 1970s, The Silent Enemy is an early example of serious-minded men with cameras who attempted, with all good intentions, to bring to life on the big screen the lifestyles of indigenous peoples. Exoticism, for sure, when compared with Hollywood studio product! In this case, it’s the plight of Canada’s First Nation tribe, the Ojibway, well before the Europeans moved in on their territory.
The producers, W. Douglas Burden and William C. Chanler were Ivy Leaguers who had a fascination with the early lives of indigenous people and money to invest. The genre of implied documentary was not new, although such films only arose occasionally. Few such titles grabbed the attention of movie-goers, and so few made back their investments.
Prior to this production, there had been several important film projects that combined documentary technique with fictional story-telling. The Viking featured real-life Arctic explorer Captain Bob Bartlett. Chang took viewers to the jungles of Siam; it was made by Ernst Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper who later would thrill audiences with King Kong in 1933. Nanook of the North from 1922 continues to entertain, fooling many viewers into thinking they are seeing pure documentary.
The Silent Enemy tells the story of the suffering of the Ojibway tribe in Northern Canada before the time of Columbus. The people are starving. That’s the silent enemy – hunger. The Chief leads his following north, even as winter approaches, in search of sustenance. While The Silent Enemy could never be viewed as a pictorial document of anthropological accuracy, the images are convincing. Why? Because the cast are indigenous people and the film is shot on location amid the heavy snows of Northern Canada.
There are several sequences featuring animals that are extremely well captured. At the time, wild animals could move faster than most camera persons could follow, with unpredictable movements. An agent from Eastman Kodak actually was on the scene to develop images immediately, assuring good quality. Oh yes, there also is a love triangle half-heartedly thrown into the story.
Should anyone believe that this is the earliest use of indigenous Canadians and Americans in films, they would be wrong. Native Americans were encamped as a community as early as 1911 at Inceville, pioneer producer Thomas Ince’s 18,000 acre studio site reaching into the Santa Monica Mountains,. Ince lent them the land so that he could cast them as extras in Westerns being made at his studio. A number of those early Westerns still can be seen, and they seem to my untrained eye to look authentic.
The Silent Enemy was released with a no-frills sound prologue spoken by Chief Chauncey Yellow Robe, a co-star in the photoplay. The Chief stands before the camera. No fussy scenery, no added dramatic flourish. He explains what we will be seeing. So compelling is his introduction that the rest of the film obliges our respect.
Back in the 1970s, The Silent Enemy was preserved just in time to be included in the prestigious opening program of The AFI Theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Programming that title over so many hundreds of other films of the period was due to the efforts of American archivist David Shepard and British preservationist and historian Kevin Brownlow. Proud to say, I was Shepard’s assistant at the time. On the new Blu-ray from Flicker Fusion, there are two orchestral scores from which to choose. For those who want to read more about The Silent Enemy and other examples of its genre, Brownlow’s book The War, The West, and The Wilderness is a valuable tool. The Blu-ray includes part of Brownlow’s writings as a booklet, plus there is an audible interview that Brownlow did with Douglas Burden a few decades ago.
Audrey Kupferberg is a retired film and video archivist and appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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