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Now that the film is released, Spiegel is off to Venice, where his picture will be shown at the annual film festival. "The Italians like this movie," he says. "The festival chairman told me that Waterfront is the first Italian film made in America."
Apache (Hecht-Lancaster; United Artists) claims to follow in the bootsteps of High Noon and Shane, but it trips along the way. It stars Burt Lancaster in a fairly closeup view of the Indian brave, Massai, who refused to join Geronimo in a peace contract with the U.S. Army. The old chief and his warriors are shipped off to Florida reservations, but Massai escapes and decides to go it alone.
Back in Arizona Territory, Massai continues his one-man war against the Army and even the Indians who remain there. This story line gives onetime Circus-Acrobat Lancaster plenty of opportunities to leap daringly from crag to crag, horse to horse, and frying pan to fire. In time everybody is after him, but the one to catch him first is Nalinle (Jean Peters), whose object is squawhood. Together they build a little mountain hideout and plant some corn. When Army scouts find them, Massai, Nalinle and their brand-new papoose prove too homey a family to break up, so Massai goes free. How the scouts straighten out this arbitrary law enforcement with headquarters will have to wait for the sequel, to be titled, no doubt, Son of Apache.
Ernest Laszlo's photography and Robert Aldrich's direction help make the film appear a little grander than it really is. There are some fine shots of a realistic Indian village and of hazy plains and sawtooth mountains. Good scene: Massai's bewilderment as he wanders through the streets of bustling 1886 St. Louis, eying such strange sights as a player piano, a fire wagon, women in bustles.