Sedona in the movies: Broken Arrow

I finally watched the 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie, Broken Arrow. I say "finally", because I've been meaning to for years, ever since I first went to Sedona, Arizona.

On our Sedona trips, you have the option of taking a rugged (and I mean rugged) jeep tour. The route I like best is the Broken Arrow tour, so called because it goes right through the area where this movie was filmed. I've known that for years, and finally got to see the movie that is the jeep tour's namesake.

The Sedona jeep tour is an exciting ride - get ready to hold on tight!

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This Jimmy Stewart "Broken Arrow" movie (not to be confused with the totally different John Travolta movie by the same name) is obviously a period western. However, given the time in which it was created, I was pleased to see the balanced approach that it took, acknowledging that there were two sides to the "Cowboys vs. Indians" story, and that in fact not all the Cowboys were good, nor all the Indians evil. In fact, this movie is credited with having "a decisive impact on popular consciousness and effectively amend(ing) the ground rules of the genre." Guess that makes it more important than I realized!

The classic western, Broken Arrow

Based on fact, the movie is the story of ex-army scout Tom Jeffords (played by Jimmy Stewart). He is distressed at the way the war against the Apaches is going, and does his best to see if everyone could just get along together, and live in peace instead. In his efforts, he makes friends with the Apache chief Cochise, who is sympathetically portrayed as a wise leader doing the best for his people in a difficult time.

The main problem I had with this movie was the scenery. I mean that's one of the things I love about it, too -- the spectacular Sedona scenery! So why is that a problem?

Sedona, Arizona was a big place for making movies, especially back in the days of the westerns. The thing is, for decades they were making movies here, and never calling it Sedona! In movie after movie, they'd use Sedona as the location for filming, and pretend it was somewhere else. In this movie, it's supposed to be the area in southern Arizona near Tucson, where Cochise had his stronghold.

So I was sitting in Tucson, watching this movie that was clearly happening in Sedona. (Once you've been there, you simply cannot mistake Sedona scenery for anywhere else!) And everything would be going along fine, until they mentioned that they're in Tucson. Every time that happened, I did a double-take. Tucson? They're not in Tucson!

Then I'd get lulled back into the Sedona scenery until the next time they called it Tucson!

You can find the movie on Amazon or Netflix. If you've been to Sedona, or are thinking of going, it's a great movie to watch. You get a little Arizona history along with Sedona vistas... even if they are mismatched!

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If you do the jeep tour in Sedona, you might even recognize some of the views from the movie! We'll be back in Sedona (or is it Tucson??)for our Sedona getaway trips in April, May and October of 2010.
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