MOVIE · 1939

Drums Along the Mohawk

DramaRomanceWarWestern104 min

Newly married Gil and Lana Martin leave Albany in 1776 to build a life on a farm in New York’s Mohawk Valley, just as the Revolutionary War closes in around them. Henry Fonda is Gil, determined to make the homestead work, while Claudette Colbert’s Lana is pulled from city comforts into a harsher world of clearing land, rebuilding after attacks, and leaning on a scattered frontier community. As distant drums signal danger, the film follows their marriage through crop failures, raids, and the pressure of war on a settlement still trying to take root. John Ford directs with a strong sense of place and period.