Admission: $1.50

The Silent Enemy, “rediscovered” and preserved by David Shepard at Blackhawk Pictures, is the subject of an essay in Kevin Brownlow's book, “The War, The West and the Wilderness,” which begins: “The title refers to hunger. The film is an impeccable reconstruction in story form of Ojibway Indian life as it was before the white man came. Conceived and produced in full awareness that the Indian and the wilderness were both rapidly vanishing, it was made forty-five years ago for the purpose of leaving a visual record for the America that was to come of the America that used to be.
“Douglas Burden, a young explorer, had been painfully impressed by the Merian C. Cooper-Ernest Schoedsack film Chang, and with his partner William Chanler, director H.P Carver and a team of Hollywood professionals, independently financed and produced the picture for release by Paramount.
“The story line, which H.P. Carver's son Richard elaborated into a scenario, was based on a study of The Jesuit Relations, a running record in 72 volumes of the travels of Jesuit missionaries in New France (1610-1791). ‘Not one episode was invented by us,' declared Burden, ‘with the exception of the bear on the cliff.'
“Chief Yellow Robe, who plays Chief Chetoga, was a hereditary chief of the Sioux and a nephew of Sitting Bull. He also wrote and spoke the moving prologue that opens the sound version of the picture. The hunter Baluk was a highly decorated World War veteran, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, a Black Foot and a contemporary of Jim Thorpe at Carlisle. For the remainder of the cast, Burden spent six weeks travelling by canoe along the shore of Abitibi Lake searching for photogenic and cooperative Ojibway Indians.”