SEVEN ALONE

US. 1974, 97 minutes, Colour.
Dewey Martin, Aldo Ray, Anne Collings, Dean Smith, James Griffith, Stewart Peterson.
Directed by Earl Bellamy.

Seven Alone is a film directed towards a family audience. It is set in the early 1840s, portraying a family travelling from Missouri to Oregon. The father then dies from blood poisoning after an Indian attack. The mother also dies. The wagon train decides to send the children back to Missouri. However, one of the boys who is considered lazy decides to lead the children through the mountains to complete the journey.

This is American heroism, geared for a family audience and for a young children’s audience, providing them with examples and ideals.

1 . For what audience was this made? Children, family, Americans, non-Americans?

2. A glimpse of America in the 19th. century? A re-creation of a period? How well was it researched and portrayed? Of historical as well an entertainment value?

3. How particularly American was the style? Adapted for family viewing? A parallel with the Disney live action style? Differences?

4. The importance of the events being part of a true story? The authenticity and sense of realism? Sense of history, names and dates?

5. The importance of the introduction of the Missouri settings, colour? The farm and its poverty, the family and their way of life? The house, the continued moving, the father and his hard work and exasperation, the mother and her bearing children, rearing them? The symbolism? The importance of the father’s dreams and the mother not sharing them but being carried along with them?

6. How well delineated were the characters of the parents? The personality of each and their relationship with one another, pioneers, coping and not coping, their relationship with their children? The father's dreams and the mother’s reactions?

7. The film’s focusing on John? His tricks with his brother, the tricks with his sisters and their falling out of bed? John and his sullenness, the beating? What chance of growing up well did the boy have? His strengths of character, weaknesses?

8. The sudden sighting of the wagons, the visualising of drum, the trek to Oregon? The hopes of Oregon, of farm life, of prosperity? The way of making decisions and the family going with the wagon?

9. How interesting were the incidents in the life of the wagon train, the importance of the personalities in the group, the families, the guides? The importance of the Shaws? Of the Dutch doctor and John’s reaction to him?

10. John and his being out of place at times in the wagon train, his playing cards and losing the cattle, his going to sleep on the wagon, the importance of Catherine’s accident and the doctor’s helping her and decisions? The doctor helping John’s father, mother? His incompetence, but the primitive nature of the wagon train? The justice of John’s accusations against him? His insulting and hurting the doctor? His mother's lessons about this?

11. The confrontation with the Indian? John running away and the encounter with Kit Carson? The father fighting witli the Indian and his being wounded? His lingering and the significance of his death?

12. The credibility of the mother’s decline, her death? Henrietta as her bequest to John and his keeping the family together?

13. John and the responsibility for the family, his decisions, yet his bullying treatment of the other children? Their reaction to him? How did he keep them going through all the difficulties? The significance of the film's title in reference to the children and their courage and endurance?

14. The significance of Kit Carson, his helping John personally, helping the family? The importance of his later role when they were to settle in Oregon with his help? The characterisation of of Carson and his place in American pioneering legend?

15. The wisdom of the children’s decision to go on to Oregon, the significance of their mistake and finding the group going to California, the Indian leading them to the other group and his death, their courage in going on towards Oregon during the winter? How important were the sequences with the raft? With the animals, with the Indian village and the feeding of the baby, the snow sequences, encountering the group with dysentery? The momentum of each of these sequences within the film, and on the children?

16. John’s pushing them through the snow, their being on the verge of collapse? His going on and the fulfilment of his hopes? The happy ending?

17. How enjoyable, how moving? Audience identification with the children and their quest and endurance? With their characters? The pioneering American values?