The Savage Innocents (1960) on Netflix
Inuk, an Inuit hunter, offers a missionary food and his wife's company at a trading post. The missionary refuses, and Inuk accidentally kills him. White policemen set out after the hunter.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.8/102,140 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes71%
Trailer
Plot summary
Inuk is a hunter in the Arctic who has had little to do with white men. He goes to a trading post and meets a Christian missionary there. It is Inuk's custom to offer a guest food and the company of his wife, and he makes the missionary that offer. The missionary rejects it, and Inuk kills him, though not on purpose. White policemen then pursue the hunter.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Savage Innocents (1960)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Three weeks of location footage shot in Canada for The Savage Innocents was lost in a plane crash, and the lost scenes had to be refilmed in a studio in London.
- Nicholas Ray cast Japanese actress Yoko Tani and Chinese actress Anna Mae Wong as Inuit characters, saying he could not find an Eskimo actress and believed Asian and Inuit peoples shared ancestry.
- Peter O'Toole, who plays the First Trooper, had his voice dubbed by Italian actor Robert Rietti, which upset O'Toole so much that he demanded he not be credited.
- Bob Dylan is widely believed to have written his song "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" in tribute to Anthony Quinn's performance in the film.
- Nicholas Ray wrote the Eskimo dialogue in what he called beautiful, fluent, poetic language, expecting Yoko Tani to read it without an accent, but Anthony Quinn could not match her rhythm without pidgin English.
- The original script of The Savage Innocents had a third act set in a courtroom, but this was greatly truncated in the finished film.
