Watching Teddy Roosevelt struggle in the mud: The River of Doubt

If you’re looking for a polished adventure film or something with a narrative arc, you’re going to be bored out of your mind. But if you have a weird fascination with seeing historical figures looking genuinely miserable in the heat, The River of Doubt is worth the hour or so it takes to sit through. It’s for the kind of person who likes looking at old family photos of people they don’t know, just to see what the clothes looked like.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The River of Doubt (1928) through its definitive frames.

The first thing that hits you is how small Theodore Roosevelt looks. We’re used to the 'Rough Rider' image—the big teeth, the glasses, the energy. Here, especially in the later shots, he looks like a man who has been eaten alive by insects. There is a specific shot of him sitting on a rock where he just looks... deflated. It’s not the kind of shot a modern PR team would ever let out. He’s just a tired guy in a wet shirt.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The River of Doubt (1928) through its definitive frames.

The camera work is exactly what you’d expect from 1914 equipment being lugged through a rainforest. It’s shaky, the tripod clearly wasn't level half the time, and the light is either blindingly bright or swallowed by the canopy. There’s a strange lack of 'action' in the way we think of it now. Most of the film is just men moving heavy things. They move a canoe. They move a crate. They stand around a fire. It’s repetitive, but that repetition starts to give you a real sense of how much of a slog this trip was.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The River of Doubt (1928) through its definitive frames.

The editing is pretty choppy. You’ll be watching a scene of the river, and then it suddenly cuts to a title card that talks about a completely different day. It feels like someone dropped the film canisters down a hill and just taped them back together in whatever order they found them. It’s not smooth like The Timber Queen or other staged adventures from that era. It feels raw, almost accidental.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The River of Doubt (1928) through its definitive frames.

There’s a moment where they interact with some of the indigenous people, and it’s deeply awkward. You can see the confusion on both sides. The camera lingers on a group of children who are looking at the lens with this perfect mix of curiosity and 'what is this idiot doing?' It’s one of the few times the movie feels alive and not just like a historical record. It’s much more grounded than the theatricality you see in something like Arizona Nights.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The River of Doubt (1928) through its definitive frames.

I noticed that the intertitles are incredibly dramatic, almost to a fault. One will say something about 'The Perils of the Deep Jungle,' and then the next shot is just a guy trying to fix a boot. The disconnect between the text and the actual footage is almost funny. The movie is trying very hard to convince you that every second was a brush with death, even when the guys on screen just look bored or hot.

One scene goes on way too long: the portaging of the canoes. They haul these massive wooden boats over land to avoid rapids, and the footage just keeps going. You see them slip, you see the mud, you see the strain in their shoulders. It’s not 'exciting,' but by the third minute of it, you actually start to feel a bit of the exhaustion yourself. It’s effective in a way that I don’t think the filmmakers intended. It’s just pure, unedited physical labor.

The footage of Cândido Rondon is interesting too. He has a completely different energy than Roosevelt. While TR looks like he’s fighting the environment, Rondon looks like he’s just existing in it. He moves differently. It’s a subtle contrast, but it’s there if you stop looking at the 'famous guy' for a second.

The ending feels abrupt. There’s no big 'we made it' celebration that feels earned. It just kind of stops. You’re left with the image of a very gray, very tired group of men who are lucky to be alive. It’s not a 'good' movie by modern standards—the pacing is non-existent and the visual quality is a mess—but as a window into a moment where a former president almost vanished into the trees, it’s pretty haunting.

Don't watch it for the 'story.' Watch it for the way the light hits the water and the way Roosevelt’s hat gets progressively more crushed as the film goes on.