[4]Jules Vincent, a French-Canadian trapper (Stewart Granger), while in a northern Canadian town, helps an attractive Indian singer (Cyd Charisse), fend off unwanted attentions from a drunken Max Brody (Howard Petrie).

The next day, Vincent sets off by canoe into the Canadian wilderness, taking the Indian girl up north to her tribe, now accompanied by a contrite Brody.

After North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) Constable Pedley (Wendell Corey) arrives at the village on another matter, he learns about Brody's death.

While on his trapline, Vincent finds a half-frozen Father Simon (Morgan Farley) who had gone into the wilderness, to try to persuade the trapper to turn himself in.

Although he could abandon Pedley to certain death by freezing, Vincent continues to support the constable, handcuffing him to the sled to keep him moving.

At a court hearing, Pedley testifies about the events, including the canoe trip, and the magistrate (Holmes Herbert) orders Vincent released.

[5] The film was based on the true story of Mountie Constable Arthur Pedley, who in 1904 was assigned to find a lost missionary in northern Alberta.

Filming was scheduled to resume in July in Chipewyan, Alberta, Canada, where the actual events in Pedley's story had taken place.

An additional advantage noted in American Cinematographer was that the film was particularly good for 'day-for-night' shooting, which was used significantly in 'The Wild North'.

The high points are reached in a sequence showing a battle of the two men with wolves and in another recording their transit of a boiling rapids in a bobbing canoe.

The journey was long and arduous due to the conditions ( travelling for five days in slush and water plus severe snowstorms and temperatures which dropped fifty degrees below zero) and the man's insanity made it hard for Pedley even more, as he had to keep him from escaping once and had to build big fires to keep wolves at bay, and also had to tie him down to force feed him and keep him from escaping again.

Pedley was paid $1,000 for the permission to use his story, which was changed from what happened to make Pedley out to be the one who needed to be rescued by a French-Canadian man (Granger)-who the real man wasn't-played in a stereotypical way noted by Berton that had been the way French-Canadians were portrayed in Hollywood's movies about Canada since the early 1900's, part of a pattern noted by Berton about how Hollywood saw Canada in 525 movies dating from the silent era to the early '60's.