Product Description
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A young pioneer leads the first covered wagon train west
on the Oregon Trail. Directed by Raoul Walsh.
Set Contains:
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In addition to being a good movie, The Big Trail is, in
and of itself, a great story. Take the 70mm Grandeur process with
its still-breathtaking widescreen images, the celluloid
equivalent of two conventional 35mm frames side-by-side. Studio
mogul William Fox owned the process and envisioned a grand
triumph for his company. Just the site occurred: the 70mm
prints could be shown only on projectors designed for that
purpose, only two theaters in America had them, and the onset of
the Depression forestalled exhibitors from considering such an
investment. (Mostly the film was seen in the standard 35mm
version more or less simultaneously with the wide
version--and included in this set.) Fox also took a hit because
of the picture's immense scale. As a short on The Making of 'The
Big Trail' recounts, the production used locations in five states
and employed some 20,000 extras, 500 buffalo, 725 Indians from
several tribes, 185 wagons, 22 cameramen, etc. Moreover, because
sound-film technology was new, separate versions of the film were
being made with different leading players for release in
Italian-, Spanish-, and German-speaking markets! Total cost:
$2,000,000--and that's in 1930 dollars, remember.
Not a lot of that went to the star. The former Duke Morrison,
newly renamed John Wayne, had previously been prop man on some 80
Fox pictures and played a few bits and small parts, notably for
director John Ford; on The Big Trail he drew $75 a week. The
Creation of John Wayne sets forth all this, as well as a
biographical sketch of the youth from Winterset, Iowa, by way of
Glendale, Calif. The short also notes that Ford was miffed that a
rival director, Raoul Walsh, would give his (Ford's) protégé a
premature at stardom; Ford effectively dropped Wayne,
leaving him to languish in B pictures for nearly a decade till
casting him in Stagecoach. The film also cost its director. Raoul
Walsh: A Man in His Time salutes him as "probably the greatest
underrated American director," the "most authentic Westerner"
among the genre's classic directors, and a more versatile
entertainer than Ford. Walsh, who cled to have "learned
everything from D.W. Griffith" (for whom he played John Wilkes
Booth in The Birth of a Nation), enjoyed A-list standing on the
basis of his silent-film career, and he had a free hand on The
Big Trail--among other things, improvising the remarkable (and
never equaled) sequence of the wagon train being lowered by rope
down the St. George, Utah cliffs. But the film's box-office
failure reduced him to cranking out (often lively) formula fare
for most of the 1930s, till landing at his proper home, Warner
Bros., in 1939. The 70mm version of The Big Trail is accompanied
by commentary from historian and Time film critic Richard
Schickel. Although given to condescension, Schickel has a
sympathetic understanding of the technical limitations of
early-sound filmmaking, Wayne's neophyte status, the beauties of
Walsh's boisterous spirit and style, and the distinction between
convention and cliché. However, somebody really should point out
to him which of the cast members is Ward Bond. --Richard T.
Jameson