Themes: White People Among Indians, Taming the West, Out For Revenge
Main Cast: John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall, Tyrone Power, Sr.
Release Year: 1930
Country: US
Run Time: 110 minutes
Plot
The first "epic" western of the talkie era, The Big Trail is motivated by a hero's search for the murderer of his father. Twenty-three-year-old John Wayne, hitherto limited to bit parts, was thrust into the difficult leading role, a young mountaineer put in charge of a huge California-bound wagon train. Over the next several months, Wayne and his fellow pioneers face every imaginable hazard and disaster, from blistering desert heat to blinding snowstorms, negotiating steep cliffs, treacherous rivers, uncharted forests and other such natural obstacles. Meanwhile, Wayne's tentative romance with heroine Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill) is continually thwarted by a charming but duplicitous gambler (Ian Keith), and all-around villain Red Flack (Tyrone Power Sr.) and his henchman Lopez (Charlie Stevens) ceaselessly plot to double-cross the other wagon-trainers for their own financial gain. The Big Trail was a box-office disappointment, a fact which some have attributed its expensive production methods. Each scene was lensed twice, once in 35-millimeter and then in the 65-mm "Fox Grandeur" wide-screen process. And then, each dialogue scene was filmed in French and German, with totally different casts. Even if Big Trail has been a big hit, it would have lost money thanks to the time-consuming shooting and reshooting of virtually every scene. Whatever the case, it was John Wayne who suffered most from the film's failure; instantly demoted to "B"-westerns, it took him nearly a decade to rebuild his stardom. Long believed lost, The Big Trail was made available for exhibition again in the early 1970s -- and in the 1990s the original widescreen version was at last restored for public view. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The first major sound Western, The Big Trail is also one of the greatest of the early talkies. Filmed in an experimental 70 mm wide-screen format labeled Fox Grandeur and showcasing a raw young talent named John Wayne, it possesses a dramatic sweep and swagger that Hollywood would not capture again for some 20 years. From its opening scenes, it is a revelation, and its use of wide screen is not just a gimmick but instead is an effective means of conveying the enormity of the story. The plot and characters are outdated, there are some awkward attempts at comic relief, and the inevitable Indian attack -- complete with a circling of the wagons -- doesn't help matters, but overall, The Big Trail is cinematic storytelling at its best. Director Raoul Walsh visualizes for the viewers the sort of pressures the pioneers encountered, from devastating weather conditions to overwhelming physical challenges. But more importantly, Walsh's loose, rambling approach to the story helps create the impression that the travelers never quite knew what was going to happen next and were making solutions up as each new obstacle presented itself. Shot after shot is overflowing with incidental characters floating in and out at random and filled with a chaotic clutter that makes all of the wagons and possessions look well worn and battered. Much, if not all, of the film was shot on location, adding to the authentic atmosphere. The photography is strikingly beautiful, and the natural approach to sound is innovative. Wayne gives one of his best performances, Marguerite Churchill makes a memorable leading lady, and the supporting cast is balanced by Tully Marshall and Russ Powell as two of Wayne's old buddies. But Tyrone Power, Ian Keith, and Charles Stevens are laughably one-note villains, and Stevens' portrayal of a Mexican bandit is especially unsettling. The Big Trail almost certainly did not invent any of the Western clichés it employs, but it uses them in ways that make it one of the vital entries in the evolution of the movie Western. ~ Bob Mastrangelo, All Movie Guide
Harold Miles - Art Director, Fred Sersen - Art Director, Raoul Walsh - Director, Jack Dennis - Editor, Arthur Kay - Composer (Music Score), Lucien Andriot - Cinematographer, Arthur Edeson - Cinematographer, Winfield R. Sheehan - Producer, Marie Boyle - Screenwriter, Jack Peabody - Screenwriter, Florence Postal - Screenwriter, Fred Sersen - Screenwriter, Hal G. Evarts - Short Story Author
In 2006, the United States Library of Congress deemed this film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Breck Coleman (John Wayne) is a young adventurer seeking to avenge the death of an old friend. He suspects Red Flack and his minion Lopez, so he joins a wagon of settlers heading West under Flack's supervision. Meanwhile, he finds love with young Ruth Cameron, whom he'd kissed accidentally, mistaking her for somebody else. Unwilling to accept her attraction toward him, Ruth gets rather close to a gambler acquaintances of Flack's, Thorpe, who joined the trail after being caught gambling. Coleman and Flack have to lead the settlers west, while Flack does everything he can to have Coleman killed before he finds any proof of what he's done to Breck's friend.
Although the 23-year-old Wayne delivered an intriguing and charismatic performance as wagon train scout Breck Coleman, the expensive shot-on-location movie was financially unsuccessful as a result of being the first widescreen release during a time when theatres would not change over due to the encroachments of the Great Depression. After making The Big Trail, Wayne found stardom only in low-budget serials and features (mostly B-westerns). It would take another nine years—and the film Stagecoach—to return Wayne to mainstream movies. Actor Ward Bond had a minor role in the film that foreshadowed many future appearances in Wayne projects, especially in films directed by John Ford. Bond developed a successful career playing character roles and later portrayed wagonmaster Seth Adams in the similarly-themed TV Western Wagon Train.
The Big Trail was shot in an early widescreen process using 70mm film called Fox Grandeur which was first used in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Widescreen, along with Technicolor, were picked up by movie studios as the next big technological advancement for films in 1929. In 1930, a large number of films were produced which featured either widescreen or color. Color fared better than widescreen because no special equipment was needed to view color films whereas theatres needed to buy special projectors and screens to project widescreen films.
Late in 1930, however, when the effects of the Depression were beginning to be felt by the public, studios abandoned the use of widescreen and color in an attempt to decrease costs. Because only a small number of theatres could play widescreen films, two versions of the widescreen films were always simultaneously filmed, one in 35 mm and one in the 70 mm Grandeur process. By doing this, the film would be able to be played throughout the country in 35mm at the same time it was being played in deluxe theatres capable of screening widescreen films.
The wagon train drive across the country was pioneering in its use of camera work and the stunning scenery from the epic landscape. An extraordinary effort was made to lend authenticity to the movie, with the wagons drawn by oxen and lowered by ropes down canyons when necessary. Tyrone Power's character's clothing looks grimy in a more realistic way than has been seen in movies since, and even the food supplies the immigrants carried with them were researched. Locations in five states were used in the film caravan's 2,000 mile trek.
In the early 1980s, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which housed the 65mm nitrate camera negative for The Big Trail, wanted to preserve the film but found that the negative was too shrunken and fragile to be copied and that no film lab would touch it. They went to Karl Malkames, an accomplished cinematographer and a leading specialist and pioneer in film reproduction, restoration, and preservation. Malkames was known to be a “problem solver” when it came to restoring early odd-gauge format films. He immediately set about designing and building a special printer to handle the careful frame-by-frame reproduction of the negative to a 35mm anamorphic (CinemaScope) fine grain master. The printer copied at a speed of one frame a second. This was a painstaking year-long undertaking that Malkames oversaw from start to finish. It is solely because of him that this film survives in this version.
Amazingly enough, the 70mm version was seen on cable television at a time when only the 35mm version had been released to VHS and DVD. A two-disc DVD was released in the US on May 13, 2008, containing both versions.
A fairly common practice in the early sound era was to produce at least one foreign language version of a film for release in non-English speaking countries. There were at least four foreign language versions made of The Big Trail, using different casts and different character names:
French: La Piste des géants (1931), directed by Pierre Couderc, starring Gaston Glass (Pierre Calmine), Jeanne Helbling (Denise Vernon), Margot Rousseroy (Yvette), Raoul Paoli (Flack), Louis Mercier (Lopez).La Piste des géants at the Internet Movie Database
German: Die Große Fahrt (1931), directed by Lewis Seiler and Raoul Walsh, starring Theo Shall (Bill Coleman), Marion Lessing (Ruth Winter), Ullrich Haupt (Thorpe), Arnold Korff (Peter), Anders Van Haden (Bull Flack), Peter Erkelenz (Fichte), Paul Panzer (Lopez).Die Große Fahrt at the Internet Movie Database
Italian: Il grande sentiero (1931), starring Franco Corsaro and Luisa Caselotti.[1]
Spanish: La Gran jornada (1931), directed by David Howard, Samuel Schneider, and Raoul Walsh, starring Jorge Lewis(Raul Coleman), Carmen Guerrero (Isabel Prados), Roberto Guzmán (Tomas), Martin Garralaga (Martin), Al Ernest Garcia (Flack), Tito Davison (Daniel), Carlos Villarías[2](Orena), Charles Stevens[3](Lopez).La Gran jornada at the Internet Movie Database
