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Rating:  -
I was very impressed watching the "Big Trail" on widescreen. Compared to other milestone movies from the early 1930's that I've seen--"King Kong," "All Quiet on the Western Front"--this one is almost equally good.
It has many strong qualities to it:
1. The footage is quite spectacular: beautiful snowcapped mountains, rugged hills, harrowing cliffs, rushing river crossings, and panoramic sunsets above wagon trains. John Ford could have made this.
2. The film scale is quite large because of dozens of wagons, a thousand extras, and thousands more cattle tromping across the desert, plains, or falling down cliffs.
3. The plot is great! Its about enduring hardships, frontier justice, and Manifest Destiny.
There are a couple of setbacks to the movie:
1. Some of the footage of the wagon train crossing the West is too long, slowing down the story.
2. John Wayne is not a professional actor at this point, but an athlete-turned-star (he was attending USC in the 1930's); usually those acts don't start out well (The Rock, for example!); his love interest played by professional actress Marguerite Churchill--who throws great emotion and passion into her scenes with Duke--Wayne seems at some points a bit overwhelmed.
Still, if you are a John Wayne or classic western fan, you should put this movie in your DVD library. For a 77 year old flick it is quite impressive when you account for it being the first epic western with sound.
Rating:  -
Just thought I'd add to all the talk of different extant versions of this film. The Key Video VHS from 1988 offers yet ANOTHER incarnation of this film. As opposed to the edited 35mm version on Fox VHS and DVD, the Key version was a pan and scan version of the 70mm film, and ran 121 mins., even though the box listed it as 110.
Rating: -
This is an historical film that was made in 70mm widescreen and it MUST be shown that way!! What a travesty to show this in 1:33 square format!! History deserves better and so do we film buffs!!!
Rating:  -
I had a copy of this movie several years ago and lost it. I found it on Amazon and was very happy. I liked John Wayne when I was growing up (he was my hero then). I think that this movie showed what talent Mr. Wayne had. (even though he was twenty at this time). This will be a great addition to my ever growing collection of John Wayne movies.
Rating: -
I confess that I did not purchase this video; however, I did watch this movie today on TV. It is a wonderful Western, full of charm, a little corniness, some great humorous scenes, as well as a realistic-looking tale of pioneers crossing the wide-open country through the wild, Indian-settled plains, to a glorious new life in the American Northwest. It is interesting to see John Wayne already taking the moral high ground in several scenes throughout this early movie from 1930, much as he did the rest of his movie career. The long straight-on shot of pretty Marguerite Churchill leaning out the back of her conestoga wagon with a glimpse of cleavage is quite risque for 1930, though maybe not surprising just coming out of the "Roaring Twenties." The scenery is awesome, even in black & white, and the sub-plots are set-up quickly and perfectly early in the film. The scene of lowering people, cattle, and conestoga wagons down the cliff by ropes is a little unbelieveable, but who knows! Some of the scenes like the wagon swept away in the river with paniced women and children being rescued, and the wagon that fell down the cliff look like they were possibly not staged, but the footage was well incorporated into the movie. (It would be interesting to know whether or not these scenes were staged.) This is a hidden gem, not only for John Wayne fans, but for all fans of Westerns!
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