The Big Trail

A heroic young trail scout leads a large party of pioneers along THE BIG TRAIL to the West, with Indian attacks, natural disasters & romantic complications all part of the adventure.

As sweeping & magnificent as its story, Raoul Walsh's THE BIG TRAIL is a wonderful film, as entertaining as it was more than seven decades ago. With very good acting and excellent production values, it lives up to its reputation as the talkies' first epic Western.

John Wayne, pulled from obscurity for his first important movie role, looks impossibly young, but he immediately impresses with the natural charm & masculine authority he brings to the hero's role; he quietly dominates the film with the attributes which would someday make him a huge star. Marguerite Churchill is fetching as a lovely Southern belle who slowly warms to the Duke's attentions. Dialect comic El Brendel is great fun as a Swedish immigrant beset with mule & mother-in-law woes; his appearance in a scene signals laughs for the viewer.

Looking & sounding like a human grizzly bear, Tyrone Power Sr., vast & repulsive, makes a wonderful villain. Slick cardsharp Ian Keith is a sophisticated bad guy. (His famous physical similarity to John Gilbert is very apparent here.) Silent movie character actor Tully Marshall is impressive as a wily old mountain man who helps guide the wagon train. Corpulent Russ Powell, as a friendly fur trapper, puts his vocal talent for making nonsense noises to good use. Sharp-eyed movie mavens will spot Ward Bond as one of the Missouri settlers.

What will surprise many modern viewers is that THE BIG TRAIL was filmed in an early wide screen process, called Grandeur. More than living up to its name, the picture looks marvelous, with Walsh showing a mastery of the new technology. He fills the screen, every portion of it, with action. Notice during the crowd scenes, how everyone is busy doing real work, which adds so much to the verisimilitude of these sequences. Walsh deserves great credit for being one of the first directors to use wide screen. In addition, the film is blessedly free of the rear projection photography which blights so many older films. It should also be stressed that it is only natural that the soundtrack sounds a little primitive; talkies were still in their cradle. That Walsh was able to use a microphone at all, with most of the scenes shot out of doors, is more kudos for him.

THE BIG TRAIL was not a box office success. In 1930, William Haines' comedies were the big money makers and the public was looking for fare other than intelligent Westerns. Most of the cast slipped into obscurity, including Wayne. It would not be until 1939, when John Ford rescued him in STAGECOACH, that John Wayne's legend would begin in earnest. And despite its grand & sweeping vistas, it would be another 25 years before wide screen caught on with Hollywood, largely as an answer to the economic threat from television.

This movie is impressive for the type of physical props used. The wagons were real Conestoga, not the cut-down replicas seen in later movies. The circling of the wagons to fend off an attack by the locals was done with realism -- wagons overlapped with draft animals placed inside the ring -- resulting in what seems like hundreds milling about in the center. And when the shooting starts the wagons virtually disappear in the smoke. Very good representation of 'real life' (I shoot muzzle loading rifles so I know about the smoke part of it). Too bad I can't find this one on laserdisc for my library...

John Wayne's first starring role just blew me away. Televised letterbox style on AMC, I had to check and make sure I had the right date. Sure enough, this 1930 film was made using a 55 mm wide-screen process. Aside from that, it features some of the grittiest, most realistic footage of the trek west I've seen. Wagons, men and animals are really lowered down a cliff face by rope. Trees are chopped by burly men -- and burly women -- so the train can move another 10 feet. The Indians are not the "pretty boy" city slickers who portrayed them later; they're the real deal. A river crossing in a driving rain storm is so realistic, it has to be real (In fact, I understand that director Raoul Walsh nearly lost the entire cast during this sequence). I could smell the wet canvas. Each day is an agony. The various sub-plots are forgettable but the film as a whole is not. I can't think of another title that can beat The Big Trail in evoking a sense of living history on the trail to Oregon. Bravo.

By 1930, Fox had already conquered making sound movies outdoors due to being an early adopter of sound on film versus sound on disc. Next they tried their hand at widescreen films. Known as 70mm Grandeur, Fox shot three films in this process, this film and two musicals - The Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 and Happy Days (1929). The process was successful, the business end of their widescreen process was not. Due to the Great Depression, theaters could not afford to install the equipment necessary to show films in the Grandeur process. It's interesting to note that if sound itself had come into feature films in 1929 rather than 1927, that silent films would probably have been the majority of films made until 1940 for this same reason.

The Big Trail itself is a wonderfully modern-seeming western compared to other entries of the early sound era. It has an air of authenticity about it, as there is almost a documentary feel of the film in its depiction of harsh life on the Oregon Trail. Finally, there is the reason most people view this film - the birth of John Wayne's cowboy persona, not a cartoon character with either a black or white hat as many actors in the early westerns were, but a character of flesh and blood whose motivations you could understand and empathize with. Also note the presence of Ward Bond in a supporting role who, along with John Wayne, was a staple of the later John Ford westerns.

Despite its technical beauty and the presence of John Wayne, this film flopped at the box office. John Wayne went back into obscurity and did not emerge again until nine years later in "Stagecoach", where he played a part very similar to the one he plays here.

I just saw The Big Trail in Vienna's Filmmuseum for the first time. Immediately I was astonished by both the pictures optical high quality and unusual format and by its beautifully detailed story. Who has ever seen such a documentary style western with John Wayne? And there is so much time, you can actually look around on the screen, there is so much to see! One is ever grateful that the scenes are often static, because every single shot is so well composed and you want to take it it. Even the acting is good and fits in well. The long running time of the picture is wonderful, you don't want to miss a minute of it!