Across the Wide Missouri

Honesty seems the first quality of this Wellmann work:it uses no less than three different languages:English,Indian language and French:it's really great fun to hear the cast sing on Xmas day the Canadian "Alouette gentille alouette" en Français dans le texte...even if the words have nothing to do with Christ's birth.

The second strong point is scenery:the landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful and the color is splendid indeed.Mountains and forest are lovingly filmed .

A lot of people will probably note similarities with Delmer Daves's famous "Broken arrow" which was released the precedent year .It's almost the same ending.I would favor Daves's work over Wellmann's because his characters are more endearing , his story more absorbing and the relationship characters/nature more convincing.But "Across the wide Missouri" is worth watching :the story is told by Gable's son who appears as a baby in the movie and shortly as a child .One scene is particularly touching,even if we realize it only afterward:Gable and his Indian wife are kissing each other while the small child is watching.There are a lot of deaths in this often cruel story,but neither the White nor the Indians are demeaned.

Across the Wide Missouri (1951)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Clark Gable plays a beaver hunter who heads to the Rocky Mountains but encounters Indians as he explores the new territory. There's some nice things in this film but in the end it comes as a major disappointed especially about Gable and Wellman did so much better with The Call of the Wild in 1935. When this was shown on TCM, William Wellman, Jr. talked about all the problems with MGM during post production. Apparently this was originally meant to be an epic picture but the studio started cutting it to pieces and they eventually cut so much that they had to hire Howard Keel to do narration to bring any sense to the film. Watching the 78-minute movies it's easy to tell that there's all sorts of stuff missing and there are even some very strange edits, which make it clear that we were originally meant to see more. As for the final version, it's really not too bad but it's not too good either. Gable is pretty good in his role but Ricardo Montalban steals the film. J. Carroll Naish has a nice role as well. The Technicolor really brings out the great locations but in the end one can't get over the edited product. The "shock" at the end of the picture is also ruined due to the narration, which kills the suspense of how the film plays out.

Bernard DeVoto won a Pulitzer Prize for history in 1948 for his 1947 book, "Across the Wide Missouri." Some sources say that after MGM bought the film rights, the studio threw away everything except the title. That's hardly the case, because this film does a very good job of showing life in the early days of the American Northwest. DeVoto's book, and this film are mostly about the native Indians and the white trappers known as mountain men. The latter were a breed of early pioneers that flourished in the 19th century from about 1810 to the early 1880s.

The stage was set for all of this in 1803 when the U.S. acquired the Louisiana Territory from France. The 828,000 square miles doubled the size of the young nation. The purchase brought in all the lands west that drained into the Mississippi River. But most of the lands west of the Missouri River had not yet been explored. President Thomas Jefferson got Congress to approve an expedition to explore the Northwest to the Pacific Ocean.

After the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806, written accounts of it aroused great interest in the East. The mountain men became the first Americans of European descent to migrate to the region. They went first as trappers and explorers who made their living in the lucrative fur- trade. The mountain men peaked in numbers around 1840, at the time the largest U.S. migration began over the 2,200-mile Oregon Trail.

The mountain men helped open the emigrant trails. They explored and lived and dealt mostly at peace with the various Indian tribes. This movie shows all of this very well. MGM filmed the movie in Southwest Colorado, from Durango to Silverton. The spectacular scenery adds to the value and enjoyment of the film.

I am a history buff and during the years leading up to and through the 2004-2006 bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, I spent most of my summer vacations traveling and visiting sites along the Lewis and Clark route. One of my guides for these trips was "The Journals of Lewis and Clark," written by Bernard DeVoto in 1953. DeVoto and Lewis and Clark give excellent accounts of the Indians of the time. This movie covers two groups that are prominent in the journals – the Blackfeet and the Nez Perce.

I wonder how familiar the playwrights might have been with the journals. Their story of the young Indian maiden in the movie is similar to that of a real person with Lewis and Clark. Here, Kamiah is of the Blackfeet tribe. She was captured and raised by the Nez Perce. In the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a young Indian wife of a French Canadian trapper, Toussaint Charbonneau, became an invaluable guide across the Indian lands of the Northwest. She was Sacagawea, a Shoshone Indian from the Snake River country of Idaho. She had been captured by the Hidatsa and taken to their village along the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. At age 13, she was sold to Charbonneau as a wife.

This movie has a large cast of first-rate actors. Clark Gable is excellent as Flint Mitchell. Adolphe Menjou excels as Pierre. Maria Elena Marques is dazzling as Kamiah. All the actors who played major Indian parts were very good. Ricardo Montalban plays Ironshirt, John Hodiak is Brecan, J. Carrol Naish is Looking Glass, and Jack Holt is Bear Ghost. The rest of the mountain men and the supporting cast of Indians add to the historical feel and enjoyment of the film.

There was an apparent controversy that arose over this film. From the various accounts I've read, it's not even clear what it was all about. The studio head at the time apparently chopped quite a lot out of the film. Enough, that director William Wellman disowned the movie and said he would never watch it. He alluded to the best action parts being taken out. Apparently, James Whitmore, who plays a mountain man, Old Bill, had much more of a part, and most of his film time was cut out. It would be nice to see a director's cut, which probably no longer exists.

But that aside, I think this is still a first-rate film. It has action, scenery and a beautiful story told about a very interesting time and place in America's history. From that standpoint alone, it is much more valuable than the two popular mountain men pictures that were made, "Jeremiah Johnson" (1972) and "The Mountain Men" (1980).

"Across the Wide Missouri" is a film that most should enjoy. It's an excellent snapshot of a pioneer period of the American West.

This movie, for me, is just plain fun and it invokes a lot of memories at 68 years old. My grandfather, 1879-1966, used to speak the Chinook Trading Jargon. The Jargon was a trade language made up of English, French and Indian. It was primarily used on the west coast and as far east as Montana as a common language for trading etc. When I was a little boy my granddad and I used to talk back and forth in Chinook. What we hear in the movie is quite accurate, although they speak too fast for me to keep up with. Needless to say, that with the passage of time, the language has all but disappeared from everyday use. There are, however, people dedicated to keeping it alive and they sometimes have a yearly "rendezvous" where it is spoken and lessons are taught.

Thank you very one for your time. Klahowya Sikhs. (Goodbye friends).

This is one of Clark Gable's better films of the 1950s, though it never really got that much attention and many have unjustly written it off as "just another Western". However, if you watch it you'll find that the film has two major points that make it unique and a very beautiful film. First, the film is about the period BEFORE that shown in most Westerns. The typical Hollywood Western occurs between 1866-1880, though there are a few exceptions before and after. However, very few deal with life in the West circa 1829 when the only White men were fur trappers. Since I am a history teacher, I admire this about ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI. Second, the film humanizes the Native Americans much more than most films and there are no "black and white" groups in the film. Many of the Indians are quite decent but they also are not uniformly good either--and the same goes for the trappers. I particularly loved the relationship that developed between Clark Gable and his Indian bride. It did a lot to build sympathy for the characters and once again truly humanized both characters. The only real negative about this is that three of the key Indian roles are played by non-Indians (J. Carrol Naish, María Elena Marqués and Ricardo Montalban)--a standard practice in the time it was made.

While these two points make this a memorable film, it sure doesn't hurt that this film has some of the most vivid and beautiful scenery of any film of the 1950s. It's obvious that this wasn't filmed on some sound stage or filmed in the outskirts of Los Angeles! So overall, what's not to like about this film?! Excellent acting, a great script and a uniqueness make this a film worth seeking.

By the way, this film is highly reminiscent of the wonderful Robert Redford film, JEREMIAH JOHNSON--another film well worth your time.