The Big Trail and Rio Bravo DVDs, Wash. Times Review
Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 9:19 am
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/ap ... ohn-wayne/
VAULTS: The two faces of John Wayne
By Gary Arnold Sunday, April 19, 2009
Raoul Walsh's 1930 Western epic "The Big Trail," shot in a 70mm process called Grandeur, certainly appears worthy of its name in the new DVD edition of the most pictorially inspired film he directed.
There may never have been a more awesomely scenic and evocative Western in the history of the medium. Comparable perhaps, but nothing to surpass it. I've always wanted to see a theatrical print, and this DVD edition of "The Big Trail" sharpens that appetite. Every archive with 70mm capability should be aware that the 80th anniversary of the film's premiere is just down the road in October 2010.
An overreaching commercial disappointment when it was new, "The Big Trail" is ironically famous for a couple of things: the failure to make wide-screen movies an immediate sensation, and John Wayne the most foolproof newcomer of 1930. The commentary and supplementary shorts help account for why the movie's apparent strong points didn't guarantee success at the time.
"The Big Trail" is an episodic and eventually elegiac chronicle of a frontier wagon train, whose unforgettable prairie schooners, long and low and undulating like giant caterpillars while in motion, are first glimpsed massed as far as the eye can see along what purports to be the banks of the Mississippi. The film, however, overestimated the capacity or desire of the movie business to embrace its promise.
The 70mm version could be shown in only two U.S. theaters, in New York and Los Angeles. A rapid conversion of theaters to larger screens and new projection equipment proved premature, by a generation. The transformation was feasible in the early 1950s but loomed as too much too soon while the conversion to talking pictures was still in progress — and an economic depression was about to impose hard times. Part of a grandiose scheme by William Fox to dominate the business, Grandeur become one the expensive gambles that conspired to bankrupt him.
Gazing at "The Big Trail" makes you wonder if Hollywood might not have been better off esthetically under a Foxian kind of benevolent despotism, in which enhanced sound and picture quality were encouraged to make rapid strides and shoddy exhibition discredited. William Fox had a lot of the pieces in place: ownership of the best sound technology, the principal camera manufacturer and an eye-popping new film gauge, not to mention a large theater chain that he hoped to expand by acquiring Loew's, a gambit that would have placed MGM under his control. Typically, the scheme required more capital and time than he could afford.
John Wayne is such a beautiful and stirring camera subject as the lanky, intrepid scout of "The Big Trail" that it's incredible, in retrospect, that he failed to catch on in a big way. He should have been a prince of the industry at age 23. Instead, he was discarded by Fox and ended up spending a decade as a fixture of low-budget Westerns before being rediscovered by John Ford for a decisive professional comeback in "Stagecoach."
The Wayne career proved so durable that it's now possible to compare the youthful paragon of "The Big Trail" with numerous mature incarnations. For example, this is the 50th anniversary year of Howard Hawks' amiable "Rio Bravo," in which Mr. Wayne, at 51, had become a peerless figure of easygoing authority as a Western lawman. His beefy, lived-in mug and large, commanding presence seem reliable guarantees that everything is under control, even when his town is ostensibly besieged by mercenaries.
"The Big Trail" and "Rio Bravo" provide a bemusing contrast between the predominantly outdoor and indoor Western. It's as if a lot of domestication had caught up with the frontier in the intervening 30 years — a prospect implicit in the young actor's role shepherding settlers across half a continent. The pivotal episodes of the former occur pretty much on the trail; in the latter, they occur pretty much in saloons, hotel rooms or the jailhouse.
A case can be made for either school of depiction, but there's vastly more scenic beauty to behold in the country that provides backgrounds for "The Big Trail" — locations ranged from Arizona to Montana and concluded with a splendid romantic flourish among giant sequoias. There's also a more stimulating vision of heroism preserved in the youthful Wayne, whose inexperience doesn't prevent him from waxing irresistibly poetic about the wilderness in springtime or rallying snowbound pilgrims to tough it out because trailblazing simply demands exceptional courage.
Everything seems possible for that young adventurer. Later you resign yourself to the fact that caution and resignation may prove the better part of valor. The role of Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" allowed Mr. Wayne the opportunity to fuse his youthful and aging identities in a superlative way. You have to wonder where the Coen Brothers imagine they're going to find an actor with a comparable set of qualifications if they really plan to remake "True Grit." Maybe they envision a science-fiction setting.
TITLE: "The Big Trail"
RATING: No MPAA Rating (released in 1930, decades before the advent of the film rating system; occasional violent episodes in a frontier historical setting)
CREDITS: Directed by Raoul Walsh. Screenplay by Jack Peabody, Marie Boyle and Florence Postal, from a story by Hal G. Evarts. Cinematography supervised by Arthur Edeson (Grandeur version) and Lucien Andriot (35mm version). Settings by Harold Miles and Fred Sersen.
RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes, plus supplementary material
DVD EDITION: 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment
WEB SITE: www.foxhome.com
•••
TITLE: "Rio Bravo"
RATING: No MPAA Rating (released in 1959, before the film rating system; occasional violence)
CREDITS: Directed and produced by Howard Hawks. Screenplay by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett. Cinematography by Russell Harlan. Art direction by Leo K. Kuter. Music by Dimitri Tiomkin.
RUNNING TIME: 141 minutes, plus supplementary material
DVD EDITION: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
WEB SITE: www.warnervideo.com
Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC
VAULTS: The two faces of John Wayne
By Gary Arnold Sunday, April 19, 2009
Raoul Walsh's 1930 Western epic "The Big Trail," shot in a 70mm process called Grandeur, certainly appears worthy of its name in the new DVD edition of the most pictorially inspired film he directed.
There may never have been a more awesomely scenic and evocative Western in the history of the medium. Comparable perhaps, but nothing to surpass it. I've always wanted to see a theatrical print, and this DVD edition of "The Big Trail" sharpens that appetite. Every archive with 70mm capability should be aware that the 80th anniversary of the film's premiere is just down the road in October 2010.
An overreaching commercial disappointment when it was new, "The Big Trail" is ironically famous for a couple of things: the failure to make wide-screen movies an immediate sensation, and John Wayne the most foolproof newcomer of 1930. The commentary and supplementary shorts help account for why the movie's apparent strong points didn't guarantee success at the time.
"The Big Trail" is an episodic and eventually elegiac chronicle of a frontier wagon train, whose unforgettable prairie schooners, long and low and undulating like giant caterpillars while in motion, are first glimpsed massed as far as the eye can see along what purports to be the banks of the Mississippi. The film, however, overestimated the capacity or desire of the movie business to embrace its promise.
The 70mm version could be shown in only two U.S. theaters, in New York and Los Angeles. A rapid conversion of theaters to larger screens and new projection equipment proved premature, by a generation. The transformation was feasible in the early 1950s but loomed as too much too soon while the conversion to talking pictures was still in progress — and an economic depression was about to impose hard times. Part of a grandiose scheme by William Fox to dominate the business, Grandeur become one the expensive gambles that conspired to bankrupt him.
Gazing at "The Big Trail" makes you wonder if Hollywood might not have been better off esthetically under a Foxian kind of benevolent despotism, in which enhanced sound and picture quality were encouraged to make rapid strides and shoddy exhibition discredited. William Fox had a lot of the pieces in place: ownership of the best sound technology, the principal camera manufacturer and an eye-popping new film gauge, not to mention a large theater chain that he hoped to expand by acquiring Loew's, a gambit that would have placed MGM under his control. Typically, the scheme required more capital and time than he could afford.
John Wayne is such a beautiful and stirring camera subject as the lanky, intrepid scout of "The Big Trail" that it's incredible, in retrospect, that he failed to catch on in a big way. He should have been a prince of the industry at age 23. Instead, he was discarded by Fox and ended up spending a decade as a fixture of low-budget Westerns before being rediscovered by John Ford for a decisive professional comeback in "Stagecoach."
The Wayne career proved so durable that it's now possible to compare the youthful paragon of "The Big Trail" with numerous mature incarnations. For example, this is the 50th anniversary year of Howard Hawks' amiable "Rio Bravo," in which Mr. Wayne, at 51, had become a peerless figure of easygoing authority as a Western lawman. His beefy, lived-in mug and large, commanding presence seem reliable guarantees that everything is under control, even when his town is ostensibly besieged by mercenaries.
"The Big Trail" and "Rio Bravo" provide a bemusing contrast between the predominantly outdoor and indoor Western. It's as if a lot of domestication had caught up with the frontier in the intervening 30 years — a prospect implicit in the young actor's role shepherding settlers across half a continent. The pivotal episodes of the former occur pretty much on the trail; in the latter, they occur pretty much in saloons, hotel rooms or the jailhouse.
A case can be made for either school of depiction, but there's vastly more scenic beauty to behold in the country that provides backgrounds for "The Big Trail" — locations ranged from Arizona to Montana and concluded with a splendid romantic flourish among giant sequoias. There's also a more stimulating vision of heroism preserved in the youthful Wayne, whose inexperience doesn't prevent him from waxing irresistibly poetic about the wilderness in springtime or rallying snowbound pilgrims to tough it out because trailblazing simply demands exceptional courage.
Everything seems possible for that young adventurer. Later you resign yourself to the fact that caution and resignation may prove the better part of valor. The role of Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" allowed Mr. Wayne the opportunity to fuse his youthful and aging identities in a superlative way. You have to wonder where the Coen Brothers imagine they're going to find an actor with a comparable set of qualifications if they really plan to remake "True Grit." Maybe they envision a science-fiction setting.
TITLE: "The Big Trail"
RATING: No MPAA Rating (released in 1930, decades before the advent of the film rating system; occasional violent episodes in a frontier historical setting)
CREDITS: Directed by Raoul Walsh. Screenplay by Jack Peabody, Marie Boyle and Florence Postal, from a story by Hal G. Evarts. Cinematography supervised by Arthur Edeson (Grandeur version) and Lucien Andriot (35mm version). Settings by Harold Miles and Fred Sersen.
RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes, plus supplementary material
DVD EDITION: 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment
WEB SITE: www.foxhome.com
•••
TITLE: "Rio Bravo"
RATING: No MPAA Rating (released in 1959, before the film rating system; occasional violence)
CREDITS: Directed and produced by Howard Hawks. Screenplay by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett. Cinematography by Russell Harlan. Art direction by Leo K. Kuter. Music by Dimitri Tiomkin.
RUNNING TIME: 141 minutes, plus supplementary material
DVD EDITION: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
WEB SITE: www.warnervideo.com
Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC