NFR Project: John Wayne in 'The Big Trail' (1930)

The Big Trail

Dir: Raoul Walsh

Scr: Jack Peabody, Marie Boyle, Florence Postal, Fred Serser

Pho: Lucien Andriot, Arthur Edeson

Ed: Jack Dennis

Premiere: November 1, 1930

120 min.

One of the great epic Westerns, The Big Trail was ignored for decades due to its poor performance at the box office. In fact, its failure at the time consigned its lead actor, a 23-year-old John Wayne, to a decade of work toiling away in now-obscure B Westerns. Yet it is one of the most successful of the “way West” movies, in terms of it looking and feeling like the real thing.

It is most remarkable for its bold use of a new film technology – 70-millimeter film as opposed to the boxy 35-millimeter usually utilized. This was the Cinerama of its day, a wide screen that captured its subject matter in huge, complex screen compositions. Dubbed the Grandeur process, it was meant to be screened only in theaters equipped to display it properly, which for a time was only two theaters in the country. Deemed too expensive to implement, after this 70-millimeter filmmaking went dormant for decades.

Its director, Raoul Walsh, had already proved himself as a reliable and imaginative director in the silent era, capable of making hits such as The Thief of Bagdad and What Price Glory. He was given free rein and a large budget to capture this saga of a pioneer journey. Some stats: the filming took four months, an incredibly long shooting schedule at the time. The production rounded up 20,000 extras, close to 1,000 trained actors, and the same amount of Native Americans. It utilized 185 wagons, many of them antiques that were hauled out of mothballs and put back into use. 1,800 cattle, 1,400 horses, and a small menagerie of farm animals completed the party.

The movie tells the (fictional) story of the first wagon train to make it to Oregon. Walsh paid scrupulous attention to detail (except, glaringly, the Cheyenne and Crow warriors are all wearing feathered war bonnets). The provisions, the arms, the tools are all authentic. The actors lived the lives of pioneers on set. Some scenes are ridiculously picturesque – one of the pioneers lowering their wagons down a gorge is still astonishing.

The tale of the hardships suffered by the settlers is expressed in strong visual terms, needing no dialogue to convey the struggle and the beauty of the story. In a way, the pioneers en masse are the real, collective protagonist. They persevere through a river crossing, thirst in the desert, the snowy mountains, Indian attack. These bits of Western lore were new to cinema at the time and not yet the cliches they are today. Also, audiences of the day firmly embraced the concept of Manifest Destiny, and did not see the advance of the white man into the West as a bad thing.

Above all, the landscape in which the story plays out is magnificently photographed. Choosing locations across the West for use as authentic background material meant filming in seven states. (Yes, in the days before CGI, if you wanted a magnificent backdrop, you had to go find it.) Somehow, Walsh generaled all these people and this equipment across the West, setting up painterly perspective time and time again. Somehow, he wielded his microphones on location, outside any studio setup, with great skill. Oh yes, and did you know? Before the days of subtitles, to make a foreign version of a film, you had to film separately in that language. Therefore Walsh made a French version at the same time, with a different set of actors. And a German version. And a Spanish version. And an Italian version. It’s a wonder this film didn’t kill him.

In the movie, Wayne plays a young scout, Breck Colman. (Could he act yet? No, not really, but he is earnest and eager.) He is soft on Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill), but this does not deter him from his plan to kill the men who murdered his pal and mentor. The villains of the piece include Tyrone Power Sr., the father of the more popularly known Tyrone Power, his son, in his last film and only talkie, as the gruff, violent muleskinner Red Flack.

As the pilgrims draw closer to their destination, so Breck finds evidence linking the men to the crime. He turns back from the Promised Land to carry out his vengeance.

The technical limitations of the time meant that most people saw the less impressive 35-millimeter version of the movie. It failed, and Westerns at any kind of scale were frowned on for a decade. It would take director John Ford, and a John Wayne now ready for stardom, to make the Western important again with their classic 1939 Stagecoach.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: From Stump to Ship.