My new favorite John Wayne movie

[Forty Rod]

Stumbled across The Big Trail (1930 John Wayne  Tyrone Power), a 2 hour saga.  

Now consider the liabilities of grainy black and white film, less than perfect sound, less than adequate digitalizing, and early movie directing.  With all of this, The Big Trail is a wonderful movie.

My observations:

close to seventy real prairie schooners, likely real Conestogas with some amazing pre-Hollywood "look good" details.

several dozen...maybe more...oxen, a hundred or so horses, the same numbers of mules and cattle.

hundreds of extras in very historically realistic costumes

about a hundred buffalo, not beef cattle dressed for the part

two hundred or so real Indians (not an Italian or painted up white man in the bunch), Pawnee, Cheyenne, and Crow in realistic costume,like brought from their own homes.  A few too many full dress war bonnets to be entirely believable, but effective.  Several times the spoken language is NOT Navajo.

women shown working alongside the men with axes, levering wagons out of mud with levers, carrying heavy loads, etc.  Their costuming is marvelous

50 minutes in a river crossing turns sour and wagons, livestock and people are shown being washed downstream

about an hour in there are scenes of wagons and livestock being lowered down cliffs.  My Mormon ancestors wrote in great detail of doing this

burial scenes after several events, children, women, etc.  One shows a dog lying dejectedly beside a grave.

animals dying alongside the trail in a most realistic way

animals being abused by whipping to get wagons out of mud, snow, and sand.  Cruel, but ralistic

80-100 Indian tipis in one camp, very effective

a snow storm with real snow.  There weren't enough soap flakes in the country to fake it

A lot of very gritty realism, some minor errors (trap doors as muzzle loaders), virtually NO "special effects", some spectacular long shots (first wagon encampment, Indian village, wagons strung out from hell to breakfast, attack on wagon train, etc.)

Wayne with curly hair, kissing the girl.
I never heard of this one before and it is now on my list of "watch it again" flics.

Check it out and see for yourself.
 

[Duke York]

Forty Rod

This is the movie that was supposed to make the Duke into a big star.

The film was not well received at the time, and Duke went back to "B" Westerns again until John Ford's 1939 "Stagecoach"

Duke York

[Buffalo Creek Law Dog]

Apparently, it was filmed in 70mm designed for the big screen however, since it was filmed during the depression, most theaters couldn't afford to change over to the new screen size, so it only got limited play.  I watched it a couple of years ago and it had a good story line and a lot of authenticity.  It's too bad they couldn't remaster it as I would certainly buy the DVD.

[Coal Creek Griff]

Thanks for the reminder about "The Big Trail".  We watched it a few years ago and were impressed.  In part because of your reminder, we watched it again as a part of our celebration of John Wayne's birthday this week.  We enjoyed it enough (although we had to watch it with subtitles because of the poor sound) that my wife directed me to order the DVD.  It's on the way.  It is certainly a classic.

CC Griff

[Shotgun Franklin]

IMO, it just wasn't the kinda Western that folks were looking for a the time. And yep, few people saw it when it was released. Do consider though the long career that The Duke enjoyed, from 'The Big Trail' to 'The Shootist' was a long time.