User reviews

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.

John Wayne is one of the few players in film history to have failed at his first big break and then succeed on the second time around. Of course everyone knows the second time was the classic Stagecoach with John Ford directing.

But we're here to talk about The Big Trail. John Ford's fellow director Raoul Walsh spotted this tall kid on the set of one of Ford's films and thought he had potential. He wanted to make him the lead in a big budget western that Fox was planning to do. The film as planned would be an homage to the famous classic silent western The Covered Wagon.

In watching The Big Trail I was struck by how similar Wayne's character of Breck Coleman here is to the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach. Both characters were likable young cowpokes, but both were also on a mission of vengeance. And of course both films were done on location and show the expense in making them. No studio product here with a backlot western set.

I also don't think that it was an accident that Wayne got this break at the beginning of the sound era. Raoul Walsh, I'm guessing looked around Hollywood and probably didn't think a whole lot of movie cowboys would have staying power in sound. That's something else Walsh spotted in Wayne.

According to what I've read The Big Trail flopped because after spending all that money to make the film in an early wide screen process, some genius at Fox realized that their theaters weren't equipped with the wide screen to show it. And when the Great Depression hit there would be no money to widen those screens at Fox movie houses. So The Big Trail got a limited release, even in what we would call a formatted version, and lost money big for Fox films.

Marguerite Churchill is fine as the crinoline heroine who Duke wins, loses and wins again from Ian Keith. Keith, Charles Stevens and F. Tyrone Power are the trio of villains Wayne has to deal with.

F. Tyrone Power is the father of the famous movie legend Tyrone Power. He was a big burly man with a grand background in classic roles on screen and on stage. I wouldn't be surprised if his son who would have been 15 at the time might not have been hanging around the set.

Also look for Ward Bond though you might have trouble spotting him under a big bushy beard.

Watching The Big Trail now it is interesting to speculate where John Wayne's career might have gone if The Big Trail had been a big hit.

My giving this film a score of 8 is relative to other feature-length films from 1930. By the standards of films made just a few years later, this film might receive a score of only 6 or 7--mostly because the sound quality was so poor. Now it is possible that the film sounded better and the Fox Movie Channel did show a degraded print (it DID have a lot of lines and scratches), but I assume the sound problem was always an issue. That's because sound in movies was still a novelty in 1930 and many of the Hollywood talking pictures of 1930 sounded terrible--with background characters often drowning out the leads, characters huddled together to make sure they are picked up by the microphones or inconsistent quality (such as what was seen in THE BISHOP MURDER CASE, HELL'S ANGELS and other films of the day). This was all made much worse in THE BIG TRAIL because most of the film was shot outside--something unheard of at the time. Quite an innovation but also something that really stretched the talents of the sound technicians! So, while the film was very hard to listen to, I realize that they had to start somewhere, so I can forgive this--especially since the outdoor scenes are breathtaking--a major innovation for 1930.

The plot is rather similar to CIMARRON--a Western that came out the following year and which captured the Oscar for Best Picture. Unfortunately, CIMARRON isn't all that great a film and I actually like THE BIG TRAIL more due to the scope of the film. While some might balk at THE BIG TRAIL's slow-moving pace, I saw it as a great history lesson about the hardships endured by those traveling West on wagon trains. Plus, the whole thing just looked so beautiful, as director Raoul Walsh went to significant trouble to film on location and THE BIG TRAIL looks almost like a film version of some Ansel Adams prints.

As for the acting, it was pretty good. This was a major break for young John Wayne--as his previous screen appearances were, at best, minor and unremarkable. Here, he was given the lead and did a dandy job--though he was obviously young and a little less "John Wayne-ish" than he was in later films, as his screen persona was not yet firmly established. Another interesting part was played by Tyrone Power II (Tyrone Power's father). He looked nothing like his extremely handsome son and looked and sounded almost exactly like Bluto from the Popeye cartoons! He made very few sound films--dying just a year after making this film--so it's a rare opportunity to see and hear this once famous actor.

Overall, the film is well worth seeing despite some sound problems and a few overly long scenes here and there. For 1930, it was a remarkable achievement--more so than the much more famous and award-winning CIMARRON made the following year. Much of the reason THE BIG TRAIL didn't win an Oscar most likely was because ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT came out the same year and it is truly one of the great films.

Critics generally pan this flick, probably because of its crudeness, clichés and caricatures. The critics are wrong. What we are watching in "The Big Trail" is the closest to the history of the American west that we will ever see, outside the silent classics of William S. Hart.

Early movies could use or consult people WHO HAD BEEN THERE. Of course, USC quarterback John Wayne, or even Irish thespian Tyrone Power, Sr. (who tried farming and hated it) are exceptions, but there is a ring of authenticity with "The Big Trail" which you can't get second hand. And if those aren't real plains Indians by the hundreds, I'll eat my breech clout!

And the scenery! Unfortunately, cinematographers hadn't mastered filters, so the sky is always washed out, and dust and haze obscure the deep focus. But even these limitations paradoxically serve to provide a feel of endless horizons. And the locations are spectacular, especially the Indian village, which is so enormous that at first I thought half of it was backdrop. Then, there is the spectacular rope drop of animals and equipment down an escarpment that could have inspired Herzog's "Fizcarraldo".

Of course, the acting is hammy and dialog corny, but remember, The Big Trail is from 1930 and that early sound movies had yet to evolve fully from silent film technique, which called for pantomime, with its exaggerated facial expression and movement. Also bear in mind that the style of reading lines came directly from the theater stage from which lines, lacking voice amplification, were delivered as oratory to be heard in the back rows.

Robert Flaherty in his landmark documentary "Nanuk of the North" actually set up his scenes dramatically. He was by no means a fly on the wall. If Flaherty could have made a documentary about the epic journey of a pioneer wagon train through the great Western prairies, I doubt if he could have achieved much greater impact than "The Big Trail".

"The Big Trail" is quite different from other westerns I have seen. It doesn't have the silver screen sheen of classics like "Stagecoach" or "Red River". It feels more like a documentary, and I was not surprised to find that the filmmakers intimately researched aspects of frontier life they depicted here.

It was the first starring role of John Wayne, perhaps before his swaggering "Duke" persona took hold. He seems much less certain of himself, and wet behind the ears. It fits the movie's realism. Tyrone Power Sr., in his only talking role, does however play a larger-than-life character, a bad guy who would have been the perfect foil for Duke, but sticks out here, as much as I enjoyed the characterisation.

This is not one of the best Westerns. The depth, both physically and figuratively, of the spectacle of wagons crossing the prairie dwarfs the negligible storyline of Wayne's heroic young trapper on the trail of Power Sr.'s hard-bitten murderer, and his clumsy attempts to woo a beautiful young society lady.

I still enjoyed it. It reminded me a bit of Hughes' movie "Hell's Angels": enjoyable for its grand spectacle but not as interesting on a character nor plot level.

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!

John Ford's "Stagecoach" from 1939 is often described as the film which made John Wayne a big-name Hollywood star after his wilderness years on Poverty Row; indeed, Ford often liked to claim that he was the man who "discovered" Wayne. "Stagecoach", however, was not Wayne's first leading role in a major-league movie; that was "The Big Trail" from nine years earlier, and the credit for "discovering" the previously little-known young actor should really belong to that film's director, Raoul Walsh.

The action is set around 1840 and tells the story of a wagon-train of settlers making their way along the Oregon Trail from Missouri to the Oregon Territory, at this period an Anglo-American condominium including what is today British Columbia. Along the way they encounter and have to cope with all the dangers and hardships which traditionally face westward-bound pioneers in Westerns- a buffalo stampede, an Indian attack, a dangerous crossing of a swollen river and a scene where the wagons have to be lowered on ropes down a steep cliff. The main plot centres upon Wayne's character, a young trapper named Breck Coleman, and his search for the men who killed his friend. Another sub-plot deals with the rivalry between Coleman and a gambler named Thorpe (an associate of the villains) for the hand of the film's heroine, Ruth Cameron.

The film was praised by many critics when it was first released in 1930, yet proved a financial disaster for technical reasons. It was one of a number of films from around this period shot in an early widescreen process called Grandeur, which required cinemas to install expensive new screens and projection equipment, which many of them were unwilling to invest in. "The Big Trail" was, in fact, the last film to use this format; its failure convinced the industry that Grandeur was not financially viable, and widescreen formats were not revived until the fifties and sixties.

The commercial failure of "The Big Trail" was one of the reasons why Wayne spent most of the thirties on Poverty Row, and the film itself was largely forgotten for many years. It certainly has its faults. As with a lot of early talkies- and this one was made only three years after the coming of sound in "The Jazz Singer"- the sound quality is not good, often making it difficult to follow the dialogue, and there are some curious gaps in the plot. At one stage, for example, Ruth wrongly accuses Coleman of having killed her brother, yet this little misunderstanding is soon cleared up, and he never seems to regard the fact that she has made such an allegation against him as a barrier to their romance. Its attitude to the Native Americans is not what would today be regarded as politically correct. At one point Coleman says that the Indians are his friends and that he has learned a lot from them about how to survive in the wilderness, but when they go on the warpath they case to be friendly, nature-savvy proto-conservationists and revert to the standard Hollywood stereotype of bloodthirsty savages.

Yet, for all its flaws, I have given it a relatively high mark because of Walsh's courage and ambition. During the early years of the talkies, many directors retreated back within the four walls of the studio, where costs were lower and sound recording easier, creating the "filmed theatre" style of film-making. Not so Walsh in "The Big Trail". His story was set in the Great American Outdoors, and that was where he was going to make it. Shooting took place on location across the American West, so the plains, rivers and mountains we see are all real. As a result the film has a much greater visual impact than many other films from the early thirties. It was one of the earliest films to capture the scenic grandeur of the West, something which was to become a major selling-point for the Western genre in the fifties and sixties. Grandeur, that early widescreen process, seems to have been appropriately named. 7/10

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.

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.

The Big Trail is quite impressive considering the time of its making. The story centers on a trek westward over the plains by a group of pioneers led by John Wayne in his first leading role. The depiction of the hardships those pioneers met on the trail is captured magnificently by the cinematography of Lucien Andriot.It looks more realistic than any movie that's been made later.The location shoot must have been extremely difficult. The acting is quite over the top and theatrical.John Wayne is still a novice here,but you can't deny that he has charisma even at this stage in his career.So if you want to see a decent western enjoy The Big Trail.

I have really nothing to add to all the other comments, save this: To me the film looked like a silent film slowly being adapted to sound. The text boards bringing the story along reinforced that impression I suppose. Along the way the actors were allowed to leave the stilted, theatre-like acting; Marguerite Churchill very much looks like a typical early silent movie heroine at the beginning of the film, but at the end is allowed finer expressions. Gus, the Swede?, reminded me of the comic characters of Shakespeare plays, and Windy sounded to me like an early Donald Duck.

It truly amazed me that it was all filmed outdoors, on location, and even though the dust of all the wagons, horses and cattle obscured the view it must actually have been like that for the real settlers! It also was clear to me that many of those Indians must have been real, and I didn't detect any overt racism towards them. And John Wayne looks so incredibly young! As someone who became a real Wayne fan through the cavalry trilogy by John Ford, and thought that Stage Coach was Wayne's first as a leading star, this film was a revelation. The plot is very simple, again reminding me of a silent film, but the grit is very real indeed! An amazing film to have been made with that technique and under those conditions in 1930!

(1930) The Big Trail WESTERN

Directed by Raoul Walsh synonymous for well known gangster movies such as "White Heat", "High Sierra" and "The Roaring Twenties". This stars John Wayne as a cowhand raised by natives, Breck Coleman seeking retribution for the slaughter and murder of his friend. He does this by tagging along a wagon train seeking for better settlements.

This movie was supposed to be the Western movie to uplift John Wayne's social status, and it flopped, despite a moderate budget more than many of John Wayne's early quickie cheapie's he made during this time. It works as a non action Western as character study.

Handsome young John Wayne (as Breck Coleman) helps settle the great American West by serving as scout for a pioneer wagon train. An expert trailblazer, Mr. Wayne was trained by good Indians. With Wayne's help, the travelers overcome both bad weather, and bad Indians. Bad acting is not so lucky. Along the way, Wayne falls for fetching young Marguerite Churchill (as Ruth Cameron). Another attempting to catch Ms. Churchill's eye is dressed-in-black gambler Ian Keith (as Bill Thorpe)...

This creaky film is, of course, most significant as Wayne's first shot at a starring role. Seeing this film confirms the "real" John Wayne premiered in "Stagecoach" (1939) - the difference is amazing. Raoul Walsh's "The Big Trail" is most impressive in its wide-screen photography, advanced by the director and photographer Arthur Edeson. Lucien Andriot's work is also good. The rest of the cast is interesting, at least; with stage star Tyrone Power Sr. (as Red Flack) leading the charge, in his only "talkie" appearance.

***** The Big Trail (10/24/30) Raoul Walsh ~ John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, Tyrone Power Sr., David Rollins

This movie literally stopped me in my tracks while it was on the TV and i was moving my furniture out of my apartment! Its that good .I found the scope and breath of not only the production but the story to be a real delight.The uneven sound quality (remember this 1930) -actors turning away from the microphone and becoming mute,the fact that many of the old-timers acting in this movie were actually plains people and had lived amongst the very type of people they were portraying gave this film a unique feel of authenticity. The Duke even comes off as a real actor in this first rate oater. How he didn't become a star for 9 more years is a real mystery.All in all a must see!!

A 23-year-old John Wayne in his first 'starring' role leading a cast of colorful supporting characters from Kansas City, Missouri out west to Oregon, California, etc. Pretty epic, if I say so myself, and the on-location photography was legitimately impressive. John Wayne really only comes into his own in the last 30 or so minutes, culminating in a short inspirational speech delivered in the midst of a snowstorm. That same speech also distills what I think this film may have meant to the audience of the day: We have weathered hard times before and come out on the other side, and we will do the same with this Depression. Escapism is all well and good, and sometimes necessary, but films like this, that exemplify the can-do American spirit, can inspire. I did feel like the villains and romantic subplot were a bit superfluous, but overall, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Contrary to the comment posted directly below, The Big Trail (1930) was not filmed in a three-camera process "much like the later Cinerama." That was the finale to Napoleon (1927), a different film entirely! The Big Trail was simultaneously shot in both 35mm and 70mm (Grandeur) versions, and both versions are shown on Fox Movie Channel from time to time, so it's easy to compare one with the other. The Grandeur version (broadcast in letterbox @ approximately its original 2-1 ratio) is more impressive cinematically with its wide angle panoramas, but suffers from the same problem that beset early CinemaScopes, a lack of close-ups forced upon director Raoul Walsh because of focus problems. Scenes involving individuals rather than crowds or long shots are much more effective in the standard version because the camera can move closer to the players thereby achieving a greater sense of involvement for the viewer. Watching the two versions simultaneously, one gets an accurate idea of which shots Walsh chose to shoot close-up, in the standard version, but could not, in the Grandeur version. There are also a couple sequences involving El Brendel: a shell game with Ian Keith, and some business with his wife & a jackass, which are in the Grandeur version, but missing from the standard version.

For the record, The Big Trail is the only one of three Fox Grandeur films which has survived in its original wide screen format. (The other two are Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, completely lost, and Happy Days, which survives only in standard format.) Other studios also experimented with wide film at this time, but the only other one still known to exist in both formats is The Bat Whispers, filmed in both 65mm and 35mm, and released by United Artists. Other wide films were MGM's Billy the Kid (1930) and The Great Meadow (1931), RKO's Danger Lights (1930), and WB's The Lash (1930), all of which can be seen in their standard format versions on Turner Classic Movies. WB's Kismet (1930) was also filmed both wide and standard, but seems to have completely disappeared; it is rumored to be lost.

Why did wide film fail in 1930? Theaters were reeling (pun intended) under the impact of the stock market crash of October 1929, and the spiraling costs of installing sound equipment, and so were adverse to taking on the added expense of installing additional new projection equipment and new wider screens to accommodate just a handful of films, photographed in a variety of different systems that were not even always compatible with each other. It would not be until 1953 when Fox, now Twentieth Century-Fox, would try again, and this time succeed, with the introduction of wide screen CinemaScope.

In this early exercise in widescreen filmmaking - presently available in a magnificent high definition print on YouTube - Raoul Walsh makes good use of the new process both in outdoor scenes (including the usual encirclement of the wagons and culminating in a showdown in a blizzard) and chiaroscuro interior lighting effects.

Among the many impressive sights the film provides the most impressive is probably of a fresh-faced young John Wayne - apparently recommended to Walsh by John Ford - who demonstrates the grace and ease in front of a camera that ultimately would sustain a forty year film career.

Anyone looking for Tyrone Power be warned the name on the opening credits refers to his father, a hirsute brute of a man wearing dentures (at least I hope they're dentures) that look as if they were originally meant for Lon Chaney, who towers over Wayne and who Junior plainly didn't get his looks from.

Although the settlers dismiss the Indians as "savages" most of the conflict is actually between the settlers themselves; wile the most egregious racial stereotype is probably the dreaded El Brendel wandering in and out of the action making dire mother-in-law jokes: Laugh? I thought I'd never start.

The Big Trail is a film with much historic value – not so much for its acting as for the scenery and portrayal of pioneer settings and conditions. This story centers on a wagon train at the start of the Oregon Trial migrations – about 1830. It's hard to imagine any movie firm going to the lengths to produce and shoot such a realistic film today, let alone in 1930. But that's all the more to its credit, and lends the movie its sense of reality and high historical film value.

The movie was filmed on location in the great outdoors; with more covered wagons than have probably ever been assembled for a film (perhaps 100 or so in the whole picture); and a huge Indian village and cast of many dozens, if not a few hundred, true native Americans. Note the size of the wagons themselves – with wheels as tall as a man or woman. These were no doubt some of the remaining authentic covered wagons from decades before; and their enormity belies the much smaller prairie schooners, whether authentic or reconstructed, used in later films. These wagons were indeed small homes on wheels. One can see how they could carry a stove, wardrobe, chest, vanity, trunks of clothing, dishes and cookware, and barrels of food. And still have room for three or four children.

One can't help but marvel at the filming of wagons and herds crossing rivers, getting swept away by current, and women and children jumping from wagons, swimming and grabbing onto horses. Or of the descent down the steep cliffs to a valley below. That would have been along the Snake River in Idaho. The scenes show ropes with pulleys rigged onto fresh-hewn log supports, and bands of men slowly releasing the ropes to lower wagons, oxen, and cattle down the steep cliff. What reality in the filming of heavy rain storms, wagons and animals and riders sinking in mud, people pushing their oxen and livestock through the torrents and knee-deep water and mud! This movie preserves most realistically, what it must have been like for the pioneers who traveled 2,000 miles across unsettled land in the longest human migration known in history.

Overall, the quality of the surviving film (on my DVD) is poor, but not such that one can't enjoy this film. This is only John Wayne's second credited movie of nearly two dozen since 1926. And the first using his new stage name, John Wayne. His first credited film was also his first "talkie." In "Words and Music" of 1929, he was listed in the credits as Duke Morrison. The acting here seems hammy at times and overdone. It's likely because this is the time of transition from silent to sound movies; and some of the exaggerated acting (especially facial expressions) were still evident. Those were important in the silent films to convey to audiences emotions, feelings and thoughts that later would be conveyed by voice and dialog. So, there is some historical interest in the acting as well, for this reason.

For all the realism and effort to portray the conditions of a real time in history, the film's few deviations from accuracy can stand out if you're a student of the history of the time, or if you have traveled the Oregon Trail route in modern times. It appears that perhaps 75 percent of the large bands of Indians were chiefs – or elders, by their huge headdresses; and there were so few younger braves. Nowhere along the Oregon Trail is there a desert, as implied and shown in the film. The trail did cross arid regions and skirt some high desert country across Wyoming and into southern Idaho. And, the scenes of massive mountains toward the end appear to be more in Yosemite National Park or in the Colorado Rockies than of the mountains the wagon trains would have passed by or gone over at the end – the Cascades and Mount Hood. For a film that captures the true mountain scenery at the end of the Oregon Trail, see "Bend of the River."

Perhaps one day, a film museum or historic entity will clean up and restore this film, and transfer it to a digital format for preservation and future showing and enjoyment. "The Big Trail" is somewhat of a classic for its authenticity and scope, and surely deserves a spot in collections of important movies.

An American Western. A story about a large caravan of settlers attempting to cross the Oregon Trail to California featuring a young fur trapper who wants to avenge the death of a friend who was killed along the Santa Fe Trail for his furs. He is put in charge of a California-bound wagon train and discovers the killers are in the train. This a spectacular film, notable for its authenticity of life between 1837 and 1845 of Prairie schooners following ox-drawn trains of Conestoga Wagons, as the first major group of settlers move west along the Oregon Trail. It has high production values and holds dramatic sweep, recreating conditions the pioneers faced, like the blistering desert heat and blinding snowstorms, negotiating steep cliffs, treacherous rivers, uncharted forests and other such natural obstacles. The plot and characters are simplistic, and the comic relief is modestly delivered but it has a charm and is riveting for its atmosphere, setting and art direction. John Wayne rose to the challenge as leading man, cutting a dashing, athletic figure as the mountaineer man. Raoul Walsh directs with skill, giving his audience a sense of the pressures associated with pioneering - uncertainty, dangers from native indian attacks, and adverse weather conditions and other overwhelming physical challenges. The scattered narrative helped create the impression that the travelers never quite knew what was going to happen from one day to the next.

As an aside, this was John Wayne's first leading role. The Big Trail was made in an attempt to save Twentieth Century Fox. However, due to its new widescreen format (and therefore a lack of theatrical distribution), failed financially, and persuaded the big 8 Hollywood studios that big budget Westerns would now be a thing of the past; urban dramas would be the main film subgenre. Wayne would wait 8 years before he made another A picture. That film would be a Western, and required the determination of its director, John Ford, to get it greenlighted, against all the odds. It was called Stage to Lordsburg, released as "Stagecoach".

What some mistake for stilted dialog and/or dismiss as archetypal characterizations accurately represents how people talked, lived and were before World War II, let alone in whatever years "The Big Trail" represent on film.

The movie took my breath away the first time I saw it years ago. Reading the boards here helped me understand why it missed at the box office and why movie goers got the benefit of Wayne in B Westerns for another ten years. Wayne was in my opinion better in "The Big Trail" and the years of Bs than most of his star turns after 1939 with Ford's incredible cavalry trilogy, "True Grit" and "The Shootist" being Big time exceptions.

What a shame theaters missed the boat on this in 1930. Had this movie hit we might have enjoyed more movies with more realism and less hokum. In my opinion this is not only one of the finest westerns ever filmed with accurate dialog and accurate character realization, but among the finest representations of a passage of any kind ever put on film.

It still takes my breath away. Especially the dialog and accurate characterizations of types that simply don't exist any more. Some celebrate the surface homogenization of our culture that in fact hides the largest cultural degradation (into 'people like us' and 'people like them') and political divide (corporatists vs Main Streetists) in US history, but for me "The Big Trail" represents a time when our surface differences were more obvious but underneath them most folks wanted to work out the nation's failures and most folks aspired to build a great culture and a great nation.

"The Big Trail" is an epic of the melting pot in motion toward the American Dream. Certainly the finest film on that path I ever saw. that subject ever filmed.

Sweeping and still impressive early Talkie Western of pioneering days; other contemporary films in the same vein include THE COVERED WAGON (1923), THE IRON HORSE (1924) and CIMARRON (1931) – none of which I've watched, though I do have the latter on VHS. It was simultaneously filmed in the "Standard" fullscreen ratio and in an experimental Widescreen process called "Grandeur", but only the former has been released on the bare-bones Fox DVD; one can only surmise how it would look in a wider ratio, but the careful framing – not to mention the splendid cinematography – is evident enough even in the "Standard" version.

Young John Wayne is surprisingly commanding in the lead (a role which, however, didn't lead to the expected stardom – as he'd languish in 'B' Westerns for the best part of the next decade, before John Ford came to his rescue with STAGECOACH [1939]!); anyway, he and Marguerite Churchill (from DRACULA'S DAUGHTER [1936]) make a nice couple – despite her somewhat tedious character. Supporting characters include a variety of stock types: veteran westerner, comic-relief sidekick (with a penchant for making noises with his mouth!), burly and uncouth villain (played by Tyrone Power Sr.!), his two slimy cohorts (a Mexican and a Southerner, the latter also filling in as Wayne's rival for Churchill's hand), etc. Also among the members of the wagon party is a timid Swede (full of optimism for the promised land, but who's continually put down by his irascible mother-in-law) and later Wayne regular Ward Bond.

The episodic narrative resolves itself into a number of alternately cornball, lyrical and action-packed vignettes – as we see the prospective settlers combating the elements, the Indians and themselves; the film, however, has a completely authentic feel to it which smooths over its essentially dated and static quality. Also, the editing is somewhat choppy (particularly during the second half) – little wonder, since the DVD edition of the film is only 108 minutes long against the complete 158-minute "Grandeur" version!

Breck Coleman (John Wayne) is the scout responsible for a wagon train commanded by Red Flack (Tyrone Power Sr.) whose chum Lopez (Charles Stevens) also joins. An ex-gambler thrown off a Mississippi steamboat (Ian Keith) is another member of the party. On the way, Keith and Wayne compete for the love of Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill) who handles one of the wagons. They meet friendly and hostile Indians, but the biggest enemy is nature, and on top of that Wayne incurs the enmity of not only Keith, but Power and Stevens. Pros: The quasi-documentary style of this film. Just think of it: when it was made many people were still about who remembered the old west. In 'The Big Trail' the Indians look like they do on 19th-century photographs - not like dressed up Mexican extras. I also did not notice any racism; rather they are portrayed in an even-handed way. The cinematography is excellent. Cons: The dialogue sounds stiff and unnatural, not only because of the elocution of many of the actors, who were clearly unused to talking on film, but also because it is poorly written. Power growls and barks through the whole picture; his character is about as multidimensional as a mathematically defined point; and the others are not much better. The plot is less than compelling. It moves along at a pace that is at times quite sluggish, and while there are no plot holes, it fails to build up much suspense or a proper climax. I would say that after the arrival of sound it took about seven or eight years before films had regained the level of sophistication typical of good silent pictures of the 1920s. 'The Big Trail' stands close to the beginning of this development - and I am making allowances for technical issues with recording sound. It is an ok film, but the only thing for which it is memorable is the fact that it was John Wayne's first leading role.