Canadian Pacific

The building of the Canadian Pacific railway was as much a milestone in the history of Canada as the transcontinental railroad in the United States of America. But the circumstances were so incredibly different the Canadians must have had a laugh and a half at this Hollywood story of one of the great events from their history.

The great challenge of the railroad was getting it through just that last stretch of mountains in British Columbia. The track went through a mountain trail known as Kicking Horse Pass and it was quite the engineering feat. That was the main story with the building of the Canadian Pacific.

But we have here is the plot of Union Pacific essentially brought under the Maple Leaf with villain Victor Jory stirring up the Indians to prevent the Canadian Pacific from getting through. Of course since he's up against chief engineer Randolph Scott, you know how this is going to come out.

Randy as was the case in a lot of his westerns has two girls to choose from, railroad brat Nancy Olson and Quaker doctor Jane Wyatt. I really think Wyatt was a bit ridiculous pushing her pacifist beliefs in the middle of the Indian attack at the climax.

On the plus side that Indian attack is one of the best I've ever seen in a western and you will be on the edge of your seat during the final shootout between Randolph Scott and Victor Jory. Also look for a good performance from the always dependable J. Carrol Naish as the locomotive engineer and Scott's sidekick. Also Dick Wessel as a murderous bartender is also quite good.

Too bad that this particular episode in Canadian history got Americanized though.

In the opening of the film there is a scene of a modern steam-powered freight train leaving Calgary, and there the accuracy comes to an end. This film is supposed to be based on the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, but it's pure Hollywood hokum. Nobody did their homework. There is the usual shoot-outs, gun battles, renegade Indians, "bad guys," sabotage, and the "romantic angle." None of these things happened during the building of the Canadian Pacific; the ever-present Mounties saw to it. In defense of the film it is a typical out-of-the-file story. Not good, but not that bad either. Randolph Scott is good (Randolph Scott was always good!) If you're looking for a Saturday-afternoon-matinée Western, this one will do. If you're looking for an accurate story of the building of the Canadian Pacific, forget it.

Okay. I read all 18 user reviews on IMDb before watching this film and gathered it didn't have much of a fan club should I say! However I am quite early in my Randolph Scott journey so still decided to give it a try.

The story very briefly is the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway in the late 1800's linking provinces of Canada blocked off geographically by great mountain ranges and being dogged by local opposition in the form of native Indians and some white locals.

The film also provides a very basic grasp, some may say inaccurate grasp of the political divide amongst the Canadian provinces etc. But all that is for other resources.

Randolph Scott plays a surveyor (Tom Andrews) for the railway construction company as being a sort of heavy troubleshooter it appears however his work is being distracted by a love triangle with two female characters, his girlfriend (Nancy Olsen) and a female doctor who at one stage saves his life played by Jane Wyatt. The Dr. Is very anti-violence it appears and her influence has an affect on Andrews work practices. Again all this information is available elsewhere.

Now one element of the film I found fascinating was its restoration work. It was filmed in 1949 using an outdated basic colour system called Cinecolor which provided a challenge to the film's restoration and does still show up as a very reddy colour palette?

A good music score is provided by famed musical composer Dimitri Tiomkin.

Okay the film may have some historical inaccuracies with regard to Canadian history. I mean there are no Chinese workers etc. However it is still an enjoyable film. It's location of Canada is a far cry from the usual southern United States locales of 'Western' genre films. I would call it a semi-Western!

As has been pointed out, this is a highly imaginative account of the building of the Canadian Pacific. Perhaps the Scott character is based on Major Albert Bowman Rogers who, Wikipedia tells us, was tasked with finding a route through the Selkirk Mountains. The CPR promised him a cheque for $5,000 and that the pass would be named in his honour. Rogers became obsessed with finding such a pass and discovered it in April 1881.

I saw it some years ago on British TV and have just watched it again courtesy of a slightly fuzzy copy on YouTube. Just about the only scenes I recalled were Scott's miraculous escape from the dynamite explosion (not completely impossible, I understand), the bandage on Scott's head that shifted in the same scene, and Dynamite Dawson's escape from the Indians.

The blood transfusion scene (in a moving train that was remarkably stable) was perhaps a bit ahead of its time. By the late 19th century, blood transfusion was still regarded as a risky and dubious procedure, and was largely shunned by the medical establishment.

Scott, in his early fifties, again has two far young women vying for his affections, but he was still a good-looking guy.

I enjoy these American "building-a-railroad" films, and this was good entertainment.

Many actors owe their careers to Randolph Scott, debuting in one of his westerns and then rising to stardom in the years to come. Lee Marvin, James Coburn, and Mariette Hartley are all included in that group. If you want to see Nancy Olson's "introducing" credit, rent Canadian Pacific. The very next year, she snagged an Oscar nomination for Sunset Blvd. Not bad!

This isn't the best Randolph Scott movie out there, so if you want to watch his really classic westerns, check out the ones he made with his own production company: Scott-Brown Productions. (Those were almost always in Technicolor, which is a bonus.) One feature of this movie that I really enjoyed was the love triangle. At the start of the movie, he's totally in love with Nancy Olson, a girl from the country. Her hair flows free, her love is sweet, and she accepts him the way he is. Her only bone of contention is that he works too much and makes her wait to get married. Then, as the movie continues and focuses more on the less-interesting advent of the Canadian Pacific railway line, Scottie is introduced to a female doctor, Jane Wyatt. Jane is structured and makes him earn her respect and affection. But she's extremely anti-violence and doesn't accept him the way he is. Which will he pick?

If you're really interested in trains, you might like this one better than I did. I would have preferred the whole movie to be Scottie smooching his two girlfriends. Wouldn't that have been fun?