Der Weg nach Westen

Hard-driving Kirk Douglas organizes a wagon train to Oregon, hiring mountain man Robert Mitchum to lead the way and squaring off with Indians, the elements, and hostility among the settlers, particularly hard-headed farmer Richard Widmark.

Almost universally panned and patronized as director Andrew V. McLaglen's attempt to ape the style of his mentor John Ford, it's actually an innocuous, inoffensive adventure saga in the mold of How The West Was Won or Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail, though not as good as those films. It's still fairly watchable, except for the endless, obnoxious subplots featuring teenage Sally Field and her deflowering by a married, frustrated loser!

Douglas and especially Mitchum are excellent, as usual. However, Widmark falls a little short, thanks to a less than interesting character, though he's always a welcome presence in anything he's involved in.

This western is very unusual in that it features three top leading men--Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark. Now you'd think with all this high-octane masculinity and acting that this would be a terrific film, well, you'd be wrong. While it isn't a bad film, it does suffer from a thoroughly adequate script--one that never seems to deliver the goods.

Douglas plays an ex-senator bent on starting the first white colony in Oregon in 1848. The problem is that he's not exactly 'Mr. Personality'--and his abrasive and autocratic ways rub everyone in the wagon train wrong. Can he get them all to his promised land or will the folks ditch him and make for California? Tune in and see.

For the most part, this is a pretty ordinary drama about settling the West. As for Douglas, he overacts more than usual (and what's with that whipping scene?!?!). Widmark's character is inconsistent and underwritten. The only lead who comes off well is Mitchum--as a weary Kit Carson-type. Aside from being pretty ordinary and predictable, the film did have a few pluses. There was nice cinematography and as a history teacher, I appreciated how they showed lots of mules, oxen and cows pulling the wagons--whereas most films only show horses (a mistake). But this isn't enough to raise it above mediocrity.

An attempt at an epic old-style Western from a journeyman director - he made a better stab at it later with Chisum. Perhaps its the lack of John Wayne and the rest of the John Ford rep but this is a film of striking set-pieces separated by far too much time! Douglas and Widmark both do some stirring scenery-chewing but this is a melodrama so that is allowed. Mitchum is laid-back and laconic as only Mitchum could be - and looks wonderful as ever. Not sure why others were surprised to see him in a Western - Mitchum made his share and some very good ones too (El Dorado, Five Card Stud and Bandido are all favourites of mine). The Fort Hall sequence is fun - just as a reminder that the Sioux and the French weren't the only folks that got there before the Americans! ;-)

This film is fairly anachronistic for 1967. It's attitudes are much more set in 1957 or earlier, although considering our cynical world, some of those attitudes, especially the ones about young and old love are quite charming.

The film is astounding for its three stars and the cinematography is stunning. This film has that old Hollywood top film stock quality, which shows in the brilliant compositions and frequently amazing scenery. So despite the tragedy, you get the impact and drama of the untouched nature that the first settlers must have felt.

There's also a good deal of tragedy along the way, which makes the film have veritas more akin to the late 60s or 70s. The treatment of Native Americans is actually quite reasonable, even beautiful, in parts, minus a terrible throwback scene of drunken Natives requesting alcohol for a toll, but don't let that one offense put you off the picture entirely. Fact is, it's probably not even possible to get a favorable film made now of Western settlers in the American West, which is a shame, because it is an incredible story, despite its now well-documented genocidal effects on the indigenous nations of what was to become the USA.

I'm not surprised I haven't heard of the film, because one could take this as a whitewash, but I was surprised by some modern scenes it includes. I'm a bit disappointed it's not better known, because it's pretty solid, if also at times uneven and unrealistic. I wouldn't brand it as severely cliched as some others have though. It's a hybrid of a sanitized Western with something considerably deeper and rougher. Widmark, Mitchum, and Douglas all play to their types, but Douglas actually ventures into less heroic territory than is his usual assignment. Mitchum phones it in a bit, but remains charismatic as always, and his role makes a fair amount of sense.

The impact of all three of these great actors can't be overstated, not to mention an excellent supporting cast, including some who are quite effective at reminding one of a time when people actually spoke and regaled each other with stories, and didn't barely move and mutter after too much internet and video games. There's a lot in this movie to remind you of times we are so far removed from, that you're really left what happened to the reward and simplicity of human existence before modern technology.

You're also left with some sense of the true tragedy and loss that many of these early settlers endured, though the struggles here are more interpersonal, and not so much against the elements, which is a bit of an oversight, though you are given a sense of the dramatic terrain that had to be conquered. There really aren't many Westerns that focus on the settlers, without gunslingers, so this movie is uniquely worth seeing in that regard.

This film begins with a prominent former U. S. Senator by the name of "William J. Tadlock" (Kirk Douglas) trying to persuade a trapper and scout named "Dick Summers" (Robert Mitchum) to help lead a caravan full of settlers in Missouri through hostile Indian country on the way to Oregon. Although Dick Summers is initially reluctant due to his continued grieving over the death of his wife two years earlier, he eventually gets worn down and accepts the job. And although he figures he will have to deal with different personalities in this particular wagon train, what he doesn't realize is just how difficult it will be to accomplish to work with a man as mean and tyrannical as William J. Tadlock making all of the decisions. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film started off as one of those fairly standard Westerns but turned out to be quite entertaining due in large part to the presence of some of top-notch actors along with a couple of surprising developments along the way. One specific situation included a promiscuous young woman named "Mercy McBee" (Sally Field) and her interaction with a newlywed man named "Johnnie Mack" (Michael Whitney) and his frigid bride "Amanda Mack" (Katherine Justice) which then creates all kinds of drama along the way. Be that as it may, I have always enjoyed old-fashioned Westerns and I thought that this was one of the better ones during this particular period of time.