La gran jornada

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!!

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.

This movie is impressive for the type of physical props used. The wagons were real Conestoga, not the cut-down replicas seen in later movies. The circling of the wagons to fend off an attack by the locals was done with realism -- wagons overlapped with draft animals placed inside the ring -- resulting in what seems like hundreds milling about in the center. And when the shooting starts the wagons virtually disappear in the smoke. Very good representation of 'real life' (I shoot muzzle loading rifles so I know about the smoke part of it). Too bad I can't find this one on laserdisc for my library...

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.

Only three years after Able Gance's "Napoleon," was released in the revolutionary Spherical (1:33:1) and Triptych (4:00:1 aspect ratio) process, Raoul Walsh's "The Big Trail" hit the market, shot in then-experimental "Fox Grandeur 70 mm."

That alone makes "The Big Trail" a technically significant film. Word has it that it failed economically, in part due to only two U.S. theatres presenting its original format (NYC's Roxy and LA's Grauman's Chinese Theatres). The rest of the country's movie houses balked at the cost of the extra equipment necessary, after having recently converted to sound. (Does this seem reminiscent of the "'Star Wars' digital satellite controversy" of 2002?)

Finding a VHS or DVD widescreen print of "The Big Trail" is difficult. It's been shown on tv and in special movie houses that way on occasion. Generally, though, one gets a standard screen version, which fails to capture the eye-popping 70 mm. aspect ratio of the original.

The production's statistics are impressive--a 347 cast/crew, covering 7 states in 10 weeks, replete with wagons, cattle, oxen, mules, horses, et al., retracing the first settler's trek over the Oregon trail one hundred years earlier.

Twenty year old Marion Morrison was renamed John Wayne and teamed with nineteen year old Broadway actress Margurite Churchill for a hoped-for "hot screen combination." The two worked efficiently, with Wayne's untrained, natural talent in evidence.

The production looks very laborious and challenging--yet appropriate to the conditions of those early pioneers. European "superiority" vs. Native American "savagery" is expressed in the script--establishing a skewed perspective for numerous films to follow. Likewise, macho "frontier justice" is forcefully dramatized--a model for many later western efforts.

"The Big Trail," while a technical landmark, also presents a Hollywoodized depiction of American history. For a more complete understanding of this period and these events, one is prone to engage in more committed and comprehensive research.