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DVD The Big Trail
One of very few widescreen productions filmed at the dawn of the talkies, The Big Trail was dismissed by reviewers of the day, little seen, and soon shelved and forgotten--for more than half a century, as it turned out. For movie buffs, it became a sort of Holy Grail.After all, the esteemed Raoul Walsh had directed, the early 70mm angle was tantalizing, and wasn't this the movie that was intended to make a star of Duke Morrison, a 22-year-old former prop man whom Walsh had rechristened John Wayne for the occasion? For curiosity value alone, surely it rated a look.
Restored in the late 1980s and warmly embraced by film festival audiences, The Big Trail proved to be more than just a historical footnote. What were those 1930 reviewers thinking?! Wayne is fresh, exuberant, matinee-idol handsome, and irresistibly charming (only a little purple prose trips him up, and no one should have been asked to speak such early-talkie flapdoodle anyway). The scenario winds through epic settings from the banks of the Mississippi by way of the Grand Canyon to the snows of Oregon and the mountain vistas of Washington, marking both a wagon train's journey and the settling of a personal score between trail guide Wayne and Tyrone Power Sr. as a veritable ogre of a villain. (A villain off-camera, too: Legend holds that Walsh had the actor beaten nearly to death for attempting to force himself on leading lady Marguerite Churchill.) The Big Trail is now an authentic classic, and a swell movie. Probably always was. --Richard T. Jameson
I don't know why Fox Video cut close to twenty minutes off this film for DVD. Most VCR prints of this movie run a 125min long. Plus it's only shown in full screen format. This was one of the first widescreen movies ever filmed. I'm surprised they didn't release it in it's widescreen format. Although with all this missing from the dvd the Big Trail is still a great movie to watch. This was John Wayne's first starring role as the lead character and he gives it his best. Wayne plays a scout leading settlers to there new homeland. On his Journey Wayne tries to win the heart of a young woman who wants nothing to do with him at first. But that changes when he goes on the search for the men that killed a friend of his. A great movie that deserved a better DVD. In the furture I would like to see The Big Trail in it's original widescreen format with restored footage. I heard that the film was up to 154min long. It would be great to get to see that cut of the movie if it still exsits.
Where is the "Fox Grandeur" Widescreen Version?
This is a film that really deserves to be seen in its widescreen glory. This is truly an epic film. However, I feel compelled to point out that the version that is available on this DVD is not, in fact, a "cropped" version of the film. The movie was actually filmed in three different versions. The first two, featuring the original cast, were the widescreen "Fox Grandeur" version and the version available here, shot in the Academy Standard ratio, which allowed the vast majority of cash-strapped theaters (they couldn't afford the special equipment for widescreen projection) to exhibit the film. The scenes in this version were blocked appropriately for a standard film of this era. The third version, shot concurrently, was a German edition using German actors in medium and close shots and footage of John Wayne and company in the long shots.
The Big Rip Off!
The release of this film does not rate even a one. I cannot believe after waiting all these years for this film to be released in widescreen and on DVD. The studio releases a cut version that's been formated. WHAT THE HELL!! The only people who would really be interested in seeing this film are film buffs who only want to see there films unformated. Have the home video people not learned there lessons yet with the Willy Wonka incident. WE WANT WIDESCREEN NOW!! The public demands it. Stop wasting our time and yours.
The most famous and sublime treatment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is by any measure one of the most classically perfect Westerns ever made. Henry Fonda plays a hard, serious Wyatt Earp leading a cattle drive west with his brothers when a stopover in the wild town of Tombstone ends in the murder of his youngest brother. Wyatt takes up the badge he had turned down earlier and tames the wide-open town with his brothers (Ward Bond and Tim Holt), all the while waiting for the wild Clantons (led by Walter Brennan's ruthless Old Man Clanton) to make a mistake. Victor Mature delivers perhaps his finest performance as the tubercular gambler Doc Holliday, an alcoholic Eastern doctor escaping civilization in the Wild West. Ford takes great liberties... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Henry Fonda - Linda Darnell Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This landmark 1939 Western began the legendary relationship between John Ford and John Wayne, and became the standard for all subsequent Westerns. It solidified Ford as a major director and established Wayne as a charismatic screen presence. Seen today, Stagecoach still impresses as the first mature instance of a Western that is both mythic and poetic. The story about a cross-section of troubled passengers unraveling under the strain of Indian attack contains all of Ford's incomparable storytelling trademarks--particularly swift action and social introspection--underscored by the painterly landscape of Monument Valley. And what an ensemble of actors: Thomas Mitchell (who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the drunken doctor), Claire Trevor, Donald Meek, Andy Devine, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claire Trevor - John Wayne Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 30 October 1997 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Nobody made a fuss about The Comancheros when it came out, yet it has proved to be among the most enduringly entertaining of John Wayne's later Westerns. The Duke, just beginning to crease and thicken toward Rooster Cogburn proportions, plays a veteran Texas Ranger named Jake Cutter. When we first see him (in a tongue-in-cheek delayed entrance), he's catching up with a New Orleans dandy (Stuart Whitman) who killed a judge's son in a duel just after that gentlemanly practice was banned. Monsieur Paul Regret--or "Mon-sooor," as Jake insists on calling him--is not a bad fellow, let alone a badman, and it only follows that, after the requisite number of misunderstandings, he and Jake will join forces to subdue rampaging Indians and the evil white men behind their uprising.
John Wayne and Anthony Quinn star in this touching 1945 drama inspired by real-life heroism in the Philippines following General MacArthur's withdrawal in 1942 and the islands' subsequent conquest by the Japanese army. Wayne plays Colonel Joe Madden, an American who stays behind to organize a ragtag guerrilla army in the forests and hills. At his side is Captain Andres Bonifacio (Quinn), grandson of a legendary revolutionary martyred in the nation's old war against Spanish colonialists. Joe, Andres, and their fearless irregulars (with support from a schoolteacher, played by Beulah Bondi) sap the enemy's resolve through hit-and-run missions, but as time passes the locals wonder, with pronounced disillusionment, why America doesn't return with masses of troops and weapons. Wayne's star... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Anthony Quinn Director(s): Edward Dmytryk DVD Release Date: Released the 04 May 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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