The Big Trail (1930) B&W / The Comancheros (1962) Color / North To Alaska (1960) Color

Here is where John Wayne Began. He did not exist before this Film. Here a star is born.Here he's young, athletic, good looking, and can throw a mean knife. But it was 1930 and theUnited States was more concerned about staying out of bread lines than buying movie tickets.They filmed this movie in 70 Millimeter widescreen but sound was so new and money was soscarce most theatres only handled 35 mm film. So regardless of which format You see the film,You have to see this one if only to witness the birth of a screen legend. I Also see a similarmindset from the 1923 film The Covered Wagon, the character playing John's side kick wasthat movie's side kick as well. Some may say hokey, old timey. I like Hokey and Old Timey!

A welcome addition to my growing b/w collection, showing Wayne in a breakout role nine years before 'Stagecoach'. I am happy with the video quality, and with the viewer-friendly options, such as Scene Selection and Subtitles, which are handy even if one is not hearing impaired. Like many of the films of the era, it bears the mark of the silent days with an acting style that is somewhat 'camp' to modern eyes. All told, however, it is an effective film, with wonderful images in a day when there were still folks around who had lived the old way and remembered key events of the 19th century. One of my favorite Wayne pictures.

The [1929] 70mm "Fox Grandeur" process (doubling 35mm-film stock) required completely different cameras AND projectors. Needed FOUR projectors ineach(so-equipped)theater, and, of course, wider-screens. Since the film was wider, the reels were limited to six-minutes, each. The "poor" projectionistshad to change TWENTY reels to show this 121-minute movie! That was an asembly-line process... five reels for each of the four projectors. Like a soldiermarching it was 1,2,3,4 ; 1,2,3,4 ; 1,2,3,4 ; 1,2,3,4 ; 1,2,3,4. Next showing!Luckily --- for projectionists --- the Depression killed the process, saving the projectionists' fingers for selling apples for a nickel, or joining the Army and firing rifles... which was gearing-up for the certain war in Europe.I enjoyed the movie. It was NOT John Wayne's FIRST film. John had been a Prop-man/film-extra making $35-a-day [a lot, THEN]. When chosen as the"Star" of this film he got $75-a-day. He didn't catch-on right away. Made 50+ B-movies --- for the next TEN YEARS --- and ACTUALLY became a star afterappearing in 1939's  Stagecoach (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray ]. In the 'forties, he made war movies. In 1959 after Alaska and Hawaii became states,"The Duke" became the 51st star on our American flag!EVERYTHING about this movie is BIG! Wish my memory was better. One of the featurettes stated --- excuse my memory --- 20,000 extras, 50 main act-ors; and thousands of native Americans from five tribes.Filmed (concurrently "on-the-trail) in 70mm; 35mm full-screen... in German; Spanish; and English. There's thousands of cattle and horses. Hundreds ofcats; dogs; and domesticated farm animals. Oh yeah: 500 Buffaloes!Hundreds of wagons in the "wagon-train"... did I mention WARD BOND is in this? Paddlewheel steamboats, stuff you'll NEVER see again... in Virgin Forests, and unspoilt Western vistas! Ah! Wonderful!The Blu-Ray includes the same stuff on a lower-resolution DVD... as a bonus/combo.I give this film ***** for the effort, in 1929. I give the set-decorator *****; the cameramen *****; the broadway [stage] actors *****; John Wayne'spresence/effort *****. The sound, it's 1929, rates ***. The lines written for the actors? OMG: **1/2. The over-all result is ENTERTAINING with all capi-tal letters!Please watch the BACKGROUND! There's something in almost every inch of the widescreen film on YOUR widescreen TV... before CGI and those matte-screenpaintings!WATCH the people and animals... if any of the CHILDREN are STILL alive.. it's probably the 84-year BABY in the breast-feeding scene. Every swingin' animal, man, woman, and child... dead! It's what ya call celluloid HISTORY!Buy it!

Make sure that if you buy this movie, or watch it, that you get the widescreen edition. The version streaming on Prime Video, and the one sold in most cases, is the version filmed for square screen, which is the way it was seen when released, and on television. This version was almost never seen until today. This is really a beautiful movie, if seen the way it was intended, filmed on locations that still looked the way they did when pioneers were crossing America. Newly rediscovered and restored, its an amazing achievement that holds up beautifully today. (Well, with one caveat - the allegedly "comic" performance of El Brendel. Ignore him, and the movie is a towering classic.) Incidentally, Raoul Walsh gave the star of this film his name, John Wayne.

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an overall rating of 100%.Breck Coleman (John Wayne) is a young trapper who just got back to Missouri from his travels near Santa Fe, seeking to avenge the death of an old trapper friend who was killed the winter before along the Santa Fe Trail for his furs, by Red Flack (Tyrone Power, Sr.) and his minion Lopez (Charles Stevens). Coleman finds love with young Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill), whom he'd kissed accidentally.the film, Walsh had employed 93 actors and used as many as 725 natives from five different Indian tribes. He also obtained 185 wagons, 1,800 cows, 1,400 horses, 500 buffalos and 700 chickens, pigs and dogs for the production of the film.The movie was a box office bomb because it was released as a widescreen film 70 mm during a time when theaters were unwilling to change their standard 35 mm screens owing to cost. In 2006, the United States Library of Congress deemed this film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant",saying "the plot of a trek along the Oregon Trail is aided immensely by the majestic sweep provided by the experimental Grandeur wide-screen process used in filming".

This review is for the purchase experience, not solely the film. The film itself is an important one, being a relatively early talkie, a sweeping western, with John Wayne, at the young age of about 22, in his first leading role. Also, the film was shot in two versions, a 107’ version in 4:3 viewing, and a very early widescreen process at 125’ duration. Over a year ago, a reviewer here has identified that the version described here (125’) is NOT what you get, but still no one has changed it on the webpage. I bought this, thinking it was the 125’ version, but you only get the 107’ one. Not good enough, especially seeing as TCM have their own version, running about ten minutes longer than this.

One reviewer wrote 'Spectacle over Story', I agree that the acting and story line is not the best - but hey it's 1930 !! I have just got the Blu Ray 122 min Spanish edition. It can be played without sub titles and in English ( or American !! ). This film was stated to be of historic, cultural and aesthetic importance by the US Library of Congress in 2006. Forget the acting and poor sound quality just enjoy the stunning scenery, the sense of realism, the dust, the majesty and the authenticity of a pioneering huge wagon train in the old West. Absolutely stunning !!!

An amazing film and all the more suprising that it was considered a 'flop' at the time (1931). A few reviews here have commented on poor acting, particularly the villian ,but I find his performance quite eerie and threatening. I like the old style villians in these old movies, they are much more disturbing than the bad guys in later films. Little is also said about the atmosphere of the film, the snow scenes in particicular are excellent, the sky and landscape shots are breath taking too. Again why this failed at the box office is beyond me, why the audience and critics couldn't tell they were watching a superb piece of film-making? Baffling..John Wayne is good, even better than some of his later roles. all the actors have such a strong air of belief and naturalism about them that you feel you are watching a genuine historical film rather than a movie chasing awards..!Another interesting point; and modern film makers take note -is that there is very little music, and what there is is used very effectively.In fact for the first half hour or so of the movie there is no music whatsoever; just talking and chatter and wagon wheels turning, and horses grunting and sounds of wind and rain etc....So....Not your standard western with shoot-outs and saloons and sheriffs, but a wild, rolling adventure featuring the american pioneers of the 19th century.Get it, buy it, watch it .Marvel at it.

"The Big Trail" has often been seen by film historians as a rather weak film, but that is a bit unfair. The film is more a victim of the time that it was made. The film came out during that awkward transitional period from talkies to sound. It should be remembered that "The Jazz Singer", generally considered to be the first talking picture, was only made three years before in 1927.Sound films were still trying to find their feet at this time. Sound quality was a bit sketchy and the acting was very exaggerated in the silent tradition. The film also used the popular and necessary device of captions to help the narrative flow of the story. The film flopped badly at the box office failing to recoup the huge costs it had incurred in filming. Much of the blame was laid at the door of the new young star John Wayne, which was very unfair. Wayne actually gives a refreshingly natural performance, eschewing the elocution lessons he had been given. As an inexperienced actor he actually acquits himself very well. He also shows competence in the saddle that not all stars could boast. The film was made in both conventional 35mm film and in a 70mm wide-screen presentation process known as Grandeur. Unfortunately many exhibitors were unwilling to spend the money required on equipment to play the grandeur process. They had already gone through the costs of equipping their theatres with the wiring for sound, and this was the depression after all! The films failure may well have owed more to this.Viewed today, the film stands up rather well against those western epics "The Covered Wagon"(23) and "The Iron Horse"(24). Spectacle certainly takes precedent over the story. The film concerns an epic wagon train journey from the banks of the Missouri to Oregon, during that period of "Manifest destiny", when settlers began to flood west to colonise the wilderness. John Wayne plays a trapper/guide who joins a wagon train for ulterior motives, when he finds that the suspected murderers of a trapper friend are also making the trip. There is action aplenty on the trip which the director Raoul Walsh handles with an assured eye. There is a massive Indian attack where the warriors attack the encircled wagon train on their beautifully painted war ponies. There is also a very impressive buffalo hunt and a river crossing scene that has never been bettered. Then there is the impressive scene where wagons and livestock are lowered down vertiginous cliffs, which was copied in the later film "The Way West"(67), where Kirk Douglas came to a sticky end. The elements also conspire against the wagon train, and they are faced with a barrage of rainstorms and blizzards. Romance is also in the air between the strangely svelte, and youthful looking Wayne, and a pretty young pioneer girl played by Marguerite Churchill. Wayne also heads inexorably to a showdown with the villains who murdered his friend. There is a lovely final scene amongst the giant redwoods.The film is perhaps most notable for providing the first leading role for screen legend John Wayne. The director Walsh was looking for an unknown to try and save costs. Gary Cooper had already turned the role down. Walsh had seen the prop boy on a set, and enquired about him with John Ford, the director who had first come across him. At this time he had only acted briefly in a few films. He was given a screen test, and the rest as they say is history. Sadly after this film Wayne's career took a jolt and he was cast back into poverty row and the B western salt mines. It was nearly a decade later when he announced his arrival with a whirling Winchester to mega stardom as "The Ringo Kid" in Ford's "Stagecoach"(39). The film is also noteworthy for being the only talking film of Tyrone Power snr, father of screen pretty boy Tyrone Power, as Red Flack the lurching villain of the film. Power gives a performance more akin to the nasty villain you like to hiss at at the village panto. A sort of western Long John Silver. This makes the performance of Wayne look even better. That stalwart of "The Covered Wagon", Tully Marshall also appears to good effect as a trapper friend of Wayne's. It was also interesting to see that great friend of John Wayne, Ward Bond appear in a small role. They had met as American footballers and had already appeared in a couple of minor films together. Together with John Ford they enjoyed a hard drinking friendship over many years.It has taken me many years to finally get around to watch this film, and I was pleasantly surprised at the real quality that it contains. It is not a film I can recall having been shown on TV. The film easily fulfils its credentials as an epic, especially with the opening scenes of the myriad covered wagons starting off on the long trek. The story is laboured and predictable, and the acting undeniably stilted, but the action compensates for this easily. I thoroughly enjoyed the film and wondered why I have not taken the trouble to watch it before. I have watched the one disc edition, but it sounds like the restored two disc edition might be worth a shout. A deserved four stars.

This widescreen Western was made just as synchronised sound came to the cinema. It truly does have epic scope and scale, only hinted at in the standard ratio prints commonly seen in the U.K. Allowances do have to be made for the conditions in which it was made, largely out of doors, generally in remote locations, and of course with early sound equipment, and acting styles and delivery often redolent of the stage. There is also a good deal of "period" colloquialism which is not always easy to pick up, but the print does carry subtitles, which I found invaluable. All of these caveats become trivial against the visual splendour of the film itself, huge numbers of people, wagons and livestock, dwarfed by the vast and varied landscapes, photographed just before they became compromised by industrial "progress". The choice of camera set-ups and angles shows artistic taste and skill, the print quality is very good, distant details being crisp and clear, and the disc's extras give fascinating details about the enormous creative and physical resources which were devoted to this unique film. There is, I understand, no other feature extant made in this particular panoramic widescreen process, and it is difficult to imagine any other subject so well suited to show it off. For what it is worth, we also seen a youthful John Wayne in his first attempt at stardom, one which failed, not because of his performance, which is generally very good, but because of the physical difficulties in getting the film widely screened. This disc is accompanied by a standard ratio print, rather shorter, but visually better than the standard print generally available in the U.K. Perhaps I should also warn that the violence in the film is remarkably understated, and, an Indian attack on the wagon train apart, played down. This is a milestone in the history of the western, and a film which, once it gets into its stride, fills the viewer with awe; this widescreen print reveals how undeserved its relative obscurity is.