There was a time when directors could actually allow the camera to linger over a group of actors as they reacted to whatever had just happened to them. We could look, without giggling, at the characters as their faces registered horror or surprise or disbelief. They struggled to interpret their surroundings at roughly the same pace that we struggled to interpret their reactions because they weren't always the same half-dozen characters rattling around in the same old cage of circumstances tilted at a slightly different angle.
Westerns were not always the kinds of stories that Gen-Xers have come to assume that they were: the same old stories we always get, only with everybody riding horses and packing heat. The screenwriters and directors of Westerns occasionally used the tight structure of the genre to explore genuinely interesting themes.
We laugh when the camera lingers over Bruce Willis or Demi Moore because we don't know why it's taking them so long to figure out what to say. Of course they're just going to deliver the catchphrase from the promo. And we laugh at Westerns because the guy in the white hat always shoots the guy in the black hat and gets the girl and discovers a gold mine.
Doesn't he?
We only think so because we're ignorant. We haven't really looked at those old Westerns. We haven't tried to listen to the stories they're telling. We don't even believe it when we're told that there's a story about a man in a brown hat, a hat that everybody makes fun of. We don't believe in a hero who is asked to ride the wildest bronco in the territory and bravely declines to do so, only to ride the horse later privately and be thrown over and over again--but to be thrown with a stubborn and unglamorous kind of heroism. We don't believe in a woman who throws a girlish temper tantrum and isn't charming as she does so. We don't believe in a man who breaks off his engagement because he has realized that the engagement must be broken off; we have been duped by the movies into thinking that the only reason for a man to break off his engagement is because he wants to prompt his fiancee to say or do something in particular in order to win him back.
Least of all do we believe in a story that isn't like all the other stories and yet manages to tell us so much about ourselves. We roll our eyes at 50s Westerns and say the 50s were the age of conformist America when nothing very interesting was happening culturally because the whole country was too busy either hating or sympathizing with Communists.
And so we don't even give truly great films like The Big Country a chance because we're too busy trying to convince ourselves that we're entertained by naked people blowing things up. Of all Westerns, The Big Country is perhaps the movie that can best help us to see what we're missing because it is very much a film about withholding judgment, resisting the urge to jump to conclusions.
It is the story of James McKay (Gregory Peck), a ship's captain who comes to the West to marry Patricia Terrill (Caroll Baker). He finds his fiancee's father, the Major (Charles Bickford), embroiled in a feud with a rival rancher named Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives). The Terrills expect the man who is about to marry into their family to join them in their fight against the Hannasseys, but McKay is a sober adult who insists on getting all of his facts straight before charging into a fight.
He breaks the unbreakable horse not through magic, but through patience--and not to impress spectators, but to find out whether he really has what it takes to break a horse that no one else has managed to break. He uses his compass to navigate his way through an unfamiliar countryside to a ranch that he wants to buy for his fiancee as a wedding present. The ranch is called "Big Muddy" because it is the only spot for miles where the cattlemen can count on finding water.
If the Hannasseys get control of Big Muddy, they'll deny access to the Terrills. If the Terrills get control of it, they'll deny access to the Hannasseys. Although he's a newcomer to the area, McKay sees it as his responsibility to make sure that Big Muddy remains accessible to any thirsty cow. If the cattle weren't being raised for slaughter, it might be enough to draw a smile from the ASPCA. As it is, we have to respect what McKay is trying to do for the cattlemen, if not what he's doing for the cattle.
The masculinity of Gregory Peck's performance is thoughtful and compelling, everything that Gary Cooper tried (less successfully, in my opinion) to work into his portrayal of architect Howard Roark in 1949's The Fountainhead. It is masculinity at its very best: quiet and confident, unassertive and unapologetic.
"But doesn't a real man want to prove his manhood to the woman he loves?" asks Patricia Terrill.
"Least of all to the woman he loves, if she loves him," replies McKay. And he is puzzled; he can't believe he was ever in love with a woman who failed to understand anything so fundamental to the bond between man and wife.
Patricia seeks advice from her friend Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons) about how to handle her recent estrangement from McKay, an estrangement based on his refusal to fight a local tough named Steve Leech (Charlton Heston) after Leech publicly labels him a liar. "Get this through your thick skull, Leech," McKay says, "I'm not going to fight this battle or any other battle on your terms." McKay doesn't mind being called a liar because he isn't one. He claimed he had not been lost in the countryside, but had been out purchasing a wedding present, and he had been. Whether Leech believes him or not is of no consequence to him whatsoever. He doesn't even need to show Leech the deed that proves what he had been up to because he has better things to do with his life than try to police what a man like Leech thinks of him.
Still, Patricia wants him to fight Leech. He humiliates her by walking away from the fight. She expects Julie Maragon to understand her humiliation, but Maragon replies simply, as any grown-up woman would, "Patricia! How many times does a man have to win you anyway?"
Do you hear what I'm describing in my review? I'm telling you about a love story. There was a time when love stories weren't necessarily chick-flicks. There was a time when they were engaging and not the least bit sappy, when we could meditate on what makes for a genuine and satisfying love just as Elizabethan audiences meditated on the same question while watching The Taming of the Shrew.
You can watch this movie for its really quite breathtaking cinematography. You can watch it for the extraordinary performance of Burl Ives as Rufus Hannassey, a spokesman for the fiercely independent yeoman farmer who believes that a gentlemanly code of honor is only as good as the so-called gentlemen that subscribe to it. There are more good reasons to watch this film than I can list in a review that is already too long. But whatever you do, don't miss the love story.
Don't fail your cinematic heritage by missing an opportunity to see how people who are capable of mature reflection court one another. This isn't a date movie; it's a married-couple movie, a movie for people who understand that in between the flickering hormonal bursts of romance, we must look critically at ourselves and our relationships.
Or else we'll end up married to the childish blonde.
A former sea captain goes west, woos women and joins a water-rights fight. Directed by William Wyler. Best supporting Oscar for Burl Ives.More at HotMovieSale.com
One of Hollywood s greatest directors teams with a cast of incredible screen legends for this bold, sweeping tale of a ship s captain who ventures wes...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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