![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatLast night flipping channels, I stumbled upon an old favorite. A film that I hadn't seen in many years and only on commericial television.
My mother used to entertain me by describing the movies she'd seen as a child. She'd tell me about them much as one might re-tell a fairy or folk tale. So that when I finally saw the films myself, it would be akin to seeing an adored story come to life. One of her all time favorites was an old 1958 Western entitled The Big Country, which at the time had been shown in a new medium, technocolor and on a wide screen, cinemascope. Until last night I never really saw the version she told me about. Sure I'd seen it on the Saturday Night Western as a child on our local UHF station, but it was edited to fit our small square screen and for commercials - limiting the scope of the film and cinemagraphic effect. Last night on PBS it was shown in letter box format without commericials.
The Big Country directed in 1958 by William Wyler and adapted from the Donald Hamilton novel by Jessayme West, starring Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carol Baker, Charlton Heston, Chuck Conners, Charles Bickford and Burl Ives, takes place in the 1800s, and is about a former sea captain who accompanies his fiance, Patricia Tyrell, back to her family ranch where he gets imbroiled in a war over water rights between two rival families - the rich and cultured Tyrell clan and the poor rough-cut Hennessey clan.
The main character is the land - set in the ranch lands of southeastern California, with the broad plains, and unforgiving sun, vast and unlimited without fences, many trees or much water. It is a "Big Country" we are told over and over. So big, a man can get lost inside it. Half-way through, we begin to understand why. The story's main thematic arc is about a fight between two old men over a land so vast that neither can possibily see all of it.
But like all good stories, this one is about much more than that - the central character, Jim McKay, is put through a series of tests, each demonstrating a character point but doing it in a subtle manner and against type. If you are a reader of romance novels or westerns, the East Coast Dude or Fish out of Water - can't handle the rough and tumble west. He is the interloper. The girl he romances is really in love with the guy she grew up with on the ranch. He is the fool to be shown-up by her childhood pal - the rancher, uneducated but tough, with a thorough knowledge of the land. And the schoolmarm? She is a damsel, knows little of the West and is horrified by violence. Then there are the bad-guys or men in black hats - the rough and tumble ruffians, who are slaughtered in a shoot-out. In most of the B-Westerns starring John Wayne and his co-horts, the city dude has to be taught the hard way that the West is hard and tough and violent.
Wyler deliberatly goes against that type in this film. Flipping each stereotype on its head. McKay is anything but a fop or a fish out of water. He is not the intellectual braggert or elitist, you see in so many Westerns. If anything, he is more at home in his surroundings than the men who have lived there all their lives. Jim Mckay does not need to prove himself to anyone but himself. He has no desire to impress. And the land, vast as it is, is no less navigatable than the sea and like the sea he has sailed upon, should be respected and shared -it is too vast to be owned by one person. Open spaces do not scare Jim McKay, he has spent his life on one. And vast acres with a glaring sun, no trees, and no true water source aren't much different than the salt water desert he's navigated. McKay unlike the people he encounters in this landscape, is a man who does not feel the need to brag. As Jean Simmons character, Julie, states at one point, "The only thing McKay seems to be afraid of is to be perceived as 'showing off'".
Wyler, a master at cinemagraphic contrast and scope, has been credited by Laurence Olivier for not only teaching the former theater snob how to act in film but also how to respect the medium - assuring him there was nothing in literature, not even Shakespeare, that a film could not encompass. (The Player Kings - by Claudia Roth Pierpont, New Yorker, Dec 2007). In The Big Country, Wyler casts contrasts - Charlton Heston's blond and viril Steve Leech, bare chested, suntanned, rough, sarcastic, and practical is pitted against Gregory Peck's brunnett mannerly, calm, clothed, and intellectual McKay. Leech kisses Carol Baker with force, her fists pounding against his chest, overtaken by him. While McKay kisses her gently, just a brush. Both men, Wyler depicts as products of their environments. One is a rough as the land in which he was brought up in, fatherless and motherless - he worships the man who took him in and desires the blond, fiesty and somewhat spoiled daughter of tha man, Major Tyrell. The daughter, Patricia is played by 1950's pinup Carol Baker - who was female counterpart to Charlton Heston. A woman who seeks a man like her father, and does nothing but seek her father's favor. Motherless, she is lost in a sea of men. When she brings McKay home, she wants him to play second-fiddle to Daddy. To seek Daddy's favor. When he doesn't participate in the tests Leech and her father set out for him, she is humilated and sends him away, not realizing that he has passed each test but in private and only to prove something to himself. The tests include taming the unruly horse "thunder" that Leech attempts to put him on, and fighting Leech.
Jim McKay is perfect casting for Peck, who had fashioned a career out of playing the stalwart, individualistic, and free-thinking yet physically fit liberal intellectual. Like Gary Cooper, the characters he portrayed often went against the societal norm, fighting for the rights of the little guy - such as Gentlemans' Agreement, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Big Country. Yet, Peck had range as is exhibited in roles he took in Duel in the Sun, Boys from Brazil, Moby Dick, and The Gunfighter. Heston in contrast, was more limited, and best known for the viril yet angry hero in The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, The Naked Jungle, Soylent Green, Hawaii, and Planet of the Apes.
Jean Simmons is another casting contrast to the fiesty Carol Baker, more subdued - Simmons tended to play the nobel and caring girl next door or the unnoticed pretty girl as she does in this tale. Then there are Major Tyrell and Rufus Hennessey. Tyrell is played by Charles Bickford known for playing gentlemen or in parlour room dramas while the rough around the edges character actor Burl Ives plays Rufus. You may remember him best from his voice over narration of Rudolf the Red-Nose Raindeer. But he also starred as Big Daddy in the Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor classic Cat on a Tin Roof. Rufus's relationship with his son, played by the equally viril and blond, Chuck Conners, is contrasted with Tyrell's relationship with Leech. Leech it is made clear would die for the Major and his men would die for Leech - the climatic point in their relationship arises when Leech finally stands up to the Major and refuses to do his biding - but changes his mind and rides after him into the white canyon refusing to let the man ride into an ambush alone, his men following in his wake. Buck on the other hand attempts to kill his father, lies to him, and the men are unruly behind him. The climatic point in that relationship, which happens parallel to the Tyrell/Leech conflict, is when Rufus is forced to shoot his son and cradles him in pained remorse.
Even the portions of the land the characters inhabit are a study in contrasts - Rufus lives at the center of a white rock canyon, rough, well guarded, and cruel. A water tower, and a log cabin homestead at the center. Everything in stark brown and white. Tyrell lives on a sprawling range, with a three tiered homestead, and long grass, trees scattered around the sides. And Julie, Jean Simmons, Big Muddy is a winding river with green hills and trees.
There are three major fights in the film.
The first is a fight that has been building between Steve Leech and Jim McKay. Of the three it is the least voilent. Like all three fights, it is depicted realistically. Wyler was much like Robert Wise, a minimalist and realist when it came to film. He was not a fan of the well-choregraphed gun fights and fist-fights. He also believed in demonstrating the consequences of violence and warfare as is also seen in the classic The Best Years of Our Lives - which follows the story of three damaged World War II war veterans. Wyler depicts the Leech/McKay fight with a series of wide angled shots and just a few close-ups. What we see is two small men awkwardly punching each other on a sea of grass and dirt. Bare hills and mountains silently watching. At the end of it, both men bleeding and exhausted on the grass, McKay askes Leech:" Now, do you want to tell me what we proved by doing that? What was accomplished?" Leech is silent.
The next fight, a duel between Peck and Conner's, Buck, is shot in close-up. We see both men's faces. And Buck who is all words and fluster, cheats, retreats, and cowers behind a wagon wheel. The duel is not elegant. And McKay, who has the final shot, shoots his father's dueling pistol at the ground.
The final fight - is not a gunfight between numerous men, but one between two old ones, Hennessey and Tyrell. The meet in the space between their two homesteads, the canyon with its harsh white chalk walls, and unforgiving passages. Each crag and gully an apt metaphor for the on-going war between them. The filmmaker does not show the fight in closeup - we see what happens from the sky, they are but black specks, sticks, small and insignificant against the white rock canyon that seems to swallow them. Neither is a hero or a villian, both victims of unerring greed to congueor the vast land for themselves regardless of the cost to their families or those around them. Their need to prove and brag about their ability to possess the land, their own ambition, consumes them and finally breaks them much as the proud canyon does.
At the end, McKay and Julie ride up and out, starring downwards into the vast plateau that they will soon build their life and ranch on, the canyon left behind.
Watching the movie after all these years comforted me. It reminded me of what was important and what is not. And even though it was originally released over 50 years ago, it has stood the test of time dealing with universal themes that are in some ways no less relevant today than they were fifty years ago. Why, the film asks, do we fight over land that is so vast we can all live peaceably upon it without coming into contact unless we wish? Why can't we share its resources? Why let petty long-forgotten disagreements get in the way? And why do we feel the need to impress others with our virility, our prowess, our abilities? Why the need to show-off, to brag, to impress? The questions aren't answered. We never know why Tyrell and Hennessey hate one another. We never know why Buck, Steve, and Patricia feel the need to impress the old men who rule over them. All we know is they aren't as happy and content as the two characters who live outside of these needs, Jean Simmons and Gregory Peck - the only two who ride off into the sunset.
My mother used to entertain me by describing the movies she'd seen as a child. She'd tell me about them much as one might re-tell a fairy or folk tale. So that when I finally saw the films myself, it would be akin to seeing an adored story come to life. One of her all time favorites was an old 1958 Western entitled The Big Country, which at the time had been shown in a new medium, technocolor and on a wide screen, cinemascope. Until last night I never really saw the version she told me about. Sure I'd seen it on the Saturday Night Western as a child on our local UHF station, but it was edited to fit our small square screen and for commercials - limiting the scope of the film and cinemagraphic effect. Last night on PBS it was shown in letter box format without commericials.
The Big Country directed in 1958 by William Wyler and adapted from the Donald Hamilton novel by Jessayme West, starring Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carol Baker, Charlton Heston, Chuck Conners, Charles Bickford and Burl Ives, takes place in the 1800s, and is about a former sea captain who accompanies his fiance, Patricia Tyrell, back to her family ranch where he gets imbroiled in a war over water rights between two rival families - the rich and cultured Tyrell clan and the poor rough-cut Hennessey clan.
The main character is the land - set in the ranch lands of southeastern California, with the broad plains, and unforgiving sun, vast and unlimited without fences, many trees or much water. It is a "Big Country" we are told over and over. So big, a man can get lost inside it. Half-way through, we begin to understand why. The story's main thematic arc is about a fight between two old men over a land so vast that neither can possibily see all of it.
But like all good stories, this one is about much more than that - the central character, Jim McKay, is put through a series of tests, each demonstrating a character point but doing it in a subtle manner and against type. If you are a reader of romance novels or westerns, the East Coast Dude or Fish out of Water - can't handle the rough and tumble west. He is the interloper. The girl he romances is really in love with the guy she grew up with on the ranch. He is the fool to be shown-up by her childhood pal - the rancher, uneducated but tough, with a thorough knowledge of the land. And the schoolmarm? She is a damsel, knows little of the West and is horrified by violence. Then there are the bad-guys or men in black hats - the rough and tumble ruffians, who are slaughtered in a shoot-out. In most of the B-Westerns starring John Wayne and his co-horts, the city dude has to be taught the hard way that the West is hard and tough and violent.
Wyler deliberatly goes against that type in this film. Flipping each stereotype on its head. McKay is anything but a fop or a fish out of water. He is not the intellectual braggert or elitist, you see in so many Westerns. If anything, he is more at home in his surroundings than the men who have lived there all their lives. Jim Mckay does not need to prove himself to anyone but himself. He has no desire to impress. And the land, vast as it is, is no less navigatable than the sea and like the sea he has sailed upon, should be respected and shared -it is too vast to be owned by one person. Open spaces do not scare Jim McKay, he has spent his life on one. And vast acres with a glaring sun, no trees, and no true water source aren't much different than the salt water desert he's navigated. McKay unlike the people he encounters in this landscape, is a man who does not feel the need to brag. As Jean Simmons character, Julie, states at one point, "The only thing McKay seems to be afraid of is to be perceived as 'showing off'".
Wyler, a master at cinemagraphic contrast and scope, has been credited by Laurence Olivier for not only teaching the former theater snob how to act in film but also how to respect the medium - assuring him there was nothing in literature, not even Shakespeare, that a film could not encompass. (The Player Kings - by Claudia Roth Pierpont, New Yorker, Dec 2007). In The Big Country, Wyler casts contrasts - Charlton Heston's blond and viril Steve Leech, bare chested, suntanned, rough, sarcastic, and practical is pitted against Gregory Peck's brunnett mannerly, calm, clothed, and intellectual McKay. Leech kisses Carol Baker with force, her fists pounding against his chest, overtaken by him. While McKay kisses her gently, just a brush. Both men, Wyler depicts as products of their environments. One is a rough as the land in which he was brought up in, fatherless and motherless - he worships the man who took him in and desires the blond, fiesty and somewhat spoiled daughter of tha man, Major Tyrell. The daughter, Patricia is played by 1950's pinup Carol Baker - who was female counterpart to Charlton Heston. A woman who seeks a man like her father, and does nothing but seek her father's favor. Motherless, she is lost in a sea of men. When she brings McKay home, she wants him to play second-fiddle to Daddy. To seek Daddy's favor. When he doesn't participate in the tests Leech and her father set out for him, she is humilated and sends him away, not realizing that he has passed each test but in private and only to prove something to himself. The tests include taming the unruly horse "thunder" that Leech attempts to put him on, and fighting Leech.
Jim McKay is perfect casting for Peck, who had fashioned a career out of playing the stalwart, individualistic, and free-thinking yet physically fit liberal intellectual. Like Gary Cooper, the characters he portrayed often went against the societal norm, fighting for the rights of the little guy - such as Gentlemans' Agreement, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Big Country. Yet, Peck had range as is exhibited in roles he took in Duel in the Sun, Boys from Brazil, Moby Dick, and The Gunfighter. Heston in contrast, was more limited, and best known for the viril yet angry hero in The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, The Naked Jungle, Soylent Green, Hawaii, and Planet of the Apes.
Jean Simmons is another casting contrast to the fiesty Carol Baker, more subdued - Simmons tended to play the nobel and caring girl next door or the unnoticed pretty girl as she does in this tale. Then there are Major Tyrell and Rufus Hennessey. Tyrell is played by Charles Bickford known for playing gentlemen or in parlour room dramas while the rough around the edges character actor Burl Ives plays Rufus. You may remember him best from his voice over narration of Rudolf the Red-Nose Raindeer. But he also starred as Big Daddy in the Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor classic Cat on a Tin Roof. Rufus's relationship with his son, played by the equally viril and blond, Chuck Conners, is contrasted with Tyrell's relationship with Leech. Leech it is made clear would die for the Major and his men would die for Leech - the climatic point in their relationship arises when Leech finally stands up to the Major and refuses to do his biding - but changes his mind and rides after him into the white canyon refusing to let the man ride into an ambush alone, his men following in his wake. Buck on the other hand attempts to kill his father, lies to him, and the men are unruly behind him. The climatic point in that relationship, which happens parallel to the Tyrell/Leech conflict, is when Rufus is forced to shoot his son and cradles him in pained remorse.
Even the portions of the land the characters inhabit are a study in contrasts - Rufus lives at the center of a white rock canyon, rough, well guarded, and cruel. A water tower, and a log cabin homestead at the center. Everything in stark brown and white. Tyrell lives on a sprawling range, with a three tiered homestead, and long grass, trees scattered around the sides. And Julie, Jean Simmons, Big Muddy is a winding river with green hills and trees.
There are three major fights in the film.
The first is a fight that has been building between Steve Leech and Jim McKay. Of the three it is the least voilent. Like all three fights, it is depicted realistically. Wyler was much like Robert Wise, a minimalist and realist when it came to film. He was not a fan of the well-choregraphed gun fights and fist-fights. He also believed in demonstrating the consequences of violence and warfare as is also seen in the classic The Best Years of Our Lives - which follows the story of three damaged World War II war veterans. Wyler depicts the Leech/McKay fight with a series of wide angled shots and just a few close-ups. What we see is two small men awkwardly punching each other on a sea of grass and dirt. Bare hills and mountains silently watching. At the end of it, both men bleeding and exhausted on the grass, McKay askes Leech:" Now, do you want to tell me what we proved by doing that? What was accomplished?" Leech is silent.
The next fight, a duel between Peck and Conner's, Buck, is shot in close-up. We see both men's faces. And Buck who is all words and fluster, cheats, retreats, and cowers behind a wagon wheel. The duel is not elegant. And McKay, who has the final shot, shoots his father's dueling pistol at the ground.
The final fight - is not a gunfight between numerous men, but one between two old ones, Hennessey and Tyrell. The meet in the space between their two homesteads, the canyon with its harsh white chalk walls, and unforgiving passages. Each crag and gully an apt metaphor for the on-going war between them. The filmmaker does not show the fight in closeup - we see what happens from the sky, they are but black specks, sticks, small and insignificant against the white rock canyon that seems to swallow them. Neither is a hero or a villian, both victims of unerring greed to congueor the vast land for themselves regardless of the cost to their families or those around them. Their need to prove and brag about their ability to possess the land, their own ambition, consumes them and finally breaks them much as the proud canyon does.
At the end, McKay and Julie ride up and out, starring downwards into the vast plateau that they will soon build their life and ranch on, the canyon left behind.
Watching the movie after all these years comforted me. It reminded me of what was important and what is not. And even though it was originally released over 50 years ago, it has stood the test of time dealing with universal themes that are in some ways no less relevant today than they were fifty years ago. Why, the film asks, do we fight over land that is so vast we can all live peaceably upon it without coming into contact unless we wish? Why can't we share its resources? Why let petty long-forgotten disagreements get in the way? And why do we feel the need to impress others with our virility, our prowess, our abilities? Why the need to show-off, to brag, to impress? The questions aren't answered. We never know why Tyrell and Hennessey hate one another. We never know why Buck, Steve, and Patricia feel the need to impress the old men who rule over them. All we know is they aren't as happy and content as the two characters who live outside of these needs, Jean Simmons and Gregory Peck - the only two who ride off into the sunset.
