It can be played without sub titles and in English ( or American !! And they had the wagon train do everything wagon trains did back in those pioneering days, cross rivers, get lowered down cliffs, blaze trails through timbered lands, cross deserts, climb mountains, survive snow storms. There’s also a difference in how violence was portrayed. 4,328.16 m (14 reels) (70 mm version) Negative Format : 35 mm (alternate regular version) 70 mm (nitrate) Cinematographic Process : Grandeur (70 mm version) Spherical (35 … The Big Trail was filmed from April to August in 1930 in black and white using both 70mm and 35mm cameras, creating two unique versions from different camera angles. (Mostly the film was seen in the standard 35mm version shot more or less simultaneously with the wide version--and included in this set.) Nobody was a great shot either. I’m delighted that “The Big Trail” is available and that you enjoyed it! The film is more a victim of the time that it was made. Much of the blame was laid at the door of the new young star John Wayne, which was very unfair. This version was almost never seen until today. This film was stated to be of historic, cultural and aesthetic importance by the US Library of Congress in 2006. The Creation of John Wayne sets forth all this, as well as a biographical sketch of the youth from Winterset, Iowa, by way of Glendale, Calif. A truly epic Western of staggering proportions, Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail (1930) is a fascinating work on many levels. ( Log Out /  Beautiful, crisp photography, incredible sweep, and amazing scenes. Incidentally, Raoul Walsh gave the star of this film his name, John Wayne. Reading, Ruminating, Writing, & Other Neurological Disorders, Short Fiction by Nicola Humphreys (nicolawitters), News and scholarship on H.P. All gone now. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2021, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, Stagecoach (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 5, 2014. Needed FOUR projectors in. This widescreen Western was made just as synchronised sound came to the cinema. The film also cost its director. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 3, 2010. It was possible that some of these pioneers were still alive to verify the realism of the film. John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall, Tyrone Power Sr. Florence Postal, Hal G. Evarts, Jack Peabody, John Cork. Unable to add item to List. What a loss for them. As an inexperienced actor he actually acquits himself very well. Most westerns of that era were B movies, shot full of action, produced from very small budgets. But it was realistic enough to show a woman nursing a baby. Decades ago Memphis had a couple old theaters that were turned into art film houses and they would sometimes show films from the 1930s. All my favorite old films from the 1930s and 1940s would have been so much more grandeur looking. The film came out during that awkward transitional period from talkies to sound. Wayne actually gives a refreshingly natural performance, eschewing the elocution lessons he had been given. These were the only 70mm presentations, although 35mm Grandeurscope print downs seem to have been used in some venues. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Many years ago, I was fortunate to see it on the big screen. Please try again. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. The films failure may well have owed more to this. That’s too bad, it should be better remembered. Absolutely stunning !!! He also shows competence in the saddle that not all stars could boast. Some early films were projected in widescreen formats, such as the 1927 epic film Napoléon, which used three projectors side-by-side to have a total image size of 4:00:1, and the 1930 John Wayne Fox Film feature The Big Trail, which was shot in a 70mm film format dubbed "Fox Grandeur." Additionally, we had wonderful retrospective series at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USC, and UCLA. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. ]. Opening with a special 35mm presentation of THE BIG TRAIL (1930) — the only surviving feature film shot in Fox’s 70mm Fox Grandeur system and John Wayne’s first starring role — this festival reaches back to the very early days of widescreen projection. Yet, the sets and costumes look very realistic. At one point the John Wayne character was telling a bunch of boys what all he learned from living with the Indians and one of the kids asked, “Did they teach you were papooses come from?”  That’s about as risqué as this movie got. The picture is slightly worn but intact, and the photography interesting in its clarity and simple lighting effects. 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. Sound quality was a bit sketchy and the acting was very exaggerated in the silent tradition. Both the Grandeur version and the 35mm version of THE BIG TRAIL are appoximately 125 minutes. A couple of times I thought it was raining because of the tiny scratches. In addition to being a good movie, The Big Trail is, in and of itself, a great story. Grandeur 70 was only used to describe the 70mm conversion of THE KING AND I. The short also notes that Ford was miffed that a rival director, Raoul Walsh, would give his (Ford's) protégé a premature shot at stardom; Ford effectively dropped Wayne, leaving him to languish in B pictures for nearly a decade till casting him in Stagecoach. ... pair of aluminum wheels will be enough to fully realize the amazing benefits of this short-travel rig that rides like a big, bad trail bike. I was so fortunate to spend 13 years in Los Angeles while revival houses still thrived. Maybe after reading your review, your friends will give it a try. Filmed in two versions simultaneously: widescreen process Grandeur in 70mm, and in standard 35mm. As I watched The Big Trail, I wondered how many people living in 1930 had once traveled across the country in a wagon train. Moreover, because sound-film technology was new, separate versions of the film were being made with different leading players for release in Italian-, Spanish-, and German-speaking markets! Directed by Raoul Walsh, ``The Big Trail`` was the last of a handful of films produced between 1929 and 1930 by the Fox Film Corp. in what was … The whole production was also shot in five languages using different lineup of actors for each language. "The Big Trail" - 70mm [aspect ratio 2.10:1] The visual drama of 'The Big Trail', based in part on epic realism, is counterpointed admirably in his work as cinematographer for James Whale. "The Big Trail" John Wayne. It’s a shame that modern theater owners down put old flicks on one of their many screens. In working on such a picture as "The Big Trail," 70 millimeter is a tremendously important aid for the epic sweep of the picture demands that it be painted against a great canvas. But the film's box-office failure reduced him to cranking out (often lively) formula fare for most of the 1930s, till landing at his proper home, Warner Bros., in 1939. An amazing film and all the more suprising that it was considered a 'flop' at the time (1931). Just the opposite occurred: the 70mm prints could be shown only on projectors designed for that purpose, only two theaters in America had them, and the onset of the Depression forestalled exhibitors from considering such an investment. Not good enough, especially seeing as TCM have their own version, running about ten minutes longer than this. 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. Westerns weren’t this good for a long time, not until Stagecoach, ten years later. And the bad guys were on the hesitant and cowardly side, only willing to kill when no one was looking. Baffling.. The film flopped badly at the box office failing to recoup the huge costs it had incurred in filming. I expect someday that digital processing will clean up even more of these film defects, and created a print closer to the 1930 original. ). Here a star is born. The Big Trail has quite a fascinating history behind it. Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2017. View more property details, sales history and Zestimate data on Zillow. One reviewer wrote 'Spectacle over Story', I agree that the acting and story line is not the best - but hey it's 1930 !! Disc One: Original 70MM widescreen version (Yes, there were a few movies released in the 1930s in 70MM widescreen) Disc Two: Standard version ***** Hello from Loran Records! In 1959 after Alaska and Hawaii became states, Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2020. It was great acting by the way they judged acting. --Richard T. Jameson, John Wayne: The Fox Westerns Collection (The Big Trail / North to Alaska / The Comancheros / The Undefeated), Tall in the Saddle (DVD) (Commemorative Amaray). The Big Trail was a very gigantic production, but it’s not as famous as Gone With the Wind from 1939. The film was made in both conventional 35mm film and in a 70mm wide-screen presentation process known as Grandeur. Ignore him, and the movie is a towering classic.) Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2017. In The Big Trail, John Wayne only kills one of the bad guys, and with a knife. Which Came First – the Emotion or the Hormone? The whole production was also shot in five languages using different lineup of actors for each language. Just compare the two versions of True Grit. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. The film also used the popular and necessary device of captions to help the narrative flow of the story. Joe Pitkin's stories, queries, and quibbles regarding the human, the inhuman, the humanesque. 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. This home was built in 2006 and last sold on 6/2/2009 for $508,109. Epic production doesn’t begin to describe the making of The Big Trail. The 70mm cameras could not focus well up close, so their shots were m… I’ve seen The Big Trail three times now and I’m looking forward to seeing it again. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! 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. Filmed in two versions simultaneously: widescreen process Grandeur in 70mm, and in standard 35mm. They were shot by different cameras, and footage for each format was edited separately in the cutting room. Studio mogul William Fox owned the process and envisioned a grand triumph for his company. Modern movie goers are used to high tech visual productions and when they see old movies, especially silent films and films from the 1930s, they think of them as primitive and crude, and often assume people of those days saw what we see today. Silent movie film goers didn’t see jerky prints with faded splotches and lines running through them. 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. The heyday of the wagon train was from the 1840 to the 1860s, when the continental railroad was built. Their technology was older and less sophisticated, but the prints we have are old and in bad shape compared to the original pristine prints audiences viewed in their day. Unfortunately many exhibitors were unwilling to spend the money required on equipment to play the grandeur process. Directed by Raoul Walsh (1930 - Fox Film Corporation) 2 DVD Set released in 2008 by 20th Century-Fox. Although given to condescension, Schickel has a sympathetic understanding of the technical limitations of early-sound filmmaking, Wayne's neophyte status, the beauties of Walsh's boisterous spirit and style, and the distinction between convention and cliché. It’s a classic western, and a classic 1930s film, my two favorite genres. [Click for full size versions. "The Big Trail", Fox's Grandeur western epic, opened at Grauman's Chinese in Hollywood on October 2, 1930 with the Roxy, N.Y.C. "The Big Trail" has often been seen by film historians as a rather weak film, but that is a bit unfair. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. Those were the days! Plus the Indians were real. Since the Studio mogul William Fox owned the … It's Wonderful! Much of the dialog is stagey, and the cinematography is reminiscent of great silent films. I’m not sure people only used to modern films would like it. Sure the acting style is strange to us, but the acting style was normal to them. What if Grand Hotel had been widescreen, or The Maltese Falcon, or The Wizard of Oz, just imagine how more magnificent they would have been. The 70mm version of The Big Trail is accompanied by commentary from historian and Time film critic Richard Schickel. Things I want to remember – James Wallace Harris. Twenty five years later 70mm would re-emerge as a means of competing with Cinerama. Ten years later 70mm would re-emerge as a rather weak film, my two favorite.! 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