The Big Country (1958)
Country: US
Technical: Technirama 165m
Director: William Wyler
Cast: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Charles Bickford, Burl Ives, Carroll Baker
Synopsis:
A seafarer from back East travels to Texas to visit his fiancée and her rancher father, but finds himself drawn to the local schoolmarm and her efforts to keep the peace between two feuding families, his intended's and the local white trash.
Review:
A sweeping Western, leisurely and epic in theme but in fact quite simply constructed and pleasing in a classical sort of way, just 'big'. It recalls the American gothic of Duel in the Sun but relies less on spectacle and looks backwards and forward to the phallocratic families of Ford and Peckinpah in its depiction of twisted fathers eating up a community with their hate. The colour is rather bleached but the music is exciting, and sequences like the silent, endless fistfight in long shot and the ride to Blanco Canyon are among the best in the genre.
Country: US
Technical: Technirama 165m
Director: William Wyler
Cast: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Charles Bickford, Burl Ives, Carroll Baker
Synopsis:
A seafarer from back East travels to Texas to visit his fiancée and her rancher father, but finds himself drawn to the local schoolmarm and her efforts to keep the peace between two feuding families, his intended's and the local white trash.
Review:
A sweeping Western, leisurely and epic in theme but in fact quite simply constructed and pleasing in a classical sort of way, just 'big'. It recalls the American gothic of Duel in the Sun but relies less on spectacle and looks backwards and forward to the phallocratic families of Ford and Peckinpah in its depiction of twisted fathers eating up a community with their hate. The colour is rather bleached but the music is exciting, and sequences like the silent, endless fistfight in long shot and the ride to Blanco Canyon are among the best in the genre.
Country: US
Technical: Technirama 165m
Director: William Wyler
Cast: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Charles Bickford, Burl Ives, Carroll Baker
Synopsis:
A seafarer from back East travels to Texas to visit his fiancée and her rancher father, but finds himself drawn to the local schoolmarm and her efforts to keep the peace between two feuding families, his intended's and the local white trash.
Review:
A sweeping Western, leisurely and epic in theme but in fact quite simply constructed and pleasing in a classical sort of way, just 'big'. It recalls the American gothic of Duel in the Sun but relies less on spectacle and looks backwards and forward to the phallocratic families of Ford and Peckinpah in its depiction of twisted fathers eating up a community with their hate. The colour is rather bleached but the music is exciting, and sequences like the silent, endless fistfight in long shot and the ride to Blanco Canyon are among the best in the genre.