The Big Trail (1930)

The Big Trail was not just a Raoul Walsh western about 19th century pioneering the Oregon Trail in search of a new and better life, but rather it is the story of trailblazing cinema with a bit actor who would one day become one of America's most well known stars, and movies attempting to take the next step in innovation of bringing great cinema to the big screen, by making the screen even bigger then it was ever before. Unfortunately the picture would be a failure and would hold back both the new technology and the film's star several years, waiting for a time when America would could rebound from the great depression and embrace these two major figures of cinema.

Before evening getting to the plot of the film, you must look into the background of its leading man. Director Raoul Walsh was looking into casting its lead character, frontiersman Breck Coleman, with already known western actor Gary Cooper, but since Cooper was under contract at Paramount and not Fox it was not a possibility. Walsh's attempts to cast the part fell onto him spotting a prop man unloading a truck on the Fox lot. This gentleman was near 6'4" in his early twenties and carried himself with the ruggedness of a cowboy, his name was Marion Morrison. Morrison had acted in bit roles before, but now he would have his big break. However Walsh and the studio hated his name. Many stage names were suggested until the final decision was made, John Wayne.

The plot of the picture takes us to a time somewhere in the mid 19th century as we watch pioneering settlers set out on a big wagon train from Missouri to a valley in Oregon. The train is led by a rascally, grizzly of a brute named Red Flack (Tyrone Power, Sr.). Our hero is Breck Coleman (Wayne) who takes it upon himself to be scout for the wagon train as he suspects Flack of murdering friends of his and intends to seek justice of Flack and his men once the train meets its destination. It is on this train that Coleman mistakenly meets his love interest Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Chruchill) whom Coleman tries to woo as well as protect from Flack and his cronies. The wagon train travels through marvelous landscapes, passes through a mighty river, braves weather and Indian attacks, all the while Flack and Coleman play a cat and mouse game which includes Flack framing Coleman for murder when the assassin that was meant to kill Breck was killed by another settler. In the end the settlers make it to the promised land with no help from the evil Flack who would run off from the train only to be hunted down and and given justice by Breck, who would settle down with his lady fair, Miss Ruth.

The picture was an early western when the wild west was not far in the rear-view mirror of America. Much of western United States were still wilderness, even the city of Los Angeles, as studios own wide tracts of land, even ranches, as studio back lots to recreate wide open locations. Even with studio back lots available this picture was shot out on location throughout the western states, including California, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana. These locations would be used for years to come in westerns that peppered the American movie screens. Wide open wilderness covered with thousands of extras gives this picture a sense of authenticity of the wild west which became almost too real on the set. Even the actors became too wild, for as legend has it that Walsh almost had Tyrone Power beaten to death for forcing himself unto leading lady Churchill. True or not, nonetheless the sets must have been pretty wild with the large amounts of equipment and props shuttled around.

A major aspect of this film was that Fox Film Corp. wanted to make this picture a grand masterpiece and to do that they decided to film it in an early form of widescreen call "Fox Grandeur." Grandeur was a format that used a 70mm film frame instead of the conventional 35mm, making the celluloid four times the size of regular film giving the picture a quality far greater then all films seen at that time. 70mm is the same film size we see today in IMAX theatres and would be considered the high definition of film stock then as it would today. Also this form gave a "letterbox" sized screen with an aspect ration of 2.1:1, (That is a screen over twice as wide as it is tall) nearly the same ratio we see in the modern widescreen formats in major motion pictures first made popular by directors such as Spielberg and Lucas in the 70s and 80s.

The Grandeur proccess can be seen as revolutionary, as many studios were testing the waters of widescreen. The Big Trail, though was not the first, but was the biggest leap in that realm of cinema with a budget of around $2 million. However only two theatres in America were equipt with the correct technology to play such a picture, Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and New York's Roxy. Due to the Great Depression and the fact that most theaters just recently spent much of their money equipping themselves for sound within the last two or three years, theater owners were not about to shell out more money to buy new projectors and widen the screen. Fox was prepared for this problem as they shot the film in both Grandeur and standard 35mm so that the film could be seen throughout the land in regular neighborhood movie houses. Technically these were two separate pictures as the two types of pictures were shot differently and to different lengths. (Grandeur being nearly 20 minutes longer.) The 35mm prints still has some beautiful shots of wide landscapes and the thousands of extras in the traveling shots, but would not capture the same awe inspiring majesty seen in the 70mm print. The 70mm film had to shoot dialogue differently as closeups with a 70mm camera didn't work very well, but could cover much more area encasing entire scenes in one large scope shot. Fox would also produce international releases as well, shooting the film with French, Spanish, German, and Italian versions shot at the same time with different casts.

The film was a financial failure. It was said that audiences at the widescreen shows stood and applauded for the massive scope of the film as well for the capturing the wildness of frontier America. Audiences elsewhere were not as excited as 35mm prints did not bring in the financial rewards hoped by Fox. The 30s were a time where movies would struggle to get audiences in during the Great Depression and the advents of widesrceen and color were the next steps in movie evolution, but color would take over first as theaters did not need to by any new equipment to project thecolor images. With that widescreen formatting would be pushed back until it was needed again in the 50s with movies trying to win audiences over the free entertainment of television. With the financial failure of the picture John Wayne would be pushed back from possible super stardom as well. It would be nine years of playing in B-westerns before his next big break in Stagecoach.

The film may not have been a success, but was a step in the right direction for cinema. Unfortunately that step would not be heard for a while as Wayne and widescreen were pushed to a back burner. The widescreen version would not see the light of day very often and luckily would be saved in restoration and preservation. The Big Trail may be just a footnote, but a big footnote that must be kept in mind as the picture is a 1930 mega western starring John Wayne produced in 70mm. Truly a film before its time in nearly every aspect.