The Big Country

Westerns, by their very nature, are mostly quite simplistic films. That's not to say they're bad – some of the simplest westerns of all are actually cinematic masterpieces because they've been pared to the bone for maximum impact. Stagecoach and High Noon, for example. But every now and then a western comes along that adds layers to the basic concept of the genre and becomes something more. This might be layers of psychology, layers of philosophy, layers of brutality – anything, really, that goes beyond the simple western framework and lends a more profound subtext to the film. Notable genre entries that have done this include The Searchers, The Wild Bunch and The Big Country, the latter of which is a 1958 epic made by William Wyler just a year before his incredible remake of Ben Hur. Sea captain Jim Mackay (Gregory Peck) travels to the Wild West to reunite with a lady he met back east, the beautiful Pat Terrill (Carroll Baker). However, Jim finds nothing but hostility and danger in the west, and is quickly taunted by some the locals who find him effeminate and cowardly because of his belief that violence doesn't solve anything. Pat's father Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford) is a wealthy rancher, but Jim is troubled when he discovers that the Major is locked in a long-standing feud over water rights with a rival family, the Hannasseys. It doesn't take Jim long to figure out that Pat is not the woman for him – she may have seemed the perfect match back in the polite society of the East, but in her home region of the West she is dedicated to her father's aggressive attitudes and treats Jim differently, belittling him almost, because of his pacifist views. Worse still, the ranch foreman Steve Leech (Charlton Heston) has designs of his own on Pat and wants to fight Jim for her affection. In the end, Jim switches his attention to school teacher Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons), who owns the patch of land that provides both the Terrills and the Hannasseys with their water. Violence erupts between the two warring families, with Jim and Julie getting caught literally in the middle of their fatal battle for supremacy. There's much to admire about The Big Country. Jerome Moross's amazing score is perhaps the most memorable thing of all, a wonderful piece of dramatic scoring that is now a classic and known by people who haven't even seen the film. It's good to see Peck in such fine form too – often criticised for being too wooden, his acting style here lends perfect credibility to the pacifist hero role. The entire cast in is excellent form if the truth be told, with Burl Ives the choice of the bunch as the fiercely proud leader of the Hannassey clan (an Oscar-winning role, and thoroughly deserving of it). Franz Planer's cinematography is quite majestic and helps the film to live up to its rather grand title. And Wyler directs the film exceptionally well, holding our attention over almost three hours and presenting characters and a back story that are totally convincing and involving. Critics have occasionally accused the film of being overblown, and there is an element of truth in that, and the ending rather unfairly asks us to care about the fate of Bickford and Ives when they've been portrayed as very unsympathetic characters up to that point. On the whole, though, The Big Country is definitely a western worth recommending.

source: The Big Country

I waded my way through this overrated Western shown in widescreen on BB2, a British major television channel. Mercifully the BBC shows films without advertisements. I am in a minority, but I see nothing exceptional in this film. It is a VERY American film, sprawling as a lot of mediocre American novels do and straining to be GREAT. For me this is as stolid and worthy of such BIG novels turned into film like ' From Here To Eternity ', ' Gone With The Wind ' and despite the just rightness of its subject matter ' Exodus ', and the list could go on of badly written novels turned into BIG cinema. I think the cast is a mess and on or off screen I cannot buy any relationship of any kind between Charlton Heston and Gregory Peck. Carroll Baker so good in ' Something Wild ' and ' Baby Doll ' fades into the noise of it all and the scenery. I give it a 5 for that great actress Jean Simmons, bigger to me than this tiresome film and William Wyler's bland direction. Do not get me wrong. I like Westerns, but I am not a fan of this one. It is pretentious and far too conservative in its direction to see it more than once. And the music is terrible, and the opening sounded like an anthem to the GREAT and BIG country America. It flaunts itself with its clean surface and muddled content, brainwashing us to believe it is one of the BIG and GREAT Westerns. A small film in a BIG country.

A masterpiece, pure and simple. I saw "The Big Country" when It came out and I was in my very early teens. I thought it was over at the one hour thirty-nine minute mark; it was the longest motion picture I had ever seen. And I could not appreciate it at the time. Oh, I liked Peck's character very much but missed all the amazing nuances of the complex characters, for this is not only a Western but also a capital "R" Romance, a study in loyalties (most clearly seen in Heston's role. Is this his finest performance? Ives won the Oscar, and deservedly so, but Conners never again came close to the talent he showed as Buck, and Bickford crowned his long career in this triumphant human drama of love, family, power, blood, money and land. The true star of this wonderful motion picture is actually the title character: it is about "The Big Country". It is the West. It does not matter if it be Texas or Alberta; it could as easily have been oil rather than cattle (as was attempted not nearly so well in "Giant"); or it could have been gold (as in the inferior "Pale Rider"): Wyler here captures the essence of the West in a pre-Leone Shakespearean human epic of the West.

The law of averages makes it inevitable than any major performer, whether vocalist (Sinatra) or actor (Michael Caine) if sufficiently prolific will turn in a percentage of dross. Ironically Gregory Peck, one of the finest and most underrated of major actors, turned out two of the most disappointing big-budget, all-star cast, 'westerns' in a tad over a decade, Duel In The Sun and this one, The Big Country. Though far and away the best thing in it Peck is hamstrung by the essential dullness of the story and pedestrian directing of William Wyler (who, together with Peck and Audrey Hepburn) had hit one out of the park only five years earlier with Roman Holiday. It's just hard to work up a sweat about Peck's non- conformist secure-in-his-own-skin role when the best 'all-male' opposition they can come up with for him to clash with giant Redwood Charlton Heston flaunting his Forestry Commission training in every scene and strewing the set with sawdust. From the comments I've read here I'm in the minority and not for the first time. Sue me.

After reading other reviews at the IMDB, I decided to give THE BIG COUNTRY another chance. I remembered anxiously anticipating this film when it was released in 1958. From the previews it looked BIG, with a powerful cast, and magnificent score (I still believe the overture is the best piece of music ever written for the movies). I then remember sitting through 165 interminable minutes. What a letdown! Well, I was nine at the time; so, I figured this time I would catch all those wonderful nuances I would not have understood at age nine. Upon careful reconsideration, I have decided I was a pretty good critic at nine after all. THE BIG COUNTRY is a bore. Like a Chicago voter, THE BIG COUNTRY makes its point `early and often'. It seems a reaction to cold war hysteria, mindful of `Can't we all just get along?' drummed repeatedly into our heads for 160 of the 165 minutes. Give me a break. Wyler's usual composition skills don't work here. He rarely gets in close enough. The cinematography overall is mediocre, as is the entire look of the film. I might have well have been watching an old episode of THE VIRGINIAN filmed in letterbox. By THE BIG COUNTRY, star and co-producer Gregory Peck had slipped into the stoic style that ruined most of his later films (just compare his work here with DUAL IN THE SUN, SPELLBOUND, THE GUNFIGHTER or TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH). Only once, during the scene with Jean Simmons `waking him' with cold water, does Peck even suggest that that playful, promising young actor. (Later in his career he rekindled some of that playfulness in HOW THE WEST WAS WON, but that's another movie). Baker is cute and Simmons is cuddly, but their characters are so underwritten as to give them little opportunity to express much range. THE BIG COUNTRY does have two genuinely great performances, Charleton Heston and Burl Ives. Ives, in particular, dominates every scene he is in. Heston, however, has the less showy performance; but his `Steve Leech' brings to mind John Wayne as `Ethan Edwards' in THE SEARCHERS. Unlike the uncompromising (and doomed) Edwards, however, Leech gives in to his fears and becomes `pragmatic.' This may be why Heston didn't receive more recognition for his performance; sad, because he had a much tougher job than Ives. THE BIG COUNTRY reminds me of a overlong sermon by a old country preacher. It's hard to enjoy even if you know it's good for you.

William Wyler directed this big budget spectacle. Critics always loved Wyler. His movies dominated the Academy Awards for decades (Burl Ives won Best Supporting Actor in this one). This was Wyler's second and last Western of the talkie era. He directed Gary Cooper in "The Westerner" 18 years earlier. I found both movies very disappointing. Here's what I liked: Wyler excelled at creating compelling heavies. Walter Brennan's Judge Roy Bean in "The Westerner" may the best Western bad guy ever. Here Chuck Conners gets the best role of his career. His sniveling "inadequate son" henchman makes my "Top Ten Western Henchman" list. Very similar to Jack Lord's excellent character in "The Man From The West", released the same year. Of course, both Conners and Lord went on to '60's TV stardom. Gregory Peck is well cast as the bottled up pacifist. The characters are well developed and there are no glaring plot holes. It's impressive thematically as a pacifist metaphor during the height of the Cold War. "The Westerner" was similar, but was a metaphor for U.S. isolationism leading into WW2. It's a good looking movie if you like a lot of shots of wide open prairie. Charlton Heston underplays his role perfectly as the "cattle baron's adopted son turned loyal foreman" (See Arthur Kennedy in "The Man From Laramie" and Burt Lancaster in "Vengeance Valley" for similar characters). Now here's what I didn't like: Nice acting job by Peck, but he's not my idea of a Western hero. In that sense, this is an "anti-Western" like "High Noon". Like I always say, if I was anti-Western, I would watch musicals and romantic comedies, not this movie. I'm not a big fan of "range war" Westerns. They tend to get stuck in one place. The landscapes in this movie are impressive, but limited. The story is too melodramatic. I felt like I was watching "Peyton Place Goes West". Usually the romantic subplots in Westerns are gratuitous. Here we have the opposite problem. Romance is overdeveloped to the point where this is barely a Western. I liked Carol Baker in this, but I don't get the attraction of Jean Simmons. Never went for Audrey Hepburn either. I didn't buy Burl Ives's character. I thought he overacted and was very "stagy". I thought the musical soundtrack was indulgent and intrusive. There is not an iota of comic relief. Not a single Indian or Mexican reference, except for a highly stereotyped Mexican servant. Like George Stevens ("Shane") and Fred Zinneman ("High Noon"), Wyler wasn't really a Westerns director. All three men had little understanding of the milieu of the era and saw little reason to include these colorful cultural elements. The conflict resolution at the end feels a little contrived. Also, it was unclear to me just how "peace" was going to come so naturally with so many potential claims on the land, considering the two main owners die simultaneously. As Peck and Simmons stared contentedly into the sunset in the film's final scene, I cringed, fearing they would once again remind us that the country was, indeed, "big".

Although there are some exceptional Westerns (such as The Oxbow Incident, The Gunfighter and The Fastest Gun Alive), this is my favorite. I must first point out that Westerns are NOT among my favorite movies. I like them in small doses or when they rise above the crowd. This movie is GREAT in so many ways. First, the soundtrack is tops. It's magnificent in scope and fits the movie so well. Second, the acting is great. Particular standouts are Gregory Peck (as the strong, confident yet humble newcomer), Charlton Heston, Charles Bickford and Burl Ives. Overall, this movie seemed to best showcase Ives and Peck, as their characters were so solidly written and mesmerizing. Third, as alluded to in the last sentence, the writing was incredible and it was in many ways an "anti-Western" that deliberately avoided clichés and debunked some of the macho excessiveness of some Westerns. Fourth, the brilliantly paced and masterful direction of William Wyler (perhaps the greatest Director who ever lived). This is the plot in a nutshell: Gregory Peck is an Easterner who had been a ship's captain who met a girl (Carol Baker) and agreed to marry her and move back west with her. It turns out her father (Bickford) owns most of the county and is way too adamant on proving his machismo--particularly when it came to altercations with another big-shot landowner (Ives) who is his rival. The problems all begin when Ives' son (Chuck Conners) and his buddies give Peck a nasty hazing. Peck laughs it off but Bickford is bound and determined to "teach that trashy clan a lesson". It becomes painfully obvious through the course of the movie that BOTH patriarchs are pig-headed bullies who won't back down until their rival is pushing up daisies! Peck realizes this rather quickly but is disheartened that his fiancée is all for a countrywide bloodbath. Her lust for revenge and mayhem drives poor Gregory Peck away--into the arms of the luscious schoolmarm (Jean Simmons--not THE Gene Simmons from KISS, but the actress). As a compromise, Peck offers to buy a piece of land under dispute by the two patriarchs and give them BOTH equal access to the land. Neither one really wants this solution, as it will preclude them from killing each other. I won't tell more about the basic plot or the conclusion, as it would spoil the experience, though there are a few WONDERFUL moments I want to highlight. First, the cowboys try to get Peck on an evil (and seemingly unbreakable) horse, but he declines. They think he's "yellow" but he just doesn't think he has to prove himself to others. Instead, when no one other than Raoul (the servant--who is exceptionally well-played), he tries again and again to ride the horse until he ultimately succeeds into saddle-breaking it. Second, for much of the movie, Charlton Heston (Bickford's foreman) is itching for a fight with Peck. Again and again, Peck backs off--not because of perceived cowardice but because he has neither an argument with him nor did he feel I needed to fight. Now remember, Peck was introduced as an ex-sea captain--this was certainly NOT a wimpy profession, but he was so self-confident in his own masculinity that he just felt no need to prove anything to himself or his fiancée. Finally, after repeated provocations, Peck agrees to fight but not publicly. Instead, they fight all alone in an open field. The fight lasts for what seems like hours, as they exchange blow after blow. All this is shown NOT with the typical closeup, but with a DISTANT shot in order to avoid glamorized the fight. Finally, after they both are spent, Peck asks Heston if this REALLY accomplished ANYTHING! This was a beautiful moment. Overall, I think this movie's theme is REAL masculinity versus FAKE put-on masculinity and it does a masterful job.

The Big Country was passed over by the professional critics as being empty, ernest, and not enough sweep to be called a true epic. Well, I remember seeing The Big Country and was properly swept off my feet by the grand scale of the Big Country, the death feud between Burl Ives and Charles Bickford, the shaky and doomed romance between Gregory Peck and the spoiled Carroll Baker and the quiet understanding between Peck and the lovely Jean Simmons, but most of all, the thing that propelled me to see The Big Country over and over was the magnificant score by Jerome Moross. Sure, I could site many scores that have aided films to glory, Max Steiner for The Letter, Maurice Jarre for Lawrence of Arabia, Miklos Roza for an excellent score for a weak epic Land of the Pharaohs, and Hans Zimmer for an excellent score for a great epic Gladiator but I still say that for a western you can't get any better than the magnificant score for The Big Country. The sweep and majesty and the quiet moments of Jerome Moross's music sets the tone for this truly underated movie. United Artist released the music on LP and I wore mine out along with my neighbors complaints, I now own an excellent CD produced by SILVA SCREEN which I can't wear out. All in all see The Big Country on your big screen in Widescreen and give yourself a real treat. Who needs Giant?

I love movies, and this is as close to perfect, as it gets. First of all can, you imagine a movie with such a cast. Heston, Peck, Ives, Bickford, Connor, Baker, and Jean Simmons ( one of my favorite actors ). Throw in the scenery, the incredible musical score, and a plot with romance, and minimal violence, and you have a classic. On a home widescreen with the volume high, I am sure even compared to todays movies it is entertaining and ageless. As a footnote, I saw this movie years ago and it stuck in my mind. One day while listening to CBC radio on a call in request segment someone called in and asked for the theme from Big Country. It stirred me to track down a copy of the movie. I also like the story about Heston thinking of turning it down ( An Actor's Life ) since his part was secondary. His agent said are you nuts to turn down Willy Wyler. This movie led Wyler to cast him in Ben Hur.