The Big Trail

John Wayne's first starring film (produced in 1929 and released the following year) was an innovative early Western epic that made use of two motion-picture technologies still in their infancy: widescreen cinematography and outdoor sound recording. A box-office failure—many theaters still weren't equipped to screen talking pictures, while almost none had screens wide enough to accommodate the 70mm image—The Big Trail sank into oblivion. Nearly 20 years ago, the lone surviving widescreen print was found, and Fox Home Entertainment now presents a new digital transfer of this version together with a full-frame version in this handsomely packaged, reasonably priced double-disc boxed set. In Raoul Walsh's sprawling epic, shot largely on location and boasting hundreds of extras, young Duke Wayne (previously a bit player in John Ford movies) is not quite a commanding screen presence yet, here playing intrepid guide Breck Coleman, who leads a lengthy wagon train westward from a Mississippi River settlement. Several of The Big Trail's lavish set pieces—such as the wagon train's dangerous fording of a swollen river during a torrential downpour—were used as stock footage in later Westerns, so it's interesting to see these remarkable sequences in their original context. Also fascinating—in a perverse way—is watching a clearly uncomfortable Duke gamely trying to be convincing in his awkward love scenes with female lead Marguerite Churchill, a stage actress clearly out of her element. Nonetheless, this is an important film, with decent entertainment value even for today's viewers, especially nostalgia-minded movie buffs and John Wayne fans. DVD extras include a handful of featurettes (on Wayne, Walsh, the 70mm process, and a “making-of”), and a commentary by film critic/historian Richard Schickel. Recommended. [Note: this two-disc version is also available in John Wayne: The Fox Westerns—an incredible bargain at $29.98—which contains three additional titles: The Comancheros, North to Alaska, and The Undefeated.] (E. Hulse)