The Big Trail (1930)

I have to admit, I mostly watched The Big Trail for historical interest. That having been said, it actually turns out to be surprisingly good, and not nearly as dated as you might imagine from the 1930 release date.

John Wayne—in his first significant role—plays Breck Coleman, a trapper and sometime scout who agrees to scout for a wagon-train with the twin intentions of avenging the murder of one of his friends (Wayne suspects the trail boss and his lackeys of the murder) and romancing one of the settlers (Marguerite Churchill). Along the way they meet various "standard" trail adversities such as river-crossings and Indians (handled reasonably even-handedly) – of course, a lot of these things were possibly (slightly) less clichéd at the time of release. A scene where the wagons and livestock are winched down a cliff is particularly dramatic, and impressive given the absence of special effects.

The story in general is pretty effective, if both episodic and fairly straightforward. The acting is a bit more of a mixed bag. Some of it is slightly "shouty", possibly due to a mixture of the accommodating the limitations of early microphone technology and actors who were more used to the theatre. In my opinion, John Wayne gives one of the more natural performances, and his subsequent career dip in light of the failure of The Big Trail seems a little unfair.

The version I saw was the US blu-ray, which has been fairly extensively reviewed elsewhere. The film is understandably scratched in places, but generally looks genuinely pretty stunning (aside from the black-and-white the visuals are one aspect of this film that really haven't dated, and honestly look spectacular).

The blu-ray comes with two versions: a widescreen and a fullscreen version, that were filmed side-by-side but separately (and hence have different takes and a fairly significant difference in length). The widescreen version is probably the definitive one, with the fullscreen version being shot for the benefit of cinemas without appropriate screens. As of yet I've only watched the widescreen version – I do mean to get back to the other and update this review with a few comments in the medium future.