The Big Country (1958)

Written with some amount of hindsight

The Big Country is most notably quite long (about 3 hours) - it's directed by William Wyler, who's "Ben Hur" is the very definition of long, and who's films I'm naturally predisposed against because of Ben Hur- however it is also quite entertaining, so most is forgiven.

The story concerns an Eastern sailor (Gregory Peck) who comes out west to marry a cattleman's daughter, and gets drawn into a range-war with a band of semi-outlaws that the cattleman has driven into exile. Charleton Heston is the cattle baron's rough foreman and sort-of adopted son. In due course the hero decides he doesn't really like the cattle baron's daughter - she refuses to see beyond her father's ambition to expand over all the territory - and instead picks her more sensible school-teacher friend, who owns a key piece of land nearby.

As a rule, I'm not hugely keen on Charleton Heston in his Western appearances and while there's nothing hugely to complain about here, he doesn't seem quite right. I'm a bit more convinced by Gregory Peck: the character, being an Easterner, is supposed to seem slightly out of place. His only other notable Western appearance is The Gunfighter though. The women are both reasonable, although don't have a huge amount to do. From a male point of view, I suspect the hero made the right choice in the end (that romance was quite blatantly flagged early in the film). One particularly effective scene that stuck with me was the Cattle-baron's final assault against his adversary's home: his foreman initially refuses to go along with it, seeing it for the excuse for violence that it is, but is eventually goaded into joining in. The character almost doing the right thing, but being weak-willed and submitting, but ultimately still believing he's doing the right thing is very well done.

The film is beautifully shot on rolling grassland that looks like prime cattle-country (and the UK DVD seems to do it justice). A notable feature is the almost complete absence of cattle, except for a stampeed scene, which seemed quite out of place once I'd noticed it.