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The Big Country (1958) Directed by William Wyler

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The Big Country (1958) Directed by William Wyler El Rancho Lungo By Christina Harlin, your Fearless Young Orphan The Big Country (1958) Directed by William Wyler There’s so much good in The Big Country that we have to forgive it for its greatest fault: it’s entirely too long. It’s ridiculously long. Seriously it’s like they left nothing on the cutting-room floor, this movie is so blasted long. I suspect that its 160-minute length is something demanded by Charlton Heston, one of the film’s stars, because he couldn’t bear the thought of being in a movie less than two hours long. A modern audience isn’t going to stand for it (not without whining), because while some movies are so grand that their epic presentation can excuse their epic length, this ain’t one of them. And how strange is that? William Wyler made so many brisk, lively, beautifully- edited films that told their magnificent stories (far more complex than this one) in half the time. Boy, not here. We feel the length from the very start, so that it almost seems like a joke, how damned slowly everything happens. This is a western that cuts no details: if a man is going to saddle up a horse and ride away, then by god, we watch him put on his boots and then open the barn and get the horse and saddle the horse and open the gate and mount the horse and then ride off on the horse, and never you mind any handy editing tricks that could have delivered us to the “riding away” part and simply implied the rest. Sitting through the movie is an exercise of determination, and I had to break it up over two viewings. Obviously I had issues with the length. However, my friends, that was the only problem. Otherwise The Big Country is a pretty great story of untamed wilderness, with many “Hold on, while I explain in detail how a gunfight works.” major stars to light up the place: Gregory Peck, Burl Ives, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, and Chuck Connors, just to name a few of the recognizable faces. Though its length and subject matter (a land dispute between prominent families) might remind you of the weighty, overblown drama that was Giant, The Big Country is a far better film. It might take just as long to get where it’s going, but at least we like being with the people on board. Here’s the rough outline: Gregory Peck is James McKay, who has come to the Wild West from the Northeast, where he was a successful captain of a ship. He met a ranch heiress Patricia “Pat” Tyrell (Carroll Baker) when she was visiting New York; they fell in love and got engaged, and now he’s come to join her on her family’s vast lands. But the Pat that McKay fell in love with becomes a rather different woman when she’s under the rule of her strong-willed father, Major Tyrell, and she has trouble understanding McKay’s resistance to acting like the men she’s accustomed to (rough-and-rowdy ranch hands, if you’ll pardon the alliteration). For example, her father’s right-hand-man is Steve Leech (Charlton Heston), a man so manly you’ll think he’s manned a manly manwagon made of men. Soon Pat and McKay are sorely divided about his weird, “peaceful” attitude. You see, McKay can’t see the point in starting a fight over nonsense and he sees a lot of “Wow, that really is a big country, all right.” nonsense around him: most particularly, the long-standing feud between the stuck-up Tyrells and a rival ranching family, the Hannasseys (led by Pa Hannassey himself, Burl Ives, whose loud indignant speeches are unfailing howlers). It’s one of those feuds that has been going on so long that nobody really remembers what started it. Things are plenty hot now, though, as both families vie over the use of a river to water their cattle. The river runs through a property owned by a more- or-less neutral party, Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons), who inherited the land and all its problems alongside it. She’s trying to keep the peace by allowing both parties equal use of the land, but the two families are so insistent on antagonizing each other that no manner of politeness on her part seems to solve any problems. So, this is what McKay walks in on. The feud is teetering on the edge of falling into an all-out range war, and his formerly sweet fiancée wants McKay to choose her family’s side in things – and while he’s at it, for McKay to man up quite a bit and stop being so damned forgiving of all the sleights against his masculinity, real or imagined. In an effort to carve out a little something of his own, McKay approaches Julie Maragon to ask if she’d sell him her coveted land and realizes that, ermagerd, she’s beautiful Jean Simmons, and a damn site nicer than his fiancée too. A love triangle (or, a love pentagon, I guess, if you’d like to throw in Chuck Connors and Charlton Heston, who are also in the mix) complicates matters further. Regardless of what McKay tries to do to bring peace to the Big Country, the Tyrells and the Hannasseys seem determined to have it out. It all comes to a head when Julie is kidnapped and pressured (under threat of forced marriage or possibly rape) to give her land to the Hannasseys. The Tyrells ostensibly go to rescue her but of course this is really just an excuse, because even when McKay offers to go get Julie back peacefully and reasonably, the Tyrells are still ready to fight. So what’s gonna happen next? I’ll leave you to learn that on your own, with the understanding that whatever happens, it’ll happen extremely slowly. Funny thing, though. As I was just thinking about a rating for this Western, I came up with the score of 8/10, subtracting a couple points because the film is so ponderous. I thought, “If it had only been quicker, I would have rated it 9 or even 10/10.” Then I thought again – I’m not so sure that’s true. Was it really a great story? Or, ermagerd, was it just a good story that was made to seem more important by the sheer weight of the film? Wyler was a brilliant director who understood the power of a lonely western landscape and an uninterrupted view. It’s an interesting point to ponder. But either way, the 8/10 is fair and a good rating for a film in which the performances are so memorable that they crowd out any other troubles. “Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry, when I take you out in the surrey, when I take you out in the surrey With the friiiiiiiiiinge on top . .” .
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