Tonight's Movie: The Big Country (1958) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

What better day to watch William Wyler's epic Western THE BIG COUNTRY (1958) than Independence Day?

THE BIG COUNTRY has just recently been released by Kino Lorber. This is a Western I love a great deal, and I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting it via Kino Lorber's gorgeous Blu-ray.

THE BIG COUNTRY is a big movie, with a lot to it. Though the film has a lot of substance, the basic plot is actually rather simple, as a newly retired sea captain, Jim McKay (Gregory Peck), relocates from the East Coast to the untamed West. He joins his fiancee Pat (Carroll Baker), whom he met in Boston, and her father, Major Henry Tarrill (Charles Bickford), at their sprawling ranch.

Tarrill is embroiled in a decades-long dispute with the much poorer Rufus Hannassey (Oscar winner Burl Ives) over water rights. Both Tarrill and Hannassey want schoolteacher Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons) to sell them her ranch, which includes a river, but Jim gets the idea that she should sell it to him instead, and he'll let both Tarrill and Hannassey use the water, ending their feud. As it turns out, this isn't a popular idea.

From the very moment he arrives in the West Jim is told, in so many words, "You're doing it wrong." Jim's clothes, his lack of care for others' opinions of himself, and especially his attitudes toward violence mark him as an outsider. Pat begins to have doubts about Jim, and perhaps she's also having second thoughts about her father's loyal top hand, Steve Leech (Charlton Heston).

There are more plot threads here and there, including the attempts of Hannassey's lecherous son Buck (Chuck Connors) to have his way with Julie, but in the end, as more than one person comments in the bonus features, the movie's overarching theme is the futility of violence.

One of the things I love about the movie is that the characters, particularly those played by Peck and Heston, aren't drawn in black and white. Peck is the film's hero, but at times he's frankly a bit too self-centered. One can appreciate that he doesn't feel a need to "prove" himself to anyone in the West, wanting his fiancee to have faith in him without him needing to defend her honor or chase after villains. He's correct when he says he's not responsible for what others think, yet at the same time this is offset by a certain lack of empathy, not really caring to try to understand another point of view.

Jim has admirable character traits aplenty, such as privately taming a horse for his personal satisfaction, rather than to win others' admiration, and being interested in brokering peace in the region. That said, with each viewing I recognize more that he's really quite arrogant, especially when he takes off for a couple days to visit Julie's ranch.

Jim only tells the ranch hand Ramon (Alfonso Bedoya) where he's going, without a word to his hosts. Although Jim is used to navigating by a compass and stars, Pat, Steve, and the Major all believe he's likely lost in the huge country. When he comes back Jim isn't the least appreciative of their concern or worry, just stating over and over again that he wasn't lost and was fine. Hello, you didn't even want to bother to let your fiancee know you'd be "out of town" for a few days?! There's such a thing as pushing "You need to have faith in me" too far.

I also frankly wonder how he became engaged to Pat in the first place, given how wrong they are for each other; had he been at sea too long? It's a bit perplexing given his otherwise being an intelligent man. Towards the end the script tries to fill in a couple of blanks in this regard but the lack of explanation is a definite shortcoming.

Near the end Jim accepts that there are times only violence will do and acts accordingly.

While Peck is the hero, Heston's jealous Leech could at least initially be construed as a villain of sorts. An orphan who's worked on the ranch since he was a teenager, he's clearly in love with Pat himself, but might have felt he wasn't good enough to approach her, or perhaps he just didn't expect her to come back from Boston engaged!

Though Steve is rather brutal with Pat in one scene, it's only after she strikes him with a whip. Unlike Jim, Steve understands Pat; she may be childish and petulant, and their equally spirited personalities are bound to clash at times, but they're the right match, both loving the Major and the ranch. Pat expresses the fear that Jim won't want to stay on the ranch; didn't she think of that in the first place? Meanwhile the man who shares all her interests and goals has been right in front of her.

Throughout the film we see Steve mature and grow, including in the famous pre-dawn fistfight with Jim, building to the powerful scene where Steve tells the Major he won't do his dirty work anymore -- after which his loyalty comes to the fore and he rides after the Major to what seems a certain death in the Hannassays' canyon. It's the best sequence in the movie.

Honestly, Heston is my favorite character of the entire film; it may be a relatively supporting role but he makes every moment count.

Even Buck Hannassy isn't pure villain, as we see in the movie's climactic action sequence. This complexity makes the movie feel like a good book, providing a great deal for the viewer to consider. I take away new insights each time I watch it, and I would have really liked it to keep going past "The End" to see "what happened next" to the two lead couples.

Julie and Pat, while big roles, don't experience the same growth as the male characters, but I suppose if they did it would have been a five-hour movie! Cathy Wyler notes in an interview on the disc that if her father hadn't gone right into BEN-HUR (1959), she thinks he might have edited down the film's two hours and 46 minutes. (On the other hand, BEN-HUR wasn't exactly short, either, so maybe he wouldn't have!)

I can think of a couple spots in particular that could have been whittled down; I've always found a big chunk of Jim's visit to the Big Muddy unncessary, and his conversation with Julie becomes a bit bizarre. It may have been meant to show them bonding but it's never worked for me. The more low-key and cerebral Julie is clearly the right match for Jim but their relationship should have been better scripted; fortunately, towards the end, no words between them are necessary.

Backing all of the drama is the landmark score by Jerome Moross, one of the greatest ever composed for a movie. (It's hard to believe it was only an Oscar nominee, not a winner, losing to Dimitri Tiomkin's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.) The film's score turns a good movie into a great one.

The beautiful widescreen cinematography was by Franz Planer. It's shown off to great effect on this new Blu-ray release.

The plentiful extras include the documentary DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER (1986), a commentary track, and new interviews with the children of Wyler, Heston, and Peck, plus additional featurettes, a trailer and TV spot, image galleries, and reversible Blu-ray case art. The interviews with the filmmakers' children are all illuminating; I especially loved Fraser Heston saying that one of his earliest memories was of Burl Ives singing to him. Can you imagine?!

Due to the many extras, Kino's DVD release comes on two discs, while the Blu-ray is a single disc.

Both the movie and this Kino Lorber Blu-ray are highly recommended.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.