The Big Country, William Wyler's Great Western

     William Wyler's The Big Country (1958) reminds me of Marlon Brando's One Eyed Jacks (1961) in that both Westerns sprawl in screen time, 166 and 141 minutes respectively.  Both films also remind me of Sergio Leone's "Spaghetti" Westerns in their use of narrative space: the amount of time given to primary and even the supporting characters creates a richness of detail and interlocking events leading to powerful climaxes in all such epic Westerns.

     Better known for leading a successful invasion of Continental Europe, President Dwight Eisenhower said The Big Country was his favorite film.  I imagine he appreciated the story of a decent man, an Easterner, Jim McKay (Gregory Peck), journeying West to marry his fiancée, blonde Patricia "Pat" Terrill (Carroll Baker).  She's the pampered daughter of hard-edged retired Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford), a cattle rancher who employs a small army of hands led by foreman Steve Leech (Charlton Heston), who's been in love with Patricia for years.  Steve, naturally, resents Jim McKay from the outset, challenging him, for example, to ride a stubborn horse, Old Thunder, known for bucking any rider from his back.  Jim doesn't take the bait, watched by dozens of hands, judged day by day as a soft Easterner with no backbone.

     Later, Jim proves to himself he can, without witnesses except for the Mexican stable hand Ramón (Alfonso Bedoya), tame Old Thunder, albeit after getting thrown several times.  Jim doesn't like to show off.  He's humble, he keeps, as the saying goes, his cards close to his vest.  He's also wealthy, enabling him to buy the Big Muddy Ranch land, a space existing between Terrill land and Hannassey land owned by cattleman Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives) and run by his hell raiser sons.

     Both Hannassey and Terrill use the winding river on Big Muddy to water their herds.  The owner of this land, Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons), a schoolteacher and Patricia's friend, has no cattle but is the granddaughter of the man who owned that ranch.  She's also bothered a lot by the eldest Hannassey son, Buck (Chuck Connors, playing the kind of man his later Rifleman character Lucas McCain would shoot).  Rufus Hannassay wants Buck to court Julie, believing Julie's interested in the rugged but uncouth cattleman.  

     The movie shows a rivalry between rich and poor, the Terrills and Hannassays, the snobs and so-called filthy rat people, those who live on the clean open plain and those who live in a canyon in cheap shacks.  

     What Jim McKay gradually notices is the contempt the Terrills, and his bride to be, feel for the Hannassays.  As the film progressed, I felt less and less sympathy for the Terrills, the patriarch especially.  The Major's growing contempt for his prospective son-in-law gets mirrored in his protege, Steve Leech, who finally fights Jim under Jim's conditions--no witnesses, in pre-dawn subdued light.  This fistfight is staged as a small drama against a vast background of "the big country."  William Wyler shows this fight in mostly long shots, the two men exacting pain on each other under an indifferent sky on a land of violence changing hands over and over again.  At the end, the fight agreed on as a draw by both men, Jim says the fight "meant nothing."

     In this viewpoint is something reminiscent of later Sergio Leone films: human beings against a cosmic background (a Big Country as Wyler's title demonstrates) can only seem to be important in relation to the overall drama of history and the Earth itself.  What matters is the attempt by determined men of character, like Jim McKay, to make a difference, as he does, to some degree by film's end; yet, the goal only gets accomplished through much loss of life, the hatred between Hannassays and Terrills quenched but only after the mutual elimination of the two patriarchs, and the killing of Buck by his own father in the film's most horrifying and poignant scene.  

     It's all very terrible, the lengths these two sides go to, the feud escalating slowly and then so quickly the violence becomes unstoppable.

     Gregory Peck's performance stands out as simultaneously a Gregory Peck-like performance, but he's perfect for the role, a solid and decent human being completely unswayed by popular opinion, married to his own core of values.  Jean Simmons plays a grounded and sensible woman in high contrast to the frivolous Patricia, who nevertheless has inherited her father's narrow views of the Hannassays.  Burl Ives as Rufus Hannassay makes for a formidable antagonist to Charles Bickford's Major.  They're essentially the same man, except that one has money and the other doesn't.  

     Charlton Heston gives an understated performance, playing a second male lead--unusual considering this point in his on-the-rise career.  His character and many other characters in the film have many scenes where they say very little.  The movie gives a great deal of space to silent moments between people, a lesson for today's filmmakers and TV makers.  I enjoyed Alfonso Bedoya's performance.  In many Hollywood films of that era and before, Mexican actors and characters were often used as comedic tools, but his character here is a decent, friendly, and helpful employee at the Terrill ranch.  It shows how shitty the Terrills can be when, in questioning him about Jim's whereabouts, they browbeat and insult him, calling him stupid but really he's unable to answer their questions because he doesn't recall the word compass, the device Jim uses to navigate his way to Julie Maragon's place to buy her land.

     It was good, too, to see Chuck Connors given such a significant role in a big Western epic.  Made soon before his five year stint as Lucas McCain the Rifleman, The Big Country gave Connors the chance to prove his acting abilities and magnetic screen charisma.  He plays a louse in this film, but in some ways his character mirrors Charlton Heston's Steve Leech, a man without a father who attached his emotions to the Major, who raised him as a son he never had, while also treating him as an employee.  Connors' Buck Hannassay has a relationship with his actual father, but it's one of resentment towards the old man, while the latter expects very little from his sons, Buck in particular.  It's interesting to see Chuck Connors get the role with more dialogue and maybe even more screen time than Charlton Heston, who had played Moses two years earlier and would play Ben-Hur in William Wyler's film of the same name just the next year.  

     The film was shot in Arizona and California.  In spite of the recognizable lead actors and actresses, there is no sense of the modern world.  It's a quiet space of endless grass, gently rolling hills, a stage where the human condition plays out; families and class struggle, violence, fathers and sons, and a final peace, with numerous funerals implied after the film ends.

     If Hollywood were now capable of making a complex and well-acted film like this it wouldn't be in such a pathetic state.

Vic Neptune