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Sur les rives du Mississippi, les prétendants à la conquête de l'Ouest s'amassent, prêts pour le départ. Coleman, un jeune trappeur, enquête sur le meurtre de son meilleur ami. Il soupçonne le conducteur de l'une des caravanes. Dans le but de le démasquer, il se fait engager comme guide.
The Big Trail (1930) is a lavish early widescreen movie shot on location across the American West starring John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh.
In 2006, the United States Library of Congress deemed this film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Director Walsh was casting his lavishly expensive epic and had offered the lead to Gary Cooper, who couldn't accept it, and saw a broad-shouldered young prop man carrying furniture named Marion "Duke" Morrison. He cast Morrison in the lead and renamed him "John Wayne" because Walsh happened to be reading a biography of General Mad Anthony Wayne at the time. After making Stagecoach almost a decade later, John Ford pretended in interviews for the next thirty years that he had discovered Wayne as a prop man when casting Stagecoach, despite the fact that Wayne had been top-billed with his name above the title in more than thirty movies by the time Stagecoach was produced. Filming on The Big Trail began in April 1930. During production, John Wayne fell sick from dysentery and was nearly replaced.
Legend has it that the director Raoul Walsh had co-star Tyrone Power, Sr. almost beaten to death for forcing himself on the leading lady, Marguerite Churchill. Power would die just a year later from a heart attack.
Although the 23-year-old Wayne delivered an intriguing and charismatic performance as wagon train scout Breck Coleman, the expensive shot-on-location movie was financially unsuccessful as a result of being the first widescreen release during a time when theatres would not change over due to the encroachments of the Great Depression. After making The Big Trail, Wayne found stardom only in low-budget serials and features (mostly B-westerns). It would take another nine years—and the film Stagecoach—to return Wayne to prominence. Actor Ward Bond had a minor role in the film that had him on camera for much of the movie and foreshadowed many future appearances in Wayne projects, especially in films directed by John Ford. Bond developed a successful career playing character roles and later portrayed wagonmaster Seth Adams in the similarly themed TV Western Wagon Train, which featured ascout dressed in buckskins similar to Wayne's outfit in The Big Trail. Bond, basically an extra in The Big Trail, can be seen somewhere in the frame in an extraordinary number of scenes.
The Big Trail was shot in an early widescreen process using 70mm film called 70 mm Grandeur film which was first used in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Widescreen, along with Technicolor, were picked up by movie studios as the next big technological advancement for films in 1929. In 1930, a large number of films were produced which featured either widescreen or color. Color fared better than widescreen because no special equipment was needed to view color films whereas theatres needed to buy special projectors and screens to project widescreen films.
Late in 1930, however, when the effects of the Depression were beginning to be felt by the public, studios abandoned the use of widescreen and color in an attempt to decrease costs. Because only a small number of theatres could play widescreen films, two versions of the widescreen films were always simultaneously filmed, one in 35 mm and one in the 70 mm Grandeur process. By doing this, the film would be able to be played throughout the country in 35mm at the same time it was being played in deluxe theatres capable of screening widescreen films. The movie's scenes were often filmed at very different angles for the widescreen and standard releases, with the best angles reserved for the widescreen version. A good example is the scene of Breck Coleman talking with the children, the same sequence simultaneously shot from starkly different angles.
The wagon train drive across the country was pioneering in its use of camera work and the stunning scenery from the epic landscape. An extraordinary effort was made to lend authenticity to the movie, with the wagons drawn by oxen and lowered by ropes down canyons when necessary. Tyrone Power's character's clothing looks grimy in a more realistic way than has been seen in movies since, and even the food supplies the immigrants carried with them were researched. Locations in five states were used in the film caravan's 2,000 mile trek.
In the early 1980s, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which housed the 65mm nitrate camera negative for The Big Trail, wanted to preserve the film but found that the negative was too shrunken and fragile to be copied and that no film lab would touch it. They went to Karl Malkames, an accomplished cinematographer and a leading specialist and pioneer in film reproduction, restoration, and preservation. Malkames was known to be a “problem solver” when it came to restoring early odd-gauge format films. He immediately set about designing and building a special printer to handle the careful frame-by-frame reproduction of the negative to a 35mm anamorphic (CinemaScope) fine grain master. The printer copied at a speed of one frame a second. This was a painstaking year-long undertaking that Malkames oversaw from start to finish. It is solely because of him that this film survives in this version.
The 70mm version was seen on cable television at a time when only the 35mm version had been released to VHS and DVD. A two-disc DVD was released in the US on May 13, 2008, containing both versions. This movie comes on Fox Movie Channel sometimes.
Another widescreen western was also produced the same year, Billy the Kid, starring John Mack Brown as Billy the Kid and Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett. No widescreen prints of Billy the Kid survive; only a standard-width version shot simultaneously remains.
Beyond the format difference, the 70mm and 35mm versions vary substantially from each other. They were shot by different cameras, and footage for each format was edited separately in the cutting room. Some scenes were shot simultaneously by both cameras, the only difference being the angle (with the better angle usually given to the 70mm camera). Some scenes were shot first by one camera, and then retaken with the other camera. The 70mm cameras could not focus well up close, so the shots were mainly panoramas with very few close-ups. The 35mm cameras could move in and focus at short distances. Thus scenes in the 70mm version might show two characters talking to each other in the same take, while in the 35mm would have close-up shots cutting back and forth between the two characters.
In the editing of the films, some scenes were edited out for one version but allowed to remain in the other version. The 35mm version was edited to be shorter (108 minutes rather than 122 minutes), so many scenes in the 70mm version are not found in the 35mm film. However, there are a few scenes in the 35mm version not found in the 70mm.
The 70mm version has been released on VHS as well as DVD in its widescreen original, but also reformatted to fit a traditional TV screen, despite the availability of the 35mm version which is closer to that format. The 35mm version is included along with the 70mm version in the 2008 2-disc DVD release.
A fairly common practice in the early sound era was to produce at least one foreign language version of a film for release in non-English speaking countries, an approach later replaced by simply dubbing the dialogue. There were at least four foreign language versions made of The Big Trail, using different casts and different character names:
- French: La Piste des géants (1931), directed by Pierre Couderc, starring Gaston Glass (Pierre Calmine), Jeanne Helbling (Denise Vernon), Margot Rousseroy (Yvette), Raoul Paoli (Flack), Louis Mercier (Lopez). La Piste des géants at the Internet Movie Database
- German: Die Große Fahrt (1931), directed by Lewis Seiler and Raoul Walsh, starring Theo Shall (Bill Coleman), Marion Lessing (Ruth Winter), Ullrich Haupt (Thorpe), Arnold Korff (Peter), Anders Van Haden (Bull Flack), Peter Erkelenz (Fichte), Paul Panzer (Lopez). Die Große Fahrt at the Internet Movie Database
- Italian: Il grande sentiero (1931), starring Franco Corsaro and Luisa Caselotti
- Spanish: La Gran jornada (1931), directed by David Howard, Samuel Schneider, and Raoul Walsh, starring Jorge Lewis (Raul Coleman), Carmen Guerrero (Isabel Prados), Roberto Guzmán (Tomas), Martin Garralaga (Martin), Al Ernest Garcia (Flack), Tito Davison (Daniel), Carlos Villarías (Orena), Charles Stevens (Lopez). La Gran jornada at the Internet Movie Database (Wikipedia)
- John Wayne obtient avec La Piste des géants son premier grand rôle dans un long métrage.
- Voici comment Raoul Walsh raconte sa rencontre avec celui qui deviendra le Duke : "En passant devant le magasin des accessoires, j’aperçus un grand jeune homme aux larges épaules, qui transportait un fauteuil rembourré. Il déchargeait un camion et ne me vit pas. Je le regardai prendre sous son bras un imposant sofa Louis XV comme une plume, tout en attrapant une chaise de l’autre main. Lorsqu’après les avoir déposés, il revint vers le camion, je m’approchai de lui. « Comment t’appelles-tu ? » lui demandais-je. Il m’examina attentivement. « Je vous connais ! C’est vous qui avez mis en scène Au service de la gloire. Mon nom, c’est Morrison » (…)« Voyons jusqu’à quel point tu veux devenir acteur. Laisse pousser tes cheveux et reviens me voir dans deux semaines »… L’histoire de La Piste des géants était relativement simple, mais il me fallait un éclaireur et un chef de convoi pour conduire un petit groupe de pionniers à travers les plaines. Je parcourus la liste des acteurs disponibles mais aucun d’entre eux ne me satisfit (…)Je fis passer des essais à quelques comédiens « possibles » mais Sheehan (le producteur) les refusa tous. C’est alors que je me souviens du jeune footballeur de la U.S.C. Nous n’avions toujours trouvé personne lorsqu’il se présenta. Ses cheveux avaient poussé et je me mis à reprendre espoir. Après qu’on l’eut revêtu d’un pantalon et d’une veste en daim, je le plaçai devant la caméra et Sheehan, lorsqu’il vit le résultat, me dit d’un air bougon : « Qui est-ce ce type là ? Sait-il monter à cheval ? Où as-tu été le dénicher ? » (…)Il saisit presque immédiatement ce que j’attendais de lui. Je tenais mon acteur principal ! Il suffisait de lui donner quelques indications. Sheehan le regarda, l’écouta et ronchonna de nouveau : « Il fera l’affaire. Comment s’appelle-t-il déjà ? » « Morrison ». Ce nom par contre ne lui plaisait pas… Je parcourus en esprit les livres d’histoire en m’arrêtant sur le nom des pionniers américains. J’en vins à la Révolution et je me souvins d’un nom qui m’avait toujours plu. Lorsque je le dis à Sheehan, il leva la tête et sourit d’un air entendu comme s’il l’avait pensé lui-même : « Bien sûr ! » Il prit son crayon et lut à haute voix ce qu’il venait d’écrire « Wayne ». Pas Mad Anthony. Simplement John. John Wayne. Fais-le entrer. » " (in « Un demi siècle à Hollywood » de Raoul Walsh, éditions Calmann-Levy) (Wikipedia)
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