Posted on 08/17/2019 5:15:03 PM PDT by simpson96
The Big Country is a 1958 American Technicolor epic Western directed by William Wyler and filmed in Technirama, starring Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston and Burl Ives. The supporting cast features Charles Bickford and Chuck Connors.
Ives won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as well as the Golden Globe Award. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for the musical score by Jerome Moross.
The Big Country - The Death Of Buck Hannassey (1958)
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
I just watched that again a few weeks ago. I remember seeing that at the Bel-Air Drive In in Nashville when I was a kid.
Burl Ives was amazingly frightening in that movie, not the nice old man he was later! One of the best Westerns IMO.
Superb movie!
I saw it for the first time a year or so ago.
Good and a bit different.
The greatest western music score of all time.
Charles Bickford - At the age of nine (1900) in Cambridge MA of all places, was tried and acquitted of the attempted murder of a trolley motorman who had driven over and killed his beloved dog.
William Wyler chose Chuck Heston to play Judah Ben Hur after Chuck apparently impressed Wyler in “The Big Country.”
Ironically, even though Chuck won the Best Actor Oscar and “Ben Hur” won 11 Oscars, Wyler reportedly said (off the record) that he was “disappointed” with Chuck’s acting.
LOL
Alwzys favored Ives’ character over Bickford’s. More honest and more honorable.
Great movie — #2 on my list of favorite Westerns, after Shane.
Great flick.
The fight scene between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston was a knock-down, drag-out.
I had seen that movie years ago, and enjoyed the panorama of the wide open countryside, and the horsemanship. But didn’t much care for the violence. Watching the clip reminded me of how parts of the same scenes were shot at different times of the day, and possibly different days. In that scene you have direct sunshine (coming from more than one direction), no direct sunshine, clouds, and no clouds.
Being raised on a farm and being a farmer (until age 46), and living on a farm until 62, I have a bond with the land, the livestock, and the sun.
You may wonder, “why mention the sun”
Well, a farmer that has to work out in it, judge time by it (many of the jobs were so filthy that a good watch was not worn), and predict the short term weather, the sun is part of the job. Between sun up to sundown (if not overcast) I could (with a good feel for time of day) judge the direction I was going in about any part of the midwest.
The Blanco Canyon clip has the same multiple sun angles, showing how long it must take to make parts of a scene:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9SDYkONnfCw#searching
I like Heston’s acting when he puts his cowboy hat back on, and pulls it down firmly in disgust for his boss’s behavior. Who by the way, actually couldn’t ride a horse. At the start of the scene you can see a rein going down, being held by someone (or a rock) below the camera angle. And then as he turns away, you can see how he rides in a somewhat awkward style (but only for a few seconds, as the horse and rider turn to the right and disappear behind a big rock, and most likely to a handler). Later, while riding on his own, the distance shot is a stunt double. At the end, the close up is close enough that you can’t see that his horse is being lead (lol).
One of the top 5 westerns of all time! Burl Ives was superb!
Yes, the music is great. The little touches, like putting extra dust in the stagecoach wheel hub to emphasize the dusty trail. The horses,... gotta love the horses. But boy, they sure graded a wide dirt road for parts of that scene (probably a heavily used dirt road before and after the making of the film). The sun angles, for the different viewpoints of the stagecoach stop scene, change like crazy (lol).
Red River, Shane, The Big Country. The big three.
John Wayne, John Ford and “The Searchers” say hello...
Don’t forget 3 Godfathers, another John Ford, John Wayne western.
To which I would add High Noon and Once Upon a Time in the West.
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