Review of The Big Country (1958) by Samuel C — 17 Apr 2010

"Uncontrollable Love Hungers"?

Our titular phrase is from the trailer. I kid you not. I'm not even sure where to go from there. The character who supposedly possesses such is one of the only females in the movie, certainly one of the only ones to get lines beyond a token greeting to a real character. It is arguably true that most Westerns don't even actually need a woman to be part of them, and while her uncontrollable love hungers--this, too, is a great name for a band--set the plot in motion, the girl basically drops out of the film in the second half, and her only two purposes are to get Gregory Peck out there in the first place and to set up the battle between him and Charlton Heston. To a lesser extent him and Chuck Connors. Other than that, the girl doesn't matter. The other girl in the story is equally unimportant for the most part. Both women are MacGuffins.

James McKay (Peck) has come to the West from Baltimore, where he was a ship captain and the scion of a rich shipping family. Patricia Terrill (Carroll Baker) had met him in a trip back East, they fell in love, and he has come out to marry her. She is the daughter of wealthy Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford), who has a huge rivalry going with Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives, who won an Oscar for his performance), another local rancher. Standing between them is the Big Muddy, a ranch owned by Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons), the local schoolmarm. She has the most valuable property in the area, because the water that both men's cattle need runs through it. Both men want to control the water and drive the other man out. Rufus's oldest son, Buck (Connors) thinks he can acquire Big Muddy by marrying Julie; meanwhile, the Major's foreman, Steve Leech (Heston), wants to marry Pat. It's high melodrama on the high plains.

This movie lasted way too long. Too much time was put into what I felt were completely unnecessary subplots. Yes, it's important that Gregory Peck take over the Big Muddy, but the idea that he was gone for two days doing it and everyone thought he was lost in the middle of bloody nowhere felt a little much. (There's a lot of middle of bloody nowhere out there.) When he fought Charlton Heston, it seemed pointless and too long, which is fun. It seemed as though each of them threw a punch, waited a minute, then threw another one. It was filmed from too far away to see what was going on, especially given that it was "dark." They'd regularly fall over themselves after hitting each other. It seemed like padding, which is odd in a movie which is almost three hours long; it didn't need the padding. Still, there it was.

One rather wonders if Charlton Heston at all noticed the subtext to this movie. Gregory Peck stated that it was pretty explicitly intended to be an allegory of the Cold War, and it's notable that, well, the only way to win is not to play. First Julie and then McKay are perfectly willing to let both sides share in their bounty, but each feels the need to drive the other out completely. The Major's men even prevent the Hannassey men from watering their cattle at Big Muddy even though the Major doesn't own the land or even currently have any expectation to. (At the time, he believes Julie still owns it.) There is no law in the area; the Major believes he is the law. Hannassey isn't innocent; the introduction we get to his sons is their harassment of McKay, and Buck lets himself into Julie's house and starts eating her dinner without permission. It is only McKay, the perfect gentleman, who is respected by both the Major and the Hannassey patriarch. Charlton Heston may consider him weak, but we learn he's the strongest man there where it counts.

I guess the most likable thing about McKay is what fools Charlton Heston and Pat (who played his love interest in another Western, [i]How the West Was Won[/i]). He doesn't worry about what the others think. He's doing things for his own benefit. When he rides the horse no one can ride, he doesn't do it in front of the others; none of the others see him do it. He isn't showing off. He's proving things to himself. He beats up Charlton Heston, but he makes Heston promise he won't talk about it to anyone. And so forth. Pat needs him to be a man the neighbours can admire. McKay only needs his own admiration. Not even Pat's, really. In short, he is the image we have of Gregory Peck. He is a man of quiet dignity who has nothing to prove to other people, just to himself. He didn't start the trouble, but if it's necessary, he'll stop it. If anyone else had been cast in the role, the most obvious question would have been to ask why they didn't get Gregory Peck.