Review of The Big Sky (1952) by Ally C — 23 Feb 2011

The Big Sky is a proper boys own adventure and that fact shouldn't be surprising when one knows it was directed by Howard Hawks. The fact that the 'boys' would more likely be Truffaut and Godard rather than the freckled boy scouts of America prove the cinematic drive behind the film is equal to the story it tells.

But what a story. Herzog's Fitzcarraldo is only a shade mor epic in scope than this production that was filmed almost in its entirety by the banks of and in the Missouri river from St Louis to the north-west of the country.

Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin play mountain men loners Jim Deakins and Boone Caudell who start a friendship that takes them to St Louis to find Boone's uncle Zeb. When they find him, Zeb is on the eve of a great journey into Indian territory with a crew of French traders headed by the charismatic Jourdonnais (Steven Geray) and add the two huntsmen to their crew.

Over the next two hours, everything you could expect happens to the boat and its men, along with a burgeoning attraction for the ship's biggest asset, Teal Eye, a member of the Black Crow tribe who the traders are returning to her tribe.

Her affections are of course fought most fiercely over by Deakins and Caudell and this is a typically Hawksian device which delivers a near unsolvable problem until brotherhood intervenes and makes things ok again.

The best performance in the film is Arthur Hunnicutt as Zeb who plays the Walter Huston role of humorous sage nut all the players are on good form as the film veers from one scrape to the next. Not Hawks' best but one typical of the great director.