How the West Was Won

Rating:
Summary: Classic film, flawed DVD
Review: How The West Was Won is a cinematic classic. And even if you don't enjoy western films, this movie may be worth seeing for historical value. It was the first film ever shot in a format known as Cinerama. Filmmakers would shoot with 3 cameras at one time, what they filmed would be transfered onto 3 seperate reels of film, which (in properly equipped theaters) were shown using a 3-projector setup. When shown with three projectors on the special Cinerama screen, the movie ended up being far wider than normal, giving the audience a feeling of being enveloped by the landscape. The problem was that the films needed to be shown on a 3-piece screen, and visible joints between the screens sometimes made the films look strange and skewered. When this film was put to DVD the video technicians had the difficult task of blending the original footage from 3 reels of film onto one super wide frame so that the film could be viewed on a TV, but they did a poor job of it here. They failed to eliminate the "seems" where the three strips of film meet, they failed to correct the color differences between the 3 areas of the screen and they failed to compensate for the extreme curvature of a Cinerama screen, which is nessecary to keep a straight perspective and which TV sets don't employ. What ended up on the DVD is an oddly disjointed picture with improper perspective, completely devoid of the kind of high-end digital transfer expected from a modern "big release" DVD. In addition, the film should have been transfered in an aspect ratio of 2.65:1 which is as close as can be matched to the proper aspect of Cinerama. But the DVD case lists the aspect of the DVD as 2.35:1 which is wide, but not wide enough to properly contain all the Cinerama information. The bottom line is that this is a historically important film and a lot of fun to watch. But the entertainment value and the value of this DVD in general are marred by a dissapointing job on the transfer.

Rating:
Summary: How the West was Won is Number One
Review: A masterful epic of the US in the mid-19th century, How the West Was Won is the story of two sisters, Eve and Lilly Prescott, who set out West with their family to start a farm. When their mother and father are killed in a white-water rapid, Eve stays behind to start a farm and Lilly heads to St. Louis.

With a fantastic cast that includes Debbie Reynolds, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, and many others, this epic covers everything from the Gold Rush of 1848 to the Civil War, the Ony Express, and beyond. How America and its history touches each of the characters is only a small part of this epic film, a classic among Westerns.

The only problem I had was a small one, which is why I decided to give How the West Was Won only four stars: I wasn't so fond of the unflattering and historically inaccurate way in which the Native Americans are portrayed. However, on the whole, this is a wonderful movie.

Rating:
Summary: America's own "Triumph of the Will" -- Leni would be proud!
Review: In a remarkable coincidence, the same day I saw "How the West was Won" at the Seattle Cinerama (03/01/03), the History Channel aired a program on the history of the wheel. One of the talking-head experts opined that the wheel's invention marked a fundamental change in human thought -- not only was there a technological solution to every problem, but nature could be bent to human will, forced to reveal her secrets and serve us.

This is the theme of "How the West was Won." It starts with the title, and extends to nearly everything in the film. The narration tells us that the land had to be wrested from nature and from the "primitive people" who inhabited (and by implication, infested) it. The chorus is continually singing about how "we're headed for the promised land" and those who are willing to work hard will be richly rewarded (except the Chinese railroad laborers, of course). We were justified in overrunning the continent because we are actually "doing something" with it -- as opposed to the Indians, who merely lived there in harmony with nature. Not having invented the wheel, they saw no further possibilities.

James Webb's script <does> acknowledge the culture clash between the Americans and the native peoples, recognizing that the latter will have to eventually change or be destroyed. But this is peripheral to the celebration of the industry, hard work, and sacrifice of the Americans, who "tamed" the wilderness. The film ends with a nausea-inducing flyover of the California freeways (I sat next to a guy who'd taken Dramamine in anticipation of such scenes), followed by a flight under the Golden Gate bridge, firmly and unambiguously driving the point home.

"How the West was Won" is social propaganda, plain and simple. It's the kind of film that could change Osama Bin Laden's mind about destroying the US. (Maybe the State Department could arrange a screening...)

As a movie, there's no denying "How the West was Won" is wildly entertaining. Simply as cinematic spectacle, it works magnificently. There are films (such as "2001" and "Lawrence of Arabia") that even the finest video transfer cannot do justice to, and this is one of them. Sitting in the first few rows, you're so close to the screen that you can't take in all of it at once. When the camera tracks into a scene, the sense of physical motion is uncanny. (Can you say "stimulation of peripheral vision"? Sure you can.) And if you haven't seen a buffalo stampede, or a train crash, or a row of cannons firing in sequence on a (roughly) 30' by 90' screen -- well, you haven't lived, cinematically-wise.

Story-wise, there's so much material to cover the script cannot begin to do it justice, even in a film lasting 2½ hours. Characters are more types than individuals, and almost every performer is cast to type. (Eli Wallach, in particular, gets to do his "crazy Mexican outlaw" shtick, though without an accent.) It's only the efficiency and focus of the script that keeps the actors from looking altogether foolish. Other than (perhaps) Karl Malden, no one gives what would be considered a "real" performance.

The plot (which follows the Prescott family and its descendents over 50 years) is concocted to make Debbie Reynolds' character the sort of farm girl who wants to run off to the big city to become rich, so we're treated to several (mercifully brief) song-and-dance numbers. Her sister is played by Carol Baker, who falls head over heels in love with Jimmy Stewart's "aw-shucks" mountain man, and later "tames" him (as the film's conceit requires). The rest of the film rehashes just about every cliché of westerns and Civil War movies -- though entertainingly. The final sequence posits the "conquest" of the West as occurring when "the law" (in the form of George Peppard's marshall) arrives, to establish justice. But Peppard -- who says he wants to bring the bad'un to justice in court -- shoots him to death, anyway.

My five-star rating acknowledges this is a classic film -- not necessarily a great one.

I can't pass up the opportunity to trash Pauline Kael, who was not so much a hard-nosed-but-movie-loving critic as she was an empty-headed, loudmouthed [female canine]. Note how she uses the artistic limitations of a single sentence to craft a thoughtful, insightful commentary that will help the reader better understand this film...

"'How the West Was Lost' would be a more appropriate title for this dud epic, since, as conceived by the writer, James R. Webb, the pioneers seem to be dimwitted bunglers who can't do anything right."

Hello? Were we watching the same movie? "How the West was Won" might be politically incorrect, dramatically shallow, and little more than agit-prop -- but it's no dud. The Seattle audience -- which included many people sporting "No Iraq War" buttons -- just ate it up. "How the West was Won" is Hollywood middlebrow-populist entertainment at its best.

One final question... Where did they find a stunt man who looked like Agnes Moorhead?

Rating:
Summary: Wake me when it's over
Review: I kind of figured television was responsible for this... movie. HOW THE WEST WAS WON dvd comes with a featurette on the making of the movie, in which we learn that the movie studios developed the Cinerama process (three cameras shot the movie which was projected onto three specially designed screens. Think IMAX) to present an alternative "viewing experience" to compete with television.
Watching this on television, even in a letterbox edition, is excruciating. There are visible bars where the three screens meet. Often the color in one screen doesn't jibe with that of the adjoining screen.
Those defects could be corrected by digital manipulation, I suppose, but what's the point? The Cinerama screen was meant to wrap around the audience and a television screen is flat. What can't be corrected is the lack of close-ups and a surplus of dead space.
Almost all the action takes place in the center panel, and the closest we get to the action is in a medium shot. Most of the time there's nothing happening on the edge panels. Two-thirds of the screen is dead. The only time Cinerama seemed to shine was when chaotic action was swiftly coming at the audience, which is why we are so often treated to onrushing trains and galloping horses and stampeding buffalo shot from a camera in the ground. I think it would have taken a visual genius the likes of a Busby Berkeley to exploit Cinerama's potential without having to open the paddock.
The featurette also tells us HTWWW had a cast of 12,000. I guess maybe a dozen of them weren't miscast, but that's just a guess. The movie opens with Jimmy Stewart, out of character as mountain man Linus Rawlings, canoeing along a river while Spencer Tracy narrates over the action: `(The land) known only to the lonely trappers wandering its vastness in search of beaver...' One and a half scenes later Linus skids his bark next to the Prescott campsite and gives Carroll Baker a pelt to stroke....
Okay. I was bored. What can I say? At least I was paying attention. When Debbie Reynolds delivers a rousing rendition of `Raise a Ruckus' for the despondent members of the wagon train I wasn't paying much attention at all. By the time Eli Wallach was glaring daggers at George Peppard's kids I was wondering whether or not one should fill in that little hole in the middle of a dvd when you make it into a coaster.