THE BIG COUNTRY

Really, there’s no way this Western should work as well as it does.  It’s far too long and there’s no action to speak of until the end, and even then it’s pretty thin gruel.

Worst of all, perhaps, the main character is played by Gregory Peck at his most insufferably high-minded.

He’s a rich sea captain, Jim McKay who’s journeyed from the East to Texas to marry his fiancée, Patricia (Carroll Baker).

They fell in love in Baltimore but here it’s not long before he realises she’s not for him.  She doesn’t understand that he’s so comfortable in his skin that he doesn’t feel the need to prove himself to anyone, least of all to the woman who is supposed to love him.

McKay is a peaceable live-and-let-live kind of guy, so he doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Patricia's  father, Major Terrill, who is consumed with enmity towards a neighbouring rancher, Rufus.

Both ranches need water from the Big Muddy river, which is owned by Julie (Jean Simmons). She and McKay strike up an immediate rapport and so it doesn’t take a genius to realise they will end up together, but it's nice seeing their relationship develop (I'm a big Jean Simmons fan).

Besides the breakup of McKay's engagement to Patricia, and his growing attraction to Julie, the other story arc concerns the feud.  This reaches a crisis point when Rufus takes Julie prisoner so as to try to get her to sell Big Muddy to him (not knowing that she's already sold it to McKay).  

This is just the pretext Major Terrill needs to lead an all out attack on Rufus and his assorted family members and ranch hands, so as to rid himself of them once and for all.

Rufus is played memorably by Burl Ives who won a deserved Oscar for his efforts.  His first appearance, when he gate crashes a party at Terrill's ranch injects some much needed life into proceedings, as he tears into Terrill.

He is also terrific in the closing stages, when McKay, reasonableness personified, comes to him to try to rescue Julie and avert the looming bloodshed.  There's a standout moment when Rufus realises that McKay and Julie are in love, just at the same time as they themselves also realise that this is the case.  

Then there is a duel between McKay and one of Rufus's sons, Buck, for whom Rufus feels a mixture of love and contempt, which leads to Rufus having to shoot Buck dead.

These scenes make the deliberate pacing of the film up to this point all worthwhile, even though the subsequent conclusion of the picture, in which Terrill and Rufus kill each other in a shootout, feels a bit anticlimactic.

Reading up on the film afterwards I was surprised to learn that the story is meant to be an allegory of the Cold War.  OK, I get that the warring ranches represent the US and the Soviets, but I’m not sure who or what McKay is meant to be, other than a messenger extolling the merits of non-violence and diplomacy.

I also learned that the making of the film was problematic due to rewrites of the script during the filming. Neither the director William Wyler nor his coproducer Peck were happy with the story, and by the end of the film they had fallen out with each other.

I don’t know what they didn’t like but I also had a few issues with the story.  

Principally, we never get a proper explanation for the intense hatred between the two ranchers, given that there’s enough water for both herds.  I kept expecting a revelation about some dastardly deed committed way back in the past but it never came.

Also we have Charlton Heston strangely cast in a supporting role, as Steve, Terrill's foreman, whose story arc doesn’t amount to much in that he eventually rebels against Terrill but then almost immediately changes his mind.

Patricia disappears altogether from the film for the third act but this is less due to script problems than some contractual issues surrounding Carroll Baker, and the fact she became pregnant.  Anyway, we can readily imagine that she ends up inheriting her father's ranch and marrying Steve.

Despite these problems Wyler is a good enough director to hold it all together (he didn't receive a record twelve Oscar nominations for Best Director for nothing), and the slow pace gives us plenty of opportunity to admire the stunning cinematography. 

And of course there is the iconic theme music.

RATING: ✓ Cheers