Customer Rating:  
Summary: Lewis and Kirk
Comment: I have been reading from Lewis and Clark's journal and I have been trying to stay with them day by day 200 years later. It has been an interesting experience and helps bring history to life. I reflected on the Corps of Discovery last night as I watched, for the first time, the movie "The Big Sky". I found myself seeing scenes that took me back to passages from the journals. An on-screen depiction, if you will, of what I had been visualizing in my mind. Now, for the record, I had been visualizing this in color and watched it in black and white but I came away from "The Big Sky" impressed that the writer and director had done more than the normal amount of homework in putting this story on film. The scenes of the men pulling the boat along more difficult channels, the hunters traveling on foot to find meat for the explorers, etc. were well done, I felt. I'm not going to praise "The Big Sky" as an incredible documentary because there is plenty of Hollywood in it. However, within the plot is a reasonably good look at early European-American explorers of the West.
The plot is simple enough, two backwoods Kentuckians set out to find the uncle of one of them. This leads them to St. Louis and then on to an independent fur trading company. There are rivalries and an Indian maiden romance to keep things on edge. However, even in Black and White, the scenery, at times, is the main star of the show. Much of the film was shot around the Grand Tetons back when tourism in that part of the country wasn't the overwhelming thing it is today. It's as good as an excuse as any to watch this movie. The acting is good with Kirk Douglas giving his usual solid preformance. The second and third bills were new to me but I was glad to see Arthur Hunnicut came away with an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The movie is a bit long although, in all honesty, if they were to cut the movie back to two hours, they'd probably slice out my favorite parts.
Thanks to the vast amount of old movies available on Turner Classic Movies, I have been able to see a number of movies from the distant and not-so-distant past. Many of them I never heard of and am seeing for the first time. I noticed the other day that my 13 year old son was trying to find a DVD to buy. His problem, as he looked over the latest selections, was that he'd already seen them all at least 2-3 times. I told him that, if he'd just lose his prejudice against anything from an earlier generation, he'd discover an endless treasure chest of great movies to pick from. That's the way it's been for me since we got TCM on cable two years ago. "The Big Sky" is another good (not great but good) example of that.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An ok movie, but a terrible adaption
Comment: This Howard Hawks' movie was supposed to be the film version of one of the truly great novels about the American west, A.B. Guthrie's "The Big Sky." However, as an adaption of the novel, this movie cannot be described as anything but as a miserable failure- a convoluted mish-mash of the three of novel's four parts with a completely contrived happy ending. (In the novel- the fate of the "Mandan" is not pleasant and the friendship triangle between Boone, Jim, and Teal Eye ends in tragedy.) If you love the novel then you're bound to be sorely disappointed by this film.
However, taken on its own merits without reference to its source material the movie is fairly entertaining. With Howard Hawks behind the camera and Kirk Douglas and Arthur Hunnicutt in front of it, the movie cannot help but be anything else!
The movie starts in 1830 Kentucky with boisterous Jim Deakins (Douglas) befriending taciturn Boone Cardell (a wooden Dewey Martin). The two young men go to St. Louis where they meet with Cardell's Uncle Zeb Calloway, an experienced mountain man played by Hunnicutt. Uncle Zeb takes the two young men under his wing as hunters for a trading expedition heading up the Missouri River in order to open trade relations with the hostile Blackfeet. It's a dangerous gamble, but the expeditionary leader, a Frenchman, has an ace of up his sleeve- Teal Eye, the daughter of a Blackfoot chief, who could be the key to establishing friendly relations with the tribe. The movie details the ardous journey up the Missouri and all the adventure and danger that entails.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A most excellent Western adventure
Comment: Kirk Douglas is Jim Deakins, a Kentucky backwoods type who is looking for something new to challenge him. Dewey Martin is Boone Cardell, a similar soul who is initially hostile to Deakins but they soon become inseparable friends. Their search for excitement inevitably leads them westward, where they find far more than they had bargained for. It's a great story, loaded with authentic touches that show how such men coped with the difficulties of this kind of life. Terrific movie, one of the NY Times' "1000 Best Films Ever Made."
Occasionally time forgets some movies. I don't fully understand why this is, but "The Big Sky" is a land that time forgot. Perhaps soon it will be newly remastered in a DVD version of the first quality; until then, this precious VHS copy will have to do. Finally restored to its full 140-minute length, the sound and picture quality change noticeably when the restoration of edited-for-TV footage is reinserted (the film was released for TV use in a 122-minute version). This is jarring but let us be thankful the footage has been recovered. This is usually not the case for films this old.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great, classic movie. A rare jewel.
Comment: The "Big Sky" is probably one of the best frontier movies ever made. Howard Hawks did a fantastic job of directing this one of a kind movie for it's time. The screenplay is brilliant and the folksy dialogue is pure "Hawks". You can see his brilliance in developing the relationship between characters. The casting is great, with Kirk Douglas and a great supporting cast. Arthur Hunnicutt is outstanding as the old frontiersman and received an Oscar nomination for his performance. This movie was also filmed on location on the Snake River, which was very rare in those days in Hollywood. The sets and scenery in this movie are real and authentic because they were filmed on location. This movie has been given high reviews by almost everyone and is considered to be a classic of it's time. I highly recommend it to everyone. It is one of those rare jewels that few people know about. This is a great film for those who love classic movie making from a great director. Curl up with a good blanket and some popcorn and gather the whole family around.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Big Studio
Comment: That's what they might have called this film, directed by the great Howard Hawks, but a poor job nonetheless. There is scarcely a single believable scene, just contrived rivalries between trading scows and upset Injuns during a Missouri River run in the early 19th century. More than half the action takes place at night but apparently Hawks had a phobia about night-shooting outdoors, and the sets are lousy. If he had tried day-for-night it would have added to the realism and made a little better film.
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