The Big Sky | |
---|---|
![]() Film poster | |
Directed by | Howard Hawks |
Screenplay by | Dudley Nichols |
Based on | The Big Sky 1949 novel by A.B. Guthrie Jr. |
Produced by | Howard Hawks |
Starring | Kirk Douglas Dewey Martin Elizabeth Threatt Arthur Hunnicutt |
Cinematography | Russell Harlan |
Edited by | Christian Nyby |
Music by | Dimitri Tiomkin |
Production company | Winchester Pictures Corporation |
Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
Release dates | |
Running time | 122 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $1.65 million (US rentals) [2] |
The Big Sky is a 1952 American Western film produced and directed by Howard Hawks and written by Dudley Nichols, based on the novel of the same name by A.B. Guthrie Jr. The cast includes Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Elizabeth Threatt and Arthur Hunnicutt, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Though not considered among Hawks's major achievements by most critics, the film was chosen by Jonathan Rosenbaum for his alternative list of the Top 100 American Films.
In 1832, Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) is travelling in the Kentucky wilderness when he encounters an initially hostile Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin). However, they soon become good friends and head together to St. Louis on the Missouri River in search of Boone's uncle, Zeb Calloway (Arthur Hunnicutt). They find him when they are tossed in jail for brawling with fur traders of the Missouri River Company. When 'Frenchy' Jourdonnais (Steven Geray) comes to bail Zeb out, Zeb talks him into paying for Jim and Boone too.
The two men join an expedition organised by Zeb and Frenchy, who owns a sailing barge called 'Mandan'. Taking about 30 other trappers with them, they begin to travel 2,000 miles up the Missouri and into the Yellowstone River to seek trade with the Blackfoot Indians, in competition with the Missouri Fur Company. Zeb has brought along Teal Eye (Elizabeth Threatt), a pretty Blackfoot woman he had found several years earlier after she had escaped from an enemy tribe. She is the daughter of a chief and Zeb plans to return her to her family as a means of establishing trade with the tribe. On the journey, they encounter another Blackfoot that Zeb knows, Poordevil (Hank Worden); they take him along too. Later, Teal Eye falls into the river and is rescued from rapids by Boone.
The Missouri Company knows about the threat to their monopoly. One day, it makes its move. A party led by Streak (Jim Davis) captures Teal Eye and tries to burn the boat, but Frenchy wakes up before the fire causes much damage. Poordevil tracks the enemy and Boone and Jim rescue the woman. Later the expedition puts in at a company trading post and leaves a warning not to interfere. A week later they repulse an attack by Crow Indians. Jim is separated from the group and shot in the leg. Boone, followed by Teal Eye and Poordevil, finds him, extracts the bullet and waits for his friend to heal. When they rejoin their band, they find Streak trying to buy the boat and the goods on it. Jim compares the bullet dug out of his leg with one of Streak's and finds them to be the same. Streak and his men are killed in the ensuing shootout.
The expedition finally reaches the Blackfoot village and begins trading. Teal Eye then tells a very disappointed Jim that she loves him... like a brother. Boone follows her back to her teepee. When he emerges much later, he is surprised to find out he is now married. However, Teal Eye makes him buy her from her father, so that he will be free to leave her any time he wants to. With winter coming on, the men soon begin the long return boat trip and Boone goes with them, abandoning Teal Eye. This cools the earlier friendship between Boone and Jim, who confides to Zeb that unlike Boone he would not have left if Teal Eye had chosen him instead. Later that evening, however, Boone changes his mind and decides to return to Teal Eye, which pleases Jim greatly, and the two men remain friends as they finally go their separate ways.
Film critic Manny Farber, writing in the September 27, 1952 issue of The Nation, offered this assessment of the picture: “The Big Sky shows a whiskey-laden keel boat being poled and pushed up the Missouri River. Cast with some amiably fearsome stars who act as if they have been coached by Andy Capp, and saddled with a talkative Western plot, this film is not up to the talents of its director, Howard Hawks." [3]
In 1998, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader included the film in his unranked list of the best American films not included on the AFI Top 100. [4] He'd later write, "part of what I treasure about this mysterious epic relates to the mysterious bonds that form between these two pals and a captured Blackfoot princess who speaks not a word of their language, or vice versa...the warm and utopian three-way understandings generated between this unlikely threesome, especially when they spend some time together apart from the other characters, now seem not only multicultural but also downright countercultural." [5]
To improve business, the film's running time was reduced from 140 minutes to 122 minutes for its general release. [1]
The film was nominated for two Academy Awards: [6]
The eight-minute suite for The Big Sky was released on Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin (1976), performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Gerhardt. Recorded in London in December 1975, the RCA Red Seal album was re-released on audio CD in 1991 and 2010. UPC 8-8697-77933-2-5
The original motion picture soundtrack for The Big Sky was restored by the Brigham Young University Film Music Archives for a 2003 compact disc release. [7] The limited-edition CD (BYU FMADT111) includes 28 tracks and nearly 80 minutes of orchestral music. [8]
The Gold Rush is a 1925 American silent comedy film written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplin. The film also stars Chaplin in his Little Tramp persona, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, and Malcolm Waite.
How the West Was Won is a 1962 American epic Western film directed by Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall, produced by Bernard Smith, written by James R. Webb, and narrated by Spencer Tracy. Originally filmed in true three-lens Cinerama with the according three-panel panorama projected onto an enormous curved screen, the film features an ensemble cast formed by many cinema icons and newcomers, including Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne and Richard Widmark. The supporting cast features Brigid Bazlen, Walter Brennan, David Brian, Ken Curtis, Andy Devine, Jack Lambert, Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln, Agnes Moorehead, Harry Morgan as Ulysses S. Grant, Thelma Ritter, Mickey Shaughnessy, Harry Dean Stanton, Russ Tamblyn and Lee Van Cleef.
The Naked Spur is a 1953 American Western film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, and Millard Mitchell. Written by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, the film is about a bounty hunter who tries to bring a murderer to justice, and is forced to accept the help of two strangers who are less than trustworthy.
The Sand Pebbles is a 1966 American epic war film directed by Robert Wise in Panavision. It tells the story of an independent, rebellious U.S. Navy machinist's mate, first class, aboard the fictional river gunboat USS San Pablo, on Yangtze Patrol in 1920s China.
Dead Man is a 1995 American acid western film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. It stars Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Billy Bob Thornton, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, John Hurt, Michael Wincott, Lance Henriksen, Gabriel Byrne, Mili Avital, and Robert Mitchum. The movie, set in the late 1800s, follows William Blake, a meek accountant on the run after murdering a man. He has a chance encounter with enigmatic Native American spirit-guide "Nobody", who believes Blake is the reincarnation of the visionary English poet William Blake.
Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was a Russian and American film composer and conductor. Classically trained in Saint Petersburg before the Bolshevik Revolution, he moved to Berlin and then New York City after the Russian Revolution. In 1929, after the stock market crash, he moved to Hollywood, where he became best known for his scores for Western films, including Duel in the Sun, Red River, High Noon, The Big Sky, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Rio Bravo, and Last Train from Gun Hill.
Lifeboat is a 1944 American survival film directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story by John Steinbeck. It stars Tallulah Bankhead and William Bendix, alongside Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee. The film is set entirely on a lifeboat launched from a passenger vessel torpedoed and sunk by a Nazi U-boat.
The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 American adventure war western film set during the American Civil War directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, William Holden and Constance Towers. The screenplay by John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin was loosely based on Harold Sinclair's 1956 novel of the same name, a fictionalized version of Grierson's Raid in Mississippi.
Richard Allen Boone was an American actor who starred in over 50 films and was notable for his roles in Westerns, including his starring role in the television series Have Gun – Will Travel.
The Big Sky is a 1947 Western novel by A. B. Guthrie Jr. It is the first of six novels in Guthrie's sequence dealing with the Oregon Trail and the development of Montana from 1830, the time of the mountain men, to "the cattle empire of the 1880s to the near present." The first three books of the six in chronological story sequence – The Big Sky, The Way West, and Fair Land, Fair Land – are in themselves a complete trilogy, starting in the 1830s and ending in the 1870s.
Ace in the Hole, also known as The Big Carnival, is a 1951 American drama film directed by Billy Wilder. The film stars Kirk Douglas as a cynical, disgraced reporter who stops at nothing to try to regain a job on a major newspaper. The film co-stars Jan Sterling and features Robert Arthur and Porter Hall.
Emanuel Farber was an American painter, film critic and writer. Often described as "iconoclastic", Farber developed a distinctive prose style and set of theoretical stances which have had a large influence on later generations of film critics and influence on underground culture. Susan Sontag considered him to be "the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country has ever produced."
His Kind of Woman is a 1951 film noir starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. The film features supporting performances by Vincent Price, Raymond Burr and Charles McGraw. The direction of the film, which was based on the unpublished story "Star Sapphire" by Gerald Drayson, is credited to John Farrow.
Home from the Hill is a 1960 American melodrama film starring Robert Mitchum, Eleanor Parker, George Peppard, George Hamilton, Everett Sloane and Luana Patten. Directed in CinemaScope by Vincente Minnelli and filmed in Metrocolor, it was produced by Edward Grainger, and distributed by MGM. The screenplay was adapted from the 1958 novel “Home from the Hill” by William Humphrey. The film was entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. The title is from the last line of Robert Louis Stevenson's short poem "Requiem".
Ten Who Dared is a 1960 American Western film directed by William Beaudine and starring Brian Keith, Ben Johnson, John Beal and James Drury. It was produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution. It tells the story of United States Army officer John Wesley Powell, who was the first to travel down the Colorado River, and the dangers that he and nine other men had to face while making a map of the region during their 1869 expedition. Hired by Walt Disney Studios in 1959 as a technical adviser, Otis R. Marston led a film crew through the Grand Canyon to film river running and background scenes for the film.
Dewey Dallas Martin was an American film and television actor.
Call Me Madam is a 1953 American Technicolor musical film directed by Walter Lang, with songs by Irving Berlin, based on the 1950 stage musical of the same name.
Ice Age is an American media franchise centering on a group of mammals surviving the Pleistocene ice age. It consists of computer-animated films, short films, TV specials and a series of video games. The first five films were produced by Blue Sky Studios. The series features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Chris Wedge, who were the only constant cast members for the original films.
Celebrity Big Brother 14 was the fourteenth series of the British reality television series Celebrity Big Brother. The series launched on 18 August 2014 on Channel 5 and ended after 26 days on 12 September. It was the seventh celebrity series and the eleventh series of Big Brother overall to air on the channel. Emma Willis hosted the series, whilst Rylan Clark presented the spin-off show Celebrity Big Brother's Bit on the Side along with Iain Lee, Willis and regular panelist Luisa Zissman.