Wild Blue Yonder
How the West Was Won (1962)
directed by John Ford, Henry Hathaway, and George Marshall
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Cinerama was invented to project "three synchronized 35 mm projectors" onto an enormous curved screen. Watching a movie shot that way at home is like trading a great theater-going experience for a perforated centerfold from a magazine. Dave Kehr's article on the restored Blu-Ray edition of the film is heartbreaking for the magic the format promised and clear as a lighthouse with regards to Ford's "Civil War" segment. Even on the unrestored (or decidedly low-def) disc I sat through in my living room, Ford's cynicism is Great Cinema, even if Harry Morgan doesn't seem to be in on the joke.
A regular TV reduces the Cinerama effect to a bad fish-eye lens, but there's enough there to imagine the rest. Presumably this is the kind of film the trades liked to call an "oater;" more than just a western, that phrase always implies (to me, anyway) the pace and interest level of a mule working his way through a bag of feed. Slow and a little tiresome. Which How the West Was Won can be. The patriotism is sloppy, the cameos too much, and the length unequivocally a crawl.
But Cinerama wasn't just size and it wasn't just landscapes. Audiences might like a travelogue, but they still wanted to see a movie, god damn it, and movies didn't just make themselves. How the West Was Won, among other accomplishments, is a great picture for great stunts. Jumping into cacti, jumping off of trains, rolling in a wagon down a hill. And the DVD I watched (that you can get from Netflix) included ten minutes worth of footage that a stuntman, Loren Janes, shot on the set in 1962. He narrates it dryly from 2008 with all the aplomb of Chuck Yeager asking for a stick of Beeman's. Once you see him dressed as Debbie Reynolds hitching a ride on a galloping horse, you'll always ask for Westerns at the video store.
directed by John Ford, Henry Hathaway, and George Marshall
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Cinerama was invented to project "three synchronized 35 mm projectors" onto an enormous curved screen. Watching a movie shot that way at home is like trading a great theater-going experience for a perforated centerfold from a magazine. Dave Kehr's article on the restored Blu-Ray edition of the film is heartbreaking for the magic the format promised and clear as a lighthouse with regards to Ford's "Civil War" segment. Even on the unrestored (or decidedly low-def) disc I sat through in my living room, Ford's cynicism is Great Cinema, even if Harry Morgan doesn't seem to be in on the joke.
A regular TV reduces the Cinerama effect to a bad fish-eye lens, but there's enough there to imagine the rest. Presumably this is the kind of film the trades liked to call an "oater;" more than just a western, that phrase always implies (to me, anyway) the pace and interest level of a mule working his way through a bag of feed. Slow and a little tiresome. Which How the West Was Won can be. The patriotism is sloppy, the cameos too much, and the length unequivocally a crawl.
But Cinerama wasn't just size and it wasn't just landscapes. Audiences might like a travelogue, but they still wanted to see a movie, god damn it, and movies didn't just make themselves. How the West Was Won, among other accomplishments, is a great picture for great stunts. Jumping into cacti, jumping off of trains, rolling in a wagon down a hill. And the DVD I watched (that you can get from Netflix) included ten minutes worth of footage that a stuntman, Loren Janes, shot on the set in 1962. He narrates it dryly from 2008 with all the aplomb of Chuck Yeager asking for a stick of Beeman's. Once you see him dressed as Debbie Reynolds hitching a ride on a galloping horse, you'll always ask for Westerns at the video store.
posted by NPK at 5:57 AM
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