One of my all time favorites.

Admirable film.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

From director Howard Hawks (Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, To Have and Have Not, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), this is a film I found in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so I hoped it would live up to that designation. Basically set in 1832, frontiersman and Indian trader Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) and Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin) are initially hostile to each other, but soon become friends and head for the Missouri River to find Boone's uncle Zeb Calloway (Oscar nominated Arthur Hunnicutt). They find him in jail and are put in a cell with him, for brawling with fur traders of the Missouri River Company, 'Frenchy' Jourdonnais (Steven Geray) comes to bail him, and is talked into letting the other two out as well, and Jim and Boone join Zeb and Frenchy to travel 2000 miles on an expedition up the river to trade with the Blackfoot Indians, in competition with the Missouri Company. The posse have with them pretty Blackfoot woman Teal Eye (Elizabeth Threatt) who Zeb found several years ago after she escaped an enemy tribe, he plans to use her as a hostage, being the daughter of a chief. On the journey they encounter Poordevil (Hank Worden), another Blackfoot that Zeb knows, Teal Eye falls into the river and is rescued from rapids by Boone, but she is captured by Streak (Jim Davis) from a party of The Missouri Company, they try to set fire to the group's boat, but Frenchy wakes in time to stop severe damage. The expedition reaches Blackfeet and trading begins, Teal Eye tells a very disappointed Jim she loves him, like a brother, Boone is surprised to find later that she is married, but she makes him buy her so that her father is allowed to leave anytime he wishes, in the end when winter is approaching the men start the long journey back, but Boone decides to stay with Teal Eye. Also starring Buddy Baer as Romaine and Henri Letondal as La Badie. I agree with the critics that Dougles is good but perhaps a little too suave and intense, and I can see Hunnicutt was nominated an Oscar, the black and white film definitely has great landscape scenes and is pretty well acted, my only problem with it was that it was a bit slow for the majority, only the action sequences saved it being from being boring, I'm not sure it's the sort of film I'd see again, but it's not a bad western adventure. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Cinematography. Worth watching!

The Big Sky is directed by Howard Hawks and adapted by Dudley Nichols from the novel of the same name written by A.B. Guthrie Jr. It stars Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Elizabeth Threatt & Arthur Hunnicutt. Dimitri Tiomkin scores the music and Russell Harlan photographs on location at Grand Teton National Park & Jackson Hole in Wyoming.1832 and Jim Deakins (Douglas) & Boone Caudill (Martin) meet by chance out in the wilderness. Quickly bonding they travel to St Louis together to seek out Boone's Uncle Zeb (Hunnicutt). After finding him via a bar room brawl, the two men agree to join Zeb in a venture up the Missouri river to trade fur with the unpredictable Blackfoot Indians; their insurance against attack by the Blackfoot coming courtesy of Teal Eye (Threatt), a beautiful Blackfoot princess kidnapped years previously and now being returned home. Along the way the party have to battle nature, the Indian factions and also the Missouri Company out to topple their enterprise for fear of losing their monopoly on trade. Perhaps worse still is that the new found friendship between Boone & Jim will be tested by their mutual attraction to Teal Eye?Given the credentials that come with The Big Sky, it's a little surprising that it's not more well known. Hawks, Douglas and Tiomkin speak for themselves, while Guthrie wrote the script for Shane and Nichols wrote the screenplay for John Ford's 1939 pulse raiser, Stagecoach. Add in that Hunnicutt and Harlan were Academy Award nominated for Best Support Actor and Cinematography respectively, well you have a fine bunch of professionals involved with this movie. So why so ignored or forgotten? The starting point should be with Hawks himself, who openly had issues with the finished product. Originally the film was a huge 140 minutes long and was doing decent business at the box office. But the studio execs had it cut down to 122 minutes so as to fit one more screening in during the day. The film promptly flopped and was left for dead by director and studio. Hawks was also never fully behind Douglas in the role of Deakins, he had wanted Gary Cooper or John Wayne. It seems in the end that Hawks just walked away after release and lost faith in promoting it. Western fans were grateful that the experience didn't make him turn his back on the genre, tho, for he delivered Rio Bravo 7 years later.Having not seen the full uncut version of the film, I personally have to say that the 122 minute version viewed was pretty uneven and lacking a certain narrative spark to make it fully work. It's even episodic for the most part. What isn't in doubt is that visually it's one of Hawks' most rewarding pictures, with Harlan's photography sumptuous and period perfecto. Douglas is spirited and plays the black humour within quite nicely, while Martin is good foil for Douglas' beaming machismo, even if he's just a little too animated at times. Threatt doesn't have to do anything other than smile and look pretty, while Hank Worden shows up to neatly play a buffoon Indian called Poordevil! Undoubtedly the star of the show is Hunnicutt (who also narrates), tucking into a boozy, grizzled, teller of tall tales character, Hunnicutt lifts the film on the frequent occasions it threatens to sag beyond repair.With the visuals and enjoyable Hawksian take on "man love" the film is worth the time of any Western fan. While the efforts to resist racism are honourable and neatly played. But in the end Hawks' frustration is justified, for it feels like a patched together adventure piece. And certainly not one that makes you think it's directed by the man who made Red River. I wouldn't hesitate to watch the full 140 minute cut of the film, but until then it will be some time before I can see myself watching this version again. 6/10Footnote: Some Region 2 DVD's exist of the full cut, where the cut scenes have been spliced back in from a 16mm print. I'm led to believe that the quality is far from great. For British readers, the 122 minute cut shows up once in a blue moon on TV, where the BBC have the rights so at least it is advertisement free. As yet there is still no Region 1 release for the film.

Like RED RIVER it's in black-and-white, which some find disappointing. For me it's always given the material an agreeably unglamourised flavour like its predecessor but then I was raised in the age when b/w was still the norm. A lot of it takes place at night, in any case, in the arc-lit woodlands of RKO, which does develop a certain claustrophobia. It's quite a dark film in many ways with much emphasis on physical pain, injury and impairment. People are whipped, hobbled, stabbed, shot, one guy gets an arrow in the neck, another a burning brand in the face - and the mighty Kirk has a dislocated finger amputated with the help of whisky in a scene angled for comedy but which isn't very funny. Even the head-baddie's a cripple.As a happy-go-lucky mountain-man who joins a French fur-trading expedition up the Missouri River Kirk starts out amusingly in Ned Land chucklehead mode with even a song thrown in but becomes increasingly brusque and modernistic perhaps to compensate for the fact that he's not the driving force here. At the same time I like the way Hawks makes him a team player, sitting back to listen to other actors doing their thing and not even getting the girl in the end. That prize is won by his buddy, played by the slick shifty-looking Dewey Martin with his Tony Curtis quiff but none of the Curtis charm, unfortunately. Inter-racial love stories in Westerns were all the rage at the time but the Indian bride usually got killed - an idyll denied an ongoing reality. Not here, though. As the Blackfoot princess Elizabeth Threatt is sensational. A tall mysterious lady with a cat-like grace and a haughty mien but with sudden flashes of great good humour she's very much a Hawks Woman - practical, resourceful and able to call her own shots when the time comes - and all without a single word of English dialogue. There are a couple of sly filches from THE OUTLAW (which Hawks was directing before Howard Hughes fired him) including the famous "I'll keep him warm" scene. Rumour has it that Kirk demanded 15 takes just to get it right - no I'm joking but it's a cute thought.Out on the river in daylight Hawks and Russell Harlan conjure up some marvellously fluid imagery for which Harlan was Oscar-nominated but didn't win. Ditto Arthur Hunnicutt who oozes authenticity as the guide/interpreter with his tall tales and seasoned wisdom. He's also Martin's uncle and there's some deft undercutting of myth when it's revealed that Martin's sledgehammer punches are the result of a bullet-pouch clenched in his fist and that his former prejudice against Indians is based on one of Uncle's stories ("I talk too much."). But he finally renounces prejudice off his own bat without knowing the story to be a lie. Tiomkin's exquisite score is sprung on three main themes - the epic journey, the Indian presence and a beautiful love-song sung by the Frenchmen as a remembrance of home. At the close Martin elects to remain with his bride and her people while his companions prepare to return downriver - for them a thousand-mile journey, for him "just a step and a holler" home to bed. For the audience a classic juxtaposition of movie-dreaming and our own reality. The 'Mandan' and its crew recede into infinity in our minds like a 'trip round the universe', such a long long way. But like Martin we can simply go home now, the show's over. We put on our coats and file out of the old fleapit (I'm talking 1952 here) just a step and a holler from our own private teepees.To correct a previous poster the guy who got it in the neck was Pascal, played by Booth Colman.

A delicate ,cheering exercise in genuine lightness—of the subtlestThis exquisite poem is as close as one can get to a personal cinema; it is a triumph of style.A lesson in fluidity, mastery, cleverness and what not … As fine as its script might be, Hawks' … still amazes the viewer by how independent of the content is its style. This movie is pure style, pure understanding. It lives by its inner wit, being one of the most palatable films ever—on a par with a Demme comedy. It is pure delight, pure cinema, and pure joy. The directing is incredibly refined. This justifies the movies; this makes them worth. If one such movie is made once in a decade, then the cinema is justified. One single flawless movie. Its content is its style. Here, Hawks reached the heights. The substance of … is very subtle and noble and satisfying. It is a source of limpid, clean beauty; it gives strength to the mine. It testifies of a subtle and healthy taste. It is one of Hawks' very great movies. The mastery is thorough. One an immense science of cinema is at work here! How to make the movies a pure delight, a source of force. It is like the restoring of intelligent craft in the cinema. Like in music or in literature (the arts of time) –a fluid synthesis. Hawks' extraordinarily enjoyable film enhances in us the sense of the cinema's beauty. The beauty of Hawks' movie is simple, noble, intelligent, masterful—not a single trace of clumsiness.If one day I will sketch a top of the most enjoyable –in a distinguished and intelligent way—features, Hawks' film will have its place of honor. This is a film made up of pure enjoyment.Hugely enjoyable—as fun, and as art of fun.