When I was a young boy, I had what I thought was a great idea for a play: Acting out scenes of American history as presented in a book of postage stamps someone had just given me.
Watching this movie several decades later, I was reminded of my youthful idea. If my production had ever seen the light of day, would it have turned out as awkward and tedious as "How The West Was Won"?
Two problems afflict this big production. One, which so many comment on here and elsewhere, is the difficulty of shooting Cinerama in a dramatic presentation, where acting for three different cameras required stock- still acting playing off people whom you couldn't see straight. In shot after shot, one is reminded of the inherent clumsiness of the medium. You may be drawn to watching this film because of its cast of famous names, but seeing them uniformly struggle with stiff body language and sidelong glances at their co-stars will only please those who never cared for Old Hollywood in the first place.
The second, more serious problem circles back to my childhood postage- stamp fantasy: The idea of a movie built not around characters or unifying plot, but rather a series of thinly-connected set-pieces, each showcasing a specific element of white settlement of the American West. That's what is tried here, as HTWWW shows why some stories really are too big for the screen.
Of the five main sequences, four center around key action sequences designed to carry the crux of their stories: a run through the rapids in "The Rivers"; a covered-wagon chase in "The Plains"; a buffalo stampede in "The Railroad"; and a gun battle aboard a chugging train in "The Outlaws." All of these are crammed into the story with minimal explanation or logic, as if the spectacle alone should be enough.
Sometimes it is. This is a fine film for Blu-Ray big screen viewing, as even a gentle shot, say of a canoe being paddled downriver, has a magnetic quality because of the deep-field visual display before you. Henry Hathaway, who directed three of the five segments, does a good enough job you wish he was given license to build up one of his stories into a full-length film of its own, although all five suffer from rote dialogue and cliché scenarios.
The worst sequence, "The Civil War," features the biggest actor in the production and the best-known director. John Wayne and John Ford had quite a history together, too, but none of it is found here. After we are introduced to the battlefield of Shiloh ("After Shiloh, the South never smiled," tired-sounding narrator Spencer Tracy narrates portentously), we see Wayne as General William T. Sherman, second-in-command to Harry Morgan's Ulysses S. Grant (which took some adjusting from this "M*A*S*H" fan). Grant is disappointed with himself and thinks about resigning his command, but Sherman bucks him up with odd logic: "I say a man has the right to resign only if he's wrong, not if he's right!"
The sequence revolves around how a young Confederate deserter (Russ Tamblyn) tries to take a shot at Grant and how a Union soldier with doubts (George Peppard) must step in to save his leader, though it plays haphazard, much like everything else. Peppard and Debbie Reynolds are the major stars of this film, each appearing in three sequences as members of the Prescott line about which the movie is concerned. Debbie does a lot of singing, too, which along with the ever-present Ken Darby Singers on the soundtrack made me flash on Homer Simpson: "They ruined a perfectly serviceable Western with all that fruity singing!"
Carroll Baker is the only other actor to appear in more than one sequence. Of the rest of the cast, Henry Fonda is about as useless and distant a presence as Wayne, while Gregory Peck proves Cinerama wasn't so bad by playing his role as woodenly here as he did in any other movie. Only Karl Malden and Eli Wallach manage a sportive element in their pleasantly hammy performances.
It's not that HTWWW is a bad film, just an awkward one that runs on too long.
Watching this movie several decades later, I was reminded of my youthful idea. If my production had ever seen the light of day, would it have turned out as awkward and tedious as "How The West Was Won"?
Two problems afflict this big production. One, which so many comment on here and elsewhere, is the difficulty of shooting Cinerama in a dramatic presentation, where acting for three different cameras required stock- still acting playing off people whom you couldn't see straight. In shot after shot, one is reminded of the inherent clumsiness of the medium. You may be drawn to watching this film because of its cast of famous names, but seeing them uniformly struggle with stiff body language and sidelong glances at their co-stars will only please those who never cared for Old Hollywood in the first place.
The second, more serious problem circles back to my childhood postage- stamp fantasy: The idea of a movie built not around characters or unifying plot, but rather a series of thinly-connected set-pieces, each showcasing a specific element of white settlement of the American West. That's what is tried here, as HTWWW shows why some stories really are too big for the screen.
Of the five main sequences, four center around key action sequences designed to carry the crux of their stories: a run through the rapids in "The Rivers"; a covered-wagon chase in "The Plains"; a buffalo stampede in "The Railroad"; and a gun battle aboard a chugging train in "The Outlaws." All of these are crammed into the story with minimal explanation or logic, as if the spectacle alone should be enough.
Sometimes it is. This is a fine film for Blu-Ray big screen viewing, as even a gentle shot, say of a canoe being paddled downriver, has a magnetic quality because of the deep-field visual display before you. Henry Hathaway, who directed three of the five segments, does a good enough job you wish he was given license to build up one of his stories into a full-length film of its own, although all five suffer from rote dialogue and cliché scenarios.
The worst sequence, "The Civil War," features the biggest actor in the production and the best-known director. John Wayne and John Ford had quite a history together, too, but none of it is found here. After we are introduced to the battlefield of Shiloh ("After Shiloh, the South never smiled," tired-sounding narrator Spencer Tracy narrates portentously), we see Wayne as General William T. Sherman, second-in-command to Harry Morgan's Ulysses S. Grant (which took some adjusting from this "M*A*S*H" fan). Grant is disappointed with himself and thinks about resigning his command, but Sherman bucks him up with odd logic: "I say a man has the right to resign only if he's wrong, not if he's right!"
The sequence revolves around how a young Confederate deserter (Russ Tamblyn) tries to take a shot at Grant and how a Union soldier with doubts (George Peppard) must step in to save his leader, though it plays haphazard, much like everything else. Peppard and Debbie Reynolds are the major stars of this film, each appearing in three sequences as members of the Prescott line about which the movie is concerned. Debbie does a lot of singing, too, which along with the ever-present Ken Darby Singers on the soundtrack made me flash on Homer Simpson: "They ruined a perfectly serviceable Western with all that fruity singing!"
Carroll Baker is the only other actor to appear in more than one sequence. Of the rest of the cast, Henry Fonda is about as useless and distant a presence as Wayne, while Gregory Peck proves Cinerama wasn't so bad by playing his role as woodenly here as he did in any other movie. Only Karl Malden and Eli Wallach manage a sportive element in their pleasantly hammy performances.
It's not that HTWWW is a bad film, just an awkward one that runs on too long.