I saw this film in the theater in 1962 and then not again until I just watched it on DVD. In the early '60's, Hollywood produced a number of "all-star" extravaganzas featuring absolutely anybody on the A or B list. The comedy in the series was It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and when I saw it recently after a hiatus of 40+ years, I thought it stood up well. Dated, of course, but what a joy to see all those comedy greats hamming it up. HTWWW isn't so fortunate - maybe it's because a comedy doesn't have to take itself so seriously.
To me, this film ties with Magnificent Seven for the best Western score of all time. But there's so much singing in this film I wondered if it ought to be classed as a musical. And the songs are so out of context or such obvious set pieces I wondered at times if it wasn't a Bollywood film.
The first segment, crossing the Appalachians, is the weakest. I was expecting the stars to look very young, given the vintage of the film, so I can only conclude that Karl Malden was born old. James Stewart and Carroll Baker have the hokiest accents imaginable. And the geographic absurdities are legion. The Erie Canal goes to the Great Lakes, so why do the emigrants end up on a raft on a white water river? James Stewart encounters them - he's going upstream and they're going downstream, a point repeated several times. He continues on his way, encountering river pirates, who leave him for dead and smash his canoe. (Why? Why not just beach it and use it themselves?) This means the pirates are upstream of the emigrants, who are headed away from them. But the pirates set an ambush, and sure enough, the emigrants soon come into view, having somehow teleported back upstream. Despite having been stabbed, James Stewart pitches in to fight the pirates and seems totally unhurt afterward. Then the emigrants go on their way but perform the geographically impossible trick of taking the wrong fork going downstream on a river. They careen through a raging mountain river in a deep canyon, then come ashore to bury their dead on perfectly flat land.
The rest of the movie is better. But no wagon train ever set out with autumn leaves on the trees - the whole point was to get to the Pacific before the snow began. The Cheyenne attack is the best cinematography in the whole film, but it was filmed at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California. Mount Whitney is actually visible a couple of times. And one scene shows the inside of a tumbling wagon, which is completely empty except for the hapless passengers. Wasn't the whole point of a covered wagon to carry everything for the trip? Then, when everyone has made it to California, we see a Sacramento riverboat passing high bluffs, when in fact the land along the Sacramento River is flat as a pancake.
The Civil War sequence seems perfunctory. We see vignettes of battles and field hospitals but there's no coherent narrative. They do show a soldier being prepped for surgery with chloroform, a sound piece of history and downright amazing for 1962. Contrary to innumerable films, most Civil War surgery used anesthetics.
The good news is the visual quality of the DVD version is stunning. A few panoramas with a lot of sky show the Cinerama frame joins, but they're gradational, not sharp lines. And the score is still one of my all time favorites. But this is just not a terribly good movie.
To me, this film ties with Magnificent Seven for the best Western score of all time. But there's so much singing in this film I wondered if it ought to be classed as a musical. And the songs are so out of context or such obvious set pieces I wondered at times if it wasn't a Bollywood film.
The first segment, crossing the Appalachians, is the weakest. I was expecting the stars to look very young, given the vintage of the film, so I can only conclude that Karl Malden was born old. James Stewart and Carroll Baker have the hokiest accents imaginable. And the geographic absurdities are legion. The Erie Canal goes to the Great Lakes, so why do the emigrants end up on a raft on a white water river? James Stewart encounters them - he's going upstream and they're going downstream, a point repeated several times. He continues on his way, encountering river pirates, who leave him for dead and smash his canoe. (Why? Why not just beach it and use it themselves?) This means the pirates are upstream of the emigrants, who are headed away from them. But the pirates set an ambush, and sure enough, the emigrants soon come into view, having somehow teleported back upstream. Despite having been stabbed, James Stewart pitches in to fight the pirates and seems totally unhurt afterward. Then the emigrants go on their way but perform the geographically impossible trick of taking the wrong fork going downstream on a river. They careen through a raging mountain river in a deep canyon, then come ashore to bury their dead on perfectly flat land.
The rest of the movie is better. But no wagon train ever set out with autumn leaves on the trees - the whole point was to get to the Pacific before the snow began. The Cheyenne attack is the best cinematography in the whole film, but it was filmed at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California. Mount Whitney is actually visible a couple of times. And one scene shows the inside of a tumbling wagon, which is completely empty except for the hapless passengers. Wasn't the whole point of a covered wagon to carry everything for the trip? Then, when everyone has made it to California, we see a Sacramento riverboat passing high bluffs, when in fact the land along the Sacramento River is flat as a pancake.
The Civil War sequence seems perfunctory. We see vignettes of battles and field hospitals but there's no coherent narrative. They do show a soldier being prepped for surgery with chloroform, a sound piece of history and downright amazing for 1962. Contrary to innumerable films, most Civil War surgery used anesthetics.
The good news is the visual quality of the DVD version is stunning. A few panoramas with a lot of sky show the Cinerama frame joins, but they're gradational, not sharp lines. And the score is still one of my all time favorites. But this is just not a terribly good movie.