The Big Country

The Big Country (1958) is a western whose hero refuses to use a gun, and everyone around him mistakes that for cowardice. Jim McKay is a retired sea captain. He arrives from the East to settle at his fiancée's family ranch. Two families there have been feuding for years, and the real subject of the feud is water: a creek running through the land between them. McKay declines every provocation. He admits he cannot ride, he will not duel, he stages no display. The people around him read this as weakness. What the film does is show the audience that McKay has nothing to prove to anyone. In one scene, alone with nobody watching, he goes back and tries the horse again. William Wyler and Gregory Peck fell out badly on this film. Peck was also a producer on it and the two did not speak for years. Charlton Heston did not get along with Wyler either, though the two went on to make Ben-Hur together. The famous night time fistfight is shot from a great distance, in the dark, with no music. Only from that distance does it become clear how pointless the thing these two men are doing is. Jerome Moross's score is one of the best known opening themes in the genre. Burl Ives won the Supporting Actor Oscar for his part. It runs 167 minutes, which is long. Good for: classic westerns, fifties Hollywood, and widescreen. Less good for: the length, the unhurried pace, and the place given to the women, which belongs to its era.