Quite literally the kind of film they sincerely do not make anymore, How The West Was Won is all different kinds of epic.
First of all you have the cast, which reads like a roll-call of Hollywood royalty – James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, John Wayne, Eli Wallach, George Peppard, Lee J Cobb, Karl Malden and – in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it early role – Lee Van Cleef, among countless others. Second, and arguably even more important, the film was one of the few examples of movies produced specifically for Cinerama screens (a process that required images to be projected simultaneously from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply-curved screen). And third – as the title goes some way to suggest – you have the plot, which kicks off with mountain man, Linus Rawlings (played by a somewhat bemused James Stewart, sporting perhaps the most curious accent of his career) heading to Pittsburgh to sell his furs, chancing across a family led by the marvellously named Zebulon Prescott (a giddy Karl Malden) and thereby sowing the seeds for a pan-generational, multi-story, almost portmanteau western that takes in Cheyenne Indians, the gold rush, riverboats, the American Civil War, Pony Express, buffalo hunters, outlaws and blazing shoot-outs, ending some 130 years from the film’s origin in (then) present-day Los Angeles.
Comprising five main sections (directed by Henry Hathaway, John Ford, George Marshall and – an uncredited – Richard Thorpe), How the West was Won has been a difficult movie to see as it was intended to be seen pretty much from the get-go. Certainly in recent years, various video or TV versions have struggled to ply the three different images together, resulting in quite clearly delineated marks on the screen. Thankfully, the long overdue remastered version – coming relatively hard on the heels of the film being selected for inclusion in the United States’ National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally, historically or aesthetically significant’ – not only eradicates the lines but, arguably, improves the movie to a level it has never previously enjoyed. If you consider yourself a Western fan, consider this an essential purchase.
With more classic stars of the silver screen than you can shake a stick at, this family saga covering several decades of westward expansion in the 19th century - including the Gold Rush, the Civil War and the building of the railroads - is one of the greatest epic Westerns ever made.
Commentary by Filmmaker David Strohmaier, Director of Cinerama, Inc., John Sittig, Film Historian Rudy Behlmer, Music Historian Jon Burlingame and Stuntman Loren Janes
The Red Balloon / Flight of the Red Balloon
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How the West was Won
