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| The cast of Howard Hawks' THE BIG SKY. |
Last night, Donna and I watched Howard Hawks' THE BIG SKY (1952) on the Criterion Channel - a first time viewing for both of us. I'm partial to Hawks, but I felt this might be among his top films. Not really a western so much as a pioneering story involving a boatload of Kentucky traders traveling up the Missouri River (with an Indian Princess captive as protection) into Northwestern territories never before seen by white men. It's a warm and lavish tale with numerous exciting, touching, even funny sequences, and the characters are both memorable and memorably cast. This movie gives us Kirk Douglas when he could still weave in and out of an ensemble cast, former baseball player Dewey Martin giving a real breakout star performance, and it's got to be one of the ultimate Arthur Hunnicutt pictures. And then there's the striking Elizabeth Threatt as a Blackfoot Indian Princess, looking as Goth as an outdoor movie will allow. She literally becomes Barbara Steele when her eyes narrow. Among the also there's are Hank Worden, Buddy Baer, Steven Geray, and Jim Davis.
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| Elizabeth Threatt in Barbara Steele mode. |
The film is so spectacularly scenic (for a 1.33:1 film) that that I thought to myself more than once that it was a crime that RKO decreed that Russell Harlan shoot in black-and-white. Alas, it's a still worse crime that the Criterion Channel was only able to present the film at its original 140m length in such poor condition; I know they are meticulous about such things and could only assume that this presentation represented the film in the best current form available. Most of the film looks decent, and this material was supposedly sourced from a surviving 35mm element of the 121m theatrical release, while the rest - including the whole opening and various important later scenes - had to be sourced from the only known surviving copy of the original cut - a darkish 16mm print from the collection of Martin Scorsese. (I'm told he bought it from Michael Schlesinger.)
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| Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin - a friendship that starts in a fist-fight. |
I did some checking around to investigate the film's status on home video. It has never been on Blu-ray anywhere, as far as I can tell. I was appalled to find out that its only present US release is a COLORIZED DVD of the theatrical cut. (Hardly my own color wish come true!) I also found out about some French releases, two different releases of the theatrical cut which are still in print, and a more generous 2015 release from Éditions Montparnasse (these all carry the title LA CAPTIVE AUX YEUX CLAIRS) which is only now available as a used disc set; it includes the theatrical cut dubbed in French, and the original cut (a 16mm/35mm composite) in English with optional French subtitles. According to a review by DVD Beaver, this restoration was the work of CAHIERS DU CINEMA columnist Bill Krohn. It runs 133m 57s in PAL, 25 f.p.s. - and is not only missing the RKO Radio Pictures logo (where the Dmitri Tiomkin score begins), the Winchester Pictures Corporation Presents screen, and the credits for the film's three principals but features a couple of instances of deep scratches (see illustrations below). These have actually been cleaned up fairly well for the Criterion presentation. The Criterion improvements I am not equipped to illustrate.
As I go through the French disc, I can tell that some additional restoration work must have been done on the Criterion master in recent years. Though the 16mm footage still appears conspicuously darker, it has been brightened as much as possible. Within the 16mm footage there are a couple of very noticeable jumps caused by damage to the source print, which cut off musical accompaniment and cause characters to jump to different areas onscreen. To my ear, the 16mm audio sounds somewhat duller than the audio of the French DVD.
I'm very glad I saw this, and I would be were it even in lesser form. Still, it grieves me to think this may be the best copy of THE BIG SKY we'll ever see. It's not like it's a silent movie, but it is 70 years old, and - in this version - looks every mile of it, when so many lesser films have been better protected. This is a movie I want to know well, so I'm going to have to take a look at the shorter version and find out how much the loss of those extra 20m is felt.
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