Before CGI, filmmakers found people who could actually do stuff, and pointed cameras at them. In the flawed masterpiece, The Big Country, Chuck Connors and a few stuntmen showed Gregory Peck and Carroll Baker how to ride horses:

There’s a great mix of humor in this drama. The cowboy who can’t get his boot on at the beginning of the chase, and then can’t get on his horse, is a nice touch.

The director of the first 3/4 of this movie was William Wyler. Wyler was something of a legend in Hollywood by the time he made The Big Country in 1958. He ended up with three best director Oscars, and had thirteen nominations total (tied for the most). He drove actors up the wall, making them do forty takes, but they all wanted to work with him anyway. Henry Fonda wondered why Wyler wanted another take. “It stinks.” Charlton Heston asked for direction. “Be better.” Gotta love that kind of management.

Wyler made all kinds of movies well. Hell, he made 32 silent movies just to warm up. He did westerns and dramas and comedies and sword and sandal epics and musicals and they’re all still pretty entertaining to watch. The Big Country was a big hit, although the critics mostly thought it was pretty meh. Eisenhower was still president then, and loved it, and had the movie screened four straight nights in the White House.

If you’re in the know about cinematography, you probably know about this movie. Wyler and Gregg Toland developed and perfected what’s called deep-focus cinematography. The lenses they used could keep everything in the frame in focus, no matter what the depth of field was. Nothing on the screen was blurry, no matter where it was.

Lots of directors hated widescreen. There was too much area to cover, and it was easy for the actors to look lost. But movies like The Big Country embraced all that screen square footage. The scenes of the actors pounding across the measureless prairie are amazing. I don’t think you would have Lawrence of Arabia four years later if David Lean hadn’t seen how Wyler used the landscape in The Big Country.

Wyler used the landscape as a metaphor. The fight scene in the same movie is unexcelled, because of the moonlight mood and the tiny men struggling to settle a meaningless score in a gigantic void of featureless grass:

They gave Burl Ives an Oscar for this movie, but I don’t know why. He’s sorta eating the scenery through most of it. But the real problem with the movie is Wyler was incredibly in demand for his work, and he had to ditch The Big Country to go to Italy to make Ben Hur. The movie was finished by a different director, and squanders the vibe that built up throughout the first part of the film. It just sort of fizzles out at the end.

It matters who directs a film. People used to know how to do things, but not everyone knew how to do it like William Wyler.

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