IMO.
I don't even like westerns, but the writing and acting was so outstanding, this film transcended genre.
Gregory Peck and his portrayal of Jim McKay was ahead of their time. Loved that this was the first, and only, film or show that showed a fist fight realistically, where the two people fighting got *tired*, and their fists hurt.
Brilliant screenplay, brilliant characters and dialogue, and acting.
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Very good but not as good as The Searchers.
shareI've just looked it up. The problem with it for me is that John Wayne stars in it. Apologies if you're a fan, but I don't think much of him as an actor.
shareTurtleTommy! So nice to see you again. I can't reply to your comment, since you've deleted it (?), so you won't get a notification I've replied to you, and I don't know what you said.
Anyway, I hope you return. For my money, MovieChat is the best alternative site, especially now that the owner has been able to restore so many of the old IMDB threads.
how did he do that? yes, my hat is off to him, he has restored a very important film commentary archive.
shareI really love Carroll Baker, the actress from the Actors Studio who was cast as Peck's wife. She was pregnant during filming, though, and they finally had to send her back to Hollywood before they'd really figured out how exactly to resolve her character's story. (They all began filming with an incomplete script.)
shareYou mean his fiancé? She was very good as this spoiled, b!tchy, shallow character, but it never made much sense to me that Peck's highly intelligent character would have been attracted enough to her to propose. Or that Julie would have been friends with her. Sure, she was beautiful, and as far as Julie being friends with her, there wouldn't have been a lot of choices in that remote Big Country, but we were never shown any compelling reasons why either Jim or Julie would have been attracted to her otherwise.
I didn't know she was pregnant during the shooting, and would never have guessed she was. Interesting they began with an incomplete script. I didn't know that.
She was never "Peck's wife". They were engaged and he came there to Ladder to marry her.
sharenah, its a very good movie but there are some much better Westerns.
shareJohn Wayne was one of the most naturalistic actors in movies. Unfortunately, many people reject him as an actor because of their misunderstanding of and disagreement with his political opinions. This has gradually increased in the years since his death until there are hordes of Wayne scoffers who actually have seen few or none of his movies.
shareWell, I'm not one of them. I'm an ardent Dem, but I like many of Wayne's films. He was a Natural, tall, strong and easy-going.
What I don't like is people making gross characterizations about an anonymous mob and their opinions about John Wayne. You have no idea how people these days think of John Wayne, and I don't know who these "hordes" are.
That's just liscarkat spewing his sewage again.
Anything to motivate a click.
It's how he gets off.
I'll try to remember that. I'm generally pretty naive unless people are overtly obvious with pointless venom, but there are a handful of names and subjects I don't bother to view responses from so I guess I'l try to remember this one. Sad, though, how often people seem to want to sabotage things. Wouldn't seem to grow the site, at least not for good people.
shareits one of my favorites
others
red river
the searchers
one-eyed jacks
shane
ft apache
she wore a yellow ribbon
open range
I don't know if it's the best Western but if I had to pick the 10 best this would be one of them.
Actually, thinking about it, I can't pick a top ten that easily - I think I'd have to start by splitting all John Wayne westerns in to separate list.
The fight is one of my problems with the film.
When 2 big strong men who are evenly matched fight to the point of exhaustion with naked fists there are going to be cuts, abrasions, swelling and bruising. People looking at the 2 men would have known they had a big fight.
In this film it was an obsession that anything McKay did that was courageous and tough not be known to others especially Pat. They go too far.