The Big Country

This western epic is hard to fit into a box. It feels like a traditional western, with its Texas (or Texas adjacent) ranchers battling over land and beef and water. It has the wide open vistas and manly men doing manly things. However, it also isn’t a traditional western, as it eschews the prideful strong man protagonist often associated with the likes of John Wayne, as well as the simplistic good guys vs. bad guys storytelling so often found in the genre. Yet it isn’t a revisionist western. Its more complex storytelling isn’t a kind of nihilistic moral ambiguity, nor does it engage in a heightened level of violence, both of which became more resonant in American cinema with the influence of European directors, the loosening of the Hayes Code, and the effects of the Vietnam War. Nor is it an anti-western like that of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, purposely turning the genre tropes on their head. No, The Big Country is, for lack of a better word, iconoclastic. Like Stagecoach before it, it looks to reexamine the assumptions of the western genre, and by extension those of the society in which it was made, but without outright rejecting them.

This twist on the familiar is possibly no more pronounced than in its protagonist. Though John Wayne and his ilk may have garnered a reputation for being stoics, in reality the stars of so many classic westerns, including many of Wayne’s parts, are the opposite: hotheaded, impulsive, and obstinate. Take Red River, for example, where the two male leads spend most of the movie having a prolonged manhood measurement contest over how much empathy to show their fellow employees while driving cattle. In The Big Country, Gregory Peck’s James McKay is genuinely cool headed. He is maybe the most strategic and intellectual of all the western main characters across all the many, many movies I’ve seen. He bides his time, considers his options, makes a plan, and carries it out. He is not taken in easily by flattery or by empty threats.

Westerns also have a strong relationship with honor. Honor and image are very important in the genre possibly because honor and image were also very important to the people who lived out beyond the controls of normative society. When there isn’t a policeman on every block to protect you from being robbed and a courthouse in every city and town to mediate disputes. Frontier justice and “my word is my bond” become the de facto currency. The Big Country again has its protagonist step out of this mold. It is not that McKay doesn’t have or care about honor, or even that his nature as an outsider from the “civilized” eastern seaboard means he doesn’t understand frontier honor, it’s rather that his relationship with honor is a personal one. What he doesn’t care about is how he is perceived. He is willing to let himself look weak or cowardly when there isn’t anything material to be gained by doing otherwise. On the other hand, he is happy to take on challenges when they are about proving to himself he is able to overcome them, even (or perhaps especially) if almost nobody is around to see him do it. This is such a different kind of hero approaching the tropes of the western in such a different way that that alone makes the movie an interesting watch.

The Big Country uses these subversions not just to try and carve a specific niche for the film in the broad landscape of western movies, but as an examination of the normative attitudes about masculinity in American society, especially in the mid-50s when it was made. The idealized male, at least as a cinematic hero (and not just in westerns) was tough, laconic, and took no guff. While the occasional Wayne picture like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon could end with bloodless politicking, more often than not they end with gun shots or a punch up, or both a la Red River. In fact, many male protagonists, across a breadth of genres, would try to solve at least one problem through the course of a movie’s story by punching a guy in the mouth. Even harmless screwball comedies like Ball of Fire have Gary Cooper walloping a mob boss to prove his love to Barbara Stanwyck.

McKay is different. He is generally disinterested in fighting, but not from a place of fear or lack of skill. He knows how to use a gun, he just chooses to use them sparingly. He doesn’t put forward the same level of bravado as the other men around him in The Big Country, but that leads to them continually underestimating him. He is dedicated, hardworking, capable, and doesn’t give up easily. He internalizes a lot, allowing him to ignore the things he deems inconsequential. In some sense, he is a stoic in the original Greek sense. By showing how his different way of thinking and doing, one that doesn’t completely depart from important ideas of self-worth and self-belief, can not only survive but thrive in the traditionally rough and tough world of cattle barons and blood feuds, embodies a sort of image of the new man for a new age. Despite that, I think the average viewer isn’t going to spend much of the movie ruminating on that fact. The point of the movie isn’t to deconstruct the western protagonist, like one might argue is the case with McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The point is to spin a damn good yarn, just one that features an atypical protagonist whose very existence subtly asks you to consider the power of this different life philosophy.

The movie is a good western in so many ways. It has all the beautiful, wide-open vistas and high drama one wants from an epic more than two and half hours long. More constrained and cohesive than Giant and more propulsive than Once Upon a Time in the West, though less pulsepounding and explosive than The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The Big Country has a pacing that never makes you feel its length but never needs to stray from its thesis of careful, calculated action just to keep you engaged. It has excellent, fully rounded, fully believable characters that fit the setting perfectly. Though characters often need to be a bit heightened to make the drama of the story really sing, they are never pushed to the point of being melodrama caricatures. The dialogue is simple, but still communicates greater depth. However, what takes it from being a good western into being a great one is its ability to question and subvert the genre expectations of its form without ever needing to call attention to it.

Would Recommend: If you are dying to see a true stoic Western hero on the silver screen.

Would Not Recommend: If, as far as you are concerned, John Wayne’s masculine bravado is the be all, end all of Western heroes.