Few critics rank The Big Sky (1952) among Howard Hawks' best movies. One of that director's most expansive films, it places that director's preoccupations within an epic framework.Frontier trappers Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) and Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin) join an expedition down the Missouri River in 1832. Their expedition includes Zeb (Arthur Hunnicutt), Boone's grizzled uncle, and Frenchy (Steven Geray), an ambitious French trapper. Also among the crew is Teal Eye (Elizabeth Threatt), a Blackfoot girl Frenchy's holding hostage. The expedition runs afoul of treacherous terrain, Missouri Company rivals and hostile Crow Indians. Their ties to Teal Eye earns the Blackfoot's friendship, trapping
Based on A.B. Guthrie Jr.'s novel, The Big Sky often resembles a replay of Hawks' Red River without the Freudian underpinnings. Hawks and photographer Russell Harlan film in Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks, with grandiose travel scenes so impressive we wish they'd used color. Even so, the movie's scope is impressive, from the keelboat Mandan struggling over the rapids to shootouts and elaborate Indian villages, damaged only by occasional backlot scenes. Characters speak unsubtitled French and Indian dialects, providing more authenticity than your run-of-the-mill Western.
Thematically, The Big Sky offers another Hawksian lecture in professionalism. Jim and Boone have a contentious relationship smoothened by their travails; the frontier offers too many obstacles for personal clashes to interfere. There's the standard scenes of manly bonding, from an early saloon sing-a-long to terse fireside chats. The group's camaraderie contrasts with the Missouri Company's cutthroat mercenaries, out only for money, while Teal Eyes provides an unusual conduit between white and Indian worlds.
Perhaps The Big Sky hasn't registered as a classic because its leads are too thin to be convincingly human but not large enough to seem mythic. Hawks and writer Dudley Nichols don't show interest in potentially thorny elements, like the Indian hostage situation, an amoral gambit more recently practiced by The Revenant's villains. The scope often overwhelms the human drama, preventing it from ranking alongside the best Westerns.
Kirk Douglas swaggers through the movie, playing his usual wide-grinned rogue with two-fisted charisma. Dewey Martin makes an adequate sidekick but doesn't register as Douglas's equal, lacking that star's screen presence or raw talent. Arthur Hunnicut earned a Best Supporting Actor nod, his tough, verbose Zeb a frontier type resembling a less shtick-ish Walter Brennan. Elizabeth Threatt, in her only film, gives an appealing turn speaking entirely in Blackfoot. Hank Worden plays another crackbrained character and Jim Davis is a skunk-striped villain.
The Big Sky's a definite mixed bag. Ultimately its striking scenery and huge scope swallow the one-note protagonists, resulting in an adventure that inspires awe more than satisfaction.
