Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

fcasnette I've seen this several times and warm to it the more often I see it. The nostalgic narration is not too obtrusive and works well to knit everything together.Gable growls his way through a usual tough guy that melts gradually through the film, a fine vigorous performance as pioneer man, even singing and dancing (of sorts!). Montalban has an interesting role (virtually without dialogue) at the beginning of his career. Whitmore has a small part and looks every part the mountain man. Menjou is a revelation if you saw him in Paths of Glory, as a fine second fiddle who you would want as your friend. Hodiak is good as an impassive, proud and upright Indian. Napier (West's Batman's butler) as an aristocratic survivor of Waterloo! And Maria Marques a comely and well acted female lead.The music is sweeping and fits fine, the photography absolutely superb, the Technicolour very very very beautiful, the native Americans portrayed as human beings with a history. Some nice comedy moments at the marriage. A romance virtually a silent movie with man and wife not speaking each others languages. The savagery and danger of early life not skimped. The final showdown is thrilling and realistic.Old Hollywood showmanship but the ending brings a lump to my throat as the son describes his father's life and the wisdom he passed on.

Tweekums I hadn't heard of this film until I saw it listed in the TV guide and as it was only an hour and a half long I thought I'd check it out. I'm pleased that I did as it is quite different to most westerns I'd seen. Set when much of what is now the United States was still controlled by the native population and any European heading into there territory had to make friends quickly or risk being killed. The story follows group of trappers led by Flint Mitchell who head into Blackfoot territory to hunt beavers and elk; in order to be welcome Mitchell buys and marries the Blackfoot chief's granddaughter who had been kidnapped by a Nez Perce chief and adopted as his daughter. His new wife Kamiah leads them into Blackfoot territory via a route that avoids the aggressive warrior Iron Shirt. Once there they set about trapping and hunting, they also make friends with the Blackfoot chief Bear Ghost. There are still dangers though and Iron Shirt's band poses a danger. When one of the trappers is killed his brother takes revenge by killing Grey Wolf, this leaves Iron Shirt as the new chief and the trappers are in real danger; a danger that many of them will not survive.At first I though this might be a comedy as the opening scenes contained such sights as a brawl involving all of the trappers and an Indian chief who was wearing a suit of armour and Mitchell's new wife throwing pots and pans at him when he enters her tepee in a drunken state! As the film progresses things get more serious though as the trappers get in real danger and several are killed frequently without warning. One of the deaths, I won't spoil it by saying whose, was one of the most surprising I've seen in any film. The acting was pretty solid; Clark Gable was good in the lead role as was María Elena Marqués as his wife Kamiah. Surprisingly much of the dialogue wasn't in English; some was in French and much was in the Indian's language, this wasn't subtitled which puts the viewer in the same position of not understanding that Mitchell was in; of course he had a native speaker in his group who could translate for him (and the audience). While I don't think this is a must see film I'd certainly recommend checking it out if you are a western fan and it is on television.

duke1029 "Across the Wide Missouri" was planned as a sprawling saga of early 19th Century Americana, so there are questions as to how and why it ended up in its present truncated 78 minute form, not much longer than a "B" picture. There shouldn't be any argument that director William A. 'Wild Bill' Wellman's original vision was grander in scope, even epic. Evidence of the cutting can be clearly seen in the cover of the DVD, which duplicates the original one sheet poster. Actor James Whitmore, a big favorite of Wellman's, is given co-star billing and is listed fourth overall in the cast behind MGM leading men Clark Gable, Ricardo Montalban, and John Hodiak and ahead of such venerable character actors as Adolphe Menjou, J. Carrol Naish, and Jack Holt.Whitmore had starred in the director's previous film, "The Next Voice You Hear" in 1951 and had earned an Oscar nomination for his scene-stealing performance in Wellman's iconic 1949 WWII actioner "Battleground." In the released version Whitmore is not billed in the opening credits and does not appear in the 78 minute film until some 33 minutes into the movie. He cannot be spotted with the mountain men in the sizable "Rendezvous" sequence early in the picture and is not seen on the trek over the Rockies until they're halfway there when he suddenly appears out of nowhere on top of a snow-covered mountain. For the remainder of the film he has only a handful of unimportant lines, which makes one wonder why one of Hollywood's most respected character actors would be squandered in what is essentially a bit role. Among the many ironies associated with this film is that, according to studio records, his character's name is "Bit."Wellman's MGM contract had concluded with the completion of "The Next Voice You Hear," but when Metro found themselves without a director for their scheduled epic, they asked Wellman to helm the film. 'Wild Bill' agreed on the condition that he be allowed to bring his family along with him on location - at the studio's expense, an offer he couldn't refuse when MGM agreed to his request. With three A-list stars, an exceptional supporting class of character actors, and breathtakingly beautiful locations, it should have been a blockbuster. It wasn't. The blame, if any, can be laid at the feet of studio boss, Dore Schary, who undoubtedly panicked after attending a preview when he found that the audience that had cheered the opening credits "lost interest" about halfway through. Producer Sam Zimbalist, who wasn't involved with the picture, suggested drastic cuts to be bridged by an afterthought narration by Howard Keel. Although scripted by Talbot Jennings, one of the film's co-writers, the narration is leadenly heavy-handed and overly literal and drowns the director's visual subtleties. An embittered Wellman remarked, " They cut out all the action and put in a narration to fill the holes. This was a good, long picture the way I made it. I've never seen it and I never will." Ironically Wellman re-signed with MGM, and his next picture, "Westward the Women," covered some of the same territory as "Missouri," albeit more successfully.An added irony is that the same Dore Schary, supposedly the most literate and tasteful of all studio heads in Golden Age Hollywoosd, was a serial offender. Only a few months earlier he butchered John Huston's brilliant adaptation of "The Red Badge of Courage" down to "B" picture length of a mere 69 minutes with bridging narration spoken by non-other than... James Whitmore!One last sad irony... as I write this review, news that Judy Lewis, age 76, passed away today is on the Web. She was the secret love child of Clark Gable and Loretta Young, conceived during the filming of another Wellman Western epic, "The Call of the Wild" in 1935. Miss Young never acknowledged that Lewis was her biological daughter and claimed she was adopted. Lewis' memoir "Uncommon Knowledge" was published in 1995.

tcwlsn "Across the Wide Missouri":1951: The setting for 'Across the Wide Missouri' is the state of Montana, however the majority of the film was shot in the San Juan Mountains, and north of Durango, Colorado. The movie included Clark Gable in it's cast of characters, as well as Ricardo Montalban and Maria Elena Marques. In the movie, stunt man Fred Kennedy suffered a broken neck when his intentional fall from a horse did not go as smoothly as he had intended. The whole incident was caught on film and used in the movie. Thanks to http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/filmguyernie/page8.phtml