mike48128
At Disney Parks, some of the Epcot (and other) films surpasses even Cinerama as they are 360 Degree "scope". Cinerama was the closest thing to that way back, decades ago. I saw "How the West Was Won" in it's 70mm wide-screen version on the big screen, not in Cinerama. Even on the current and much improved video version, the seam lines show up occasionally, as do color timing errors from the 3 film strips. However, it's a vast improvement over it's initial release on DVD disc format. Also, the "seams" were less prominent in true "Cinerama" projection. Is it a great movie? I like some of the segments far better than others. The action sequences are the best and the three involving the raging rapids, the tumbling pioneer wagon, and runaway train-buffalo stampede are thrilling. The Civil War (Directed by John Ford) is disappointing. Jimmy Stewart's misadventure with Walter Brennan is my least favorite segment for several reasons including bad writing and story. Historically, it's pretty inaccurate, as correctly mentioned by many other reviewers. Also, the present day ending is a big let-down. They should have shot something in a national park wilderness area. I still give it a "10" due to the tremendous effort and nostalgic value. Are there too many cameos? Maybe. They truly just don't make movies like this anymore!
elvircorhodzic
HOW THE WEST WAS WON is an epic western drama about lives of several generations of an American family. A bit confusing story describes, through six episodes, their lives and their participation in important historical events, such as colonization of the West, conflicts with the Indians and the American Civil War.The scenery is quite impressive, but the final result is stingy and unimaginative. A realistic image of one part of the American history has become part of a pale fiction. It is very difficult to consolidate into a single unit these fragmented pieces. Simply, there is plenty of historical and melodramatic segments, but it is not enough for a serious picture of that time.However, this film can have a kind of motivational effect on individuals. If we ignore that epic line, some scenes are pretty exciting. The direction is solid, soundtrack is excellent and characterization is, to put it mildly, ambiguous.The large number of familiar stars in supporting roles is the greatest asset of this film. Each of them should have given a certain charm and depth to his character. It was not so bad. Of course, there is a lot of swagger, theatricality, unconvincing ambitions and limited characters.Unfortunately, a good opportunity for an excellent historical drama is missed.
ElMaruecan82
For someone who grew up reading "Lucky Luke" comic-books, I could always spot which film inspired a specific adventure, but in the case of "How the West Was Won", it's almost a kaleidoscope of all the Western archetypes the authors used to nourish their fertile imagination. Indeed, there's an adventure about pioneers, homesteaders, telegraphs, dance-halls, Pony Express, Indian Wars, desperadoes and so on and so forth. Indeed, you could become an expert about the Old West just by reading the entire collection of "Lucky Luke", a Belgian creation, and yeah, I mean it.But the merit of "Lucky Luke" is to have used the Western archetypes as backdrops to stories meant primarily to entertain, the trap where "How the West Was Won" has fallen is that the stories become the backdrop and it doesn't quite work. Sure, you expect a film to provide the elements of its genre, but the story is here to elevate it beyond the obligatory archetypes. There's a root within the requirements of the genre but the reach of a film should be more global, except for a documentary. Indeed, would I have enjoyed a documentary on the same subject better than the same thing being wrapped up into artificial stories? probably.There was a problem with the overall approach because the film had the epic-scale, the material, the budget and the potential to be one of the best documentaries of its era, it would have been an ahead of its time approach, but instead, it chose to be an ode to old-school Hollywood clichés, which makes it even more obsolete than the stuff it pays tribute to. A shame because as soon as the opening monologue starts with the reassuring voice of Spencer Tracy, and presents the vertiginous aerial shots of the Rocky Mountain worthy of a National Geography program, we feel we're onto something special, sure, there are a few lexical blows to political correctness mentioning how the land was taken from the primitive man, but at least it acknowledges that it was taken, and after all, in a film that makes such a glorious ode to "progress" and civilization, what did we expect?One of the film's most beautiful shots, if not the most, occurs right in the beginning when a fur-trapper is slowly paddling over a canal, giving us enough time to admire how the mountains in the landscape are beautifully reflected in the river. The film was known for having been shot in Cinerama, a process that needed the used of three cameras to produce a sort of king-size image, in reality the superposition of three different shots with various tricks used to dissimulate the intersections but the result could be spectacular, as it really gave you the "big picture", pun intended. In that magnificent image of the fur-trapper, you forget that you're actually watching James Stewart. Which is the point of a good film, forget about the cast, just enjoy it.The problem is… this feeling doesn't last, and the obsession with reuniting all the Hollywood stars in that one big, epic scale undermines the immersion into the story. To a certain degree, you're busy trying to spot the actors than what their characters say or do. You name them, they're all here, as a matter of fact, it would be easier to tell you who is not in this picture. This confines to pure contrivance and affects the enjoyment. By choosing to focus on one family saga whose center of gravity is Debbie Reynolds who starts as the free-spirited daughter of Puritan pioneers, then a dance-hall performer, then the wife of a gambler, the film kind of loses that epic flavor and the whole Cinerama that had a point in the earlier scenes becomes a shortcoming rather than a strength, because the actors had to adapt to that new format, creating very awkward situations.But as a way to justify the heavy and expensive process that bothered all three directors involved in the film, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall and John Ford to name them, the film still offers all the big-scale archetypes of the Western genre, desperately trying to enrobe it with some 'history' flavor while there's more originality in five minutes of any classic Western than the three-hour platitudes and clichés we're forced to endure. And it's not the least to say that all the prestigious filmmakers involved in the project had quite an unpleasant experience and had to bother with three cameras for a movie whose whole publicity relied on the parade of stars it featured. Still, except for the big names like John Wayne and if it wasn't for Henry Fonda's voice, I would not have recognized her.Yet this film is a classic of the genre and even won the Best Screenplay, but it was made at a time where a young filmmaker named Sergio Leone would dust off the Technicolor heritage of old-school Western and gives it a new fresh of breath, using even Henry Fonda in a role worthier of his talent, even John Wayne would throw away his heroic monologues and play his Oscar-winning Rooster Cogburn in Hathaway's "True Grit", John Ford would have made another anti-Western with "Liberty Valance". "How the West Was Won" sounds more like a self-conscious, even pretentious, tribute to a genre that deserved just a good story or at least a simple documentary.No offense, but why go to such extents to only make the Civil War less significant than Debbie Reynolds' story, and have that ridiculous shootout climax? The West deserved better and the film isn't even enjoyable as a guilty pleasure. It even believes it's so great it had to be made even longer with the usual 'preludes' and 'interludes' as if it was the equivalent of "Gone With the Wind" and "Lawrence of Arabia". Well, the only spot it deserves among these masterpieces is in AFI's Top 25 Scores, the music is the only classic thing about it.
utgard14
Epic western filmed in Cinerama. I wish I could have seen it in that format. I saw it on TV and, while it's still a beautiful-looking movie, I can only imagine how much richer the experience would have been to see it in theaters. While not an anthology film exactly, it's similar in that it is a series of different stories tied together by one family over about forty or fifty years of American history. It's all narrated by Spencer Tracy. The first segment deals with a family of settlers heading west. They encounter a mountain man (James Stewart) and one of the daughters (Carroll Baker) falls in love with him. But they all run afoul of a gang of river pirates run by Walter Brennan.The other daughter (Debbie Reynolds), scared away from the West by the hardships her family had to endure, eventually becomes a dance hall girl and is the star of the second segment. Reynolds is left an inheritance by a former customer but in order to collect it, she must head to California. So she joins a wagon train across the plains to the West and is romanced by Robert Preston and Gregory Peck. These first two segments were directed by Henry Hathaway. The first is probably the film's best but the second is the weakest.The third part is directed by John Ford. Stewart and Baker's son, played by George Peppard, follows his father into the war and fights in the Battle of Shiloh. John Wayne plays William Tecumseh Sherman. This is a good segment but seemed short. The fourth segment follows Peppard after the war as he is now part of the U.S. Cavalry. This part deals with the construction of the railroads west, as well as the Pony Express and the telegraph. It features Henry Fonda as a buffalo hunter and Richard Widmark as a railroad tycoon. This segment was directed by George Marshall. It's decent but not the strongest.The final segment is again directed by Hathaway. Debbie Reynolds' character is now a widow and moves to Arizona, where she has invited Peppard and his family to live with her on her ranch. But Peppard, a former lawman at this point, must stop outlaw Eli Wallach from robbing a train. Lee J. Cobb and Carolyn Jones are also in this part. Not a particularly strong segment but a little better than the second one. All in all, a good movie but perhaps it doesn't reach quite what it was aiming for. It definitely has one of the most impressive casts in film history.
