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How the West Was Won | Classification: Western Directed: - Henry Hathaway - John Ford - Richard Thorpe - George Marshall Actors/Actresses: - Henry Fonda - Gregory Peck - James Stewart - John Wayne DVD format could have been improved I saw this film in Cinerama in Hollywood at least 3 times and will never forget the spectacluar panarama effects, something I know DVD cannnot entirely capture, yet, even still, the ratio on DVD is all wrong. Characters are left out of some shots. Complete action not included. Why! We purchase wide screen additions specifically for the FULL SCREEN effect yet many of the scenes are cropped. Parts of the sound track are fuzzy in tone, too, which distracts from an otherwide great epic. Why do manufacturer's do this to us? the technonogy today can correct these mishaps. Two still photgraphs, one during the Overture and the other during the intermission music... Da! Boring shots any amature could capture. Why not include the fine art work, the splendid posters that indentified this great film at the time. We film buffs want to see How The West Was Won paraphernalia. The film is a history lesson in itself which I shared with my 11 y.o. son. But the concept of such a remarkable film, the story telling, and the actors that are no longer with us today, deserve a better version than what this DVD produces. Yet, again, the film is awesome, and Alfred Newman's score is dramatic and powerful and beautiful. One of his best. I give it 4 stars because of my recollections of a great Cinerma motion picture. A motion picture event! It could have been more, especially on DVD format. If only they could smooth out the picture... ...I'd give it five stars. As other reviewers have mentioned, the onscreen "seams" left over by the three-camera Cinerama project are distracting, and of course the film loses something by transfer to a small TV screen. But otherwise it is both a classic and a family epic. (If you can find the souvenier program book, it's well worth a look; mine, among other things, tells me that the costumes--literally thousands--were all sewn by hand because the Cinerama cameras picked up on machine sewing. And Louis L'Amour's novelization, which may still be available secondhand, both follows the script closely and expands upon some of the information given on-screen.) Beginning c. 1830 with Zebulon Prescott (Malden), his wife and four children (two nubile daughters, a near-grown son and an ailing smaller one) on their way "down the O-hi-o," it continues through elder daughter Eve's (Baker) love-at-first-sight meeting with eastbound mountain man Linus Rawlings (Stewart), younger sister Lilith's (Reynolds) trek West during the Gold Rush and her eventual union with gambler Cleve Van Valen (Peck), the service of Eve's elder son Zeb (Peppard) in the Civil War and later in the Cavalry guarding the transcontinental railroad a-building, and finally his reunion with widowed Aunt Lilith, who wants him to take over as foreman of her ranch in Arizona Territory, and a confrontation with old nemesis outlaw Charley Gant (Wallach) that climaxes in a heart-in-your-mouth gun duel aboard a runaway train. Indeed, each of the five major divisions of the movie includes one or more edge-of-the-seat sequences--a brawl with river pirates and a deadly raft trip through rapids in the first, a running battle between Cheyenne raiders and a westbound wagon train in the second, battle sequences full of cannonades and cavalry charges in the third, and a buffalo stampede through the railroad construction camp in the fourth. Like "Around the World in 80 Days," another favorite of mine, it also seethes with Big Names in cameo roles, among the best of them being Fonda as buffalo hunter and ex-mountain-man Jethro Stuart, Ritter as the man-hungry lady blacksmith Aggie Clegg, Brennan as the leader of the pirate gang, Preston as wagonmaster Roger Morgan, and Widmark as heartless rail construction boss Mike King. (Spencer Tracy's rich-voiced narration is another plus.) By relating the westward movement to the experiences of a single family, it succeeds as a drama (though necessarily an episodic one) and makes the history seem more accessible. The whole family should enjoy it. America's own "Triumph of the Will" -- Leni would be proud! In a remarkable coincidence, the same day I saw "How the West was Won" at the Seattle Cinerama (03/01/03), the History Channel aired a program on the history of the wheel. One of the talking-head experts opined that the wheel's invention marked a fundamental change in human thought -- not only was there a technological solution to every problem, but nature could be bent to human will, forced to reveal her secrets and serve us. This is the theme of "How the West was Won." It starts with the title, and extends to nearly everything in the film. The narration tells us that the land had to be wrested from nature and from the "primitive people" who inhabited (and by implication, infested) it. The chorus is continually singing about how "we're headed for the promised land" and those who are willing to work hard will be richly rewarded (except the Chinese railroad laborers, of course). We were justified in overrunning the continent because we are actually "doing something" with it -- as opposed to the Indians, who merely lived there in harmony with nature. Not having invented the wheel, they saw no further possibilities. James Webb's script "How the West was Won" is social propaganda, plain and simple. It's the kind of film that could change Osama Bin Laden's mind about destroying the US. (Maybe the State Department could arrange a screening...) As a movie, there's no denying "How the West was Won" is wildly entertaining. Simply as cinematic spectacle, it works magnificently. There are films (such as "2001" and "Lawrence of Arabia") that even the finest video transfer cannot do justice to, and this is one of them. Sitting in the first few rows, you're so close to the screen that you can't take in all of it at once. When the camera tracks into a scene, the sense of physical motion is uncanny. (Can you say "stimulation of peripheral vision"? Sure you can.) And if you haven't seen a buffalo stampede, or a train crash, or a row of cannons firing in sequence on a (roughly) 30' by 90' screen -- well, you haven't lived, cinematically-wise. Story-wise, there's so much material to cover the script cannot begin to do it justice, even in a film lasting 2½ hours. Characters are more types than individuals, and almost every performer is cast to type. (Eli Wallach, in particular, gets to do his "crazy Mexican outlaw" shtick, though without an accent.) It's only the efficiency and focus of the script that keeps th Buy How The West Was Won at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  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