Making of a Masterpiece: The Big Country (1958), Part 2

by Brent Reid

The Big Picture

  • Examining technicalities of bringing Wyler’s iconic Western to the big screen
  • Director’s Cold War allegory sets in opposition little people with big problems
  • Lust, greed and egos clash with tragic results amidst a vast uncaring landscape
  • Renowned graphic designer Saul Bass created the much-imitated opening credits
  • Magnificent widescreen epic captured with the innovative new Technirama process
  • Contrary to doggedly persistent rumours, the movie only ever had a mono soundtrack
  • Dynamic score originally recorded in crude stereo then junked after being mixed to mono

The Big CountryMaking of a Masterpiece, Part 2 | Collectors Guide, Part 2

Charlton Heston, Carroll Baker and Gregory Peck in The Big Country (1958, dir. William Wyler) original publicity art by David Passalacqua

Heston, Baker and peck in original publicity art by David Passalacqua (uncropped); the darker skirt and Peck’s trouser leg were drawn on paper, now foxed, pasted onto board.


Contents


The Big Tale

The Big Country (1958) L-R: Charlton Heston (seated), Burl Ives (standing), Alfonso Bedoya, Jean Simmons, Gregory Peck, Carroll Baker, Charles Bickford, Chuck Connors and director William Wyler

L-R: Charlton Heston (seated), Burl Ives (standing), Alfonso Bedoya, Jean Simmons, Gregory Peck, Carroll Baker, Charles Bickford, Chuck Connors and director William Wyler.

One of Hollywood’s greatest directors teams with a cast of incredible screen legends for this bold, sweeping tale of a ship’s captain who ventures west to find a hotbed of jealousy, hatred and dangerous rivalries. As the reluctant hero is thrust into the maelstrom, he must summon all of his resolve to save not only his own life, but also the life of the woman he loves.

Four-time Academy Award winner William Wyler directs this action-packed adventure (scripted by James R. Webb, Sy Bartlett and Robert Wilder) that triumphs as “a work of art” (Motion Picture Herald). Starring Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons, Chuck Connors and Burl Ives (in an Oscar-winning performance**), this magnificently entertaining epic will take your breath away with unbridled suspense, exhilarating excitement and explosive drama on a grand scale.

*1942: Director, Mrs. Miniver; 1946: The Best Years of Our Lives; 1959: Ben-Hur; 1965: Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award
**1958: Best Supporting Actor

Did you know?
In the legendary fight sequence between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston, director William Wyler focused three Technirama cameras on the actors as they slugged it out over a fourteen-hour period. Temperatures soared into the nineties on the Stockton, California location, and when Wyler finally called “Cut!” the exhausted Peck and Heston collapsed to the ground. “I think Willie just hates actors,” gasped Heston. – US MGM/UA VHS (1997)


The Big Titles

Saul Bass: Let me tell you the two things I was trying to accomplish with my work on The Big Country. My fundamental intent was to create a sort of prologue for the film; to set up the fact that the story talks about Gregory Peck coming out from the East. It’s all well and good to say that, but an understanding what the enormity of that journey meant in those days, and the commitment it involved, had to be represented by illustrating the amount of time it took.

So what I was attempting to create in a couple of minutes was the sense of this three month journey, emphasizing the enormous concentration of energy that went into it, contrasted with the minimal amount of traversed area. Intercutting the furious activity of the hooves, the manes flying, and the wheels turning, with long shots of the stagecoach barely moving on the horizon. A tiny dot moving an eighth of an inch on the screen—cut back to this furious energy… they are charging through that desert—cut back again and they move another little bit on the horizon…

That was the first thing I was trying to accomplish, so that when Peck arrives, you psychologically understand—not intellectually, but emotionally—how dramatically he has left his environment and entered a new one. The second was to try to establish the absolute isolation of this community, which is very well done afterwards by Willie Wyler with his pictorial sense. Today, a guy gets on a plane, and in a few hours he’s in a new environment. It wasn’t like that. And by emphasizing the isolation that this community had from the civilized, more sophisticated areas of the country, it also emphasized the notions of ethics, law, and government—the idea of ethical conduct governed by a lawful society—which doesn’t exist there. The title was designed to lay this groundwork so that when Willie got into the film, you really understood basic issues.

Film title and graphic designer Saul Bass in the studio

Saul Bass in the studio

Roy Frumkes: At what point in production did you create the title sequence?

SB: While they were shooting in Stockton, and that’s an interesting story. I needed to use the stagecoach, but Willie told me “You can have it for a day; no more.” I wanted it to be so far away that you almost didn’t see it, and the way you knew it was there, and had the sense of that echo of furious activity, was the unfolding cloud of dust. But there was a light rain the night before, and after the rain there was no dust! I only had the coach for that day. What was I supposed to do? I got a bright idea. I sent the grips into Stockton, and they brought back twenty or thirty bags of flour. I cut a hole in the back of the stagecoach, and I had two guys dumping the flour out as it raced along. was perfect. The flour billowed up like a real dust cloud.

RF: My favorite shot in the sequence is the high angle of the wagon wheel, and it seems as if prairie dust is pouring off the hub. Was that more of your flour?

SB: You bet your ass it was!

The Big Country (1958, dir. William Wyler) caricature by Al Hirschfeld

1958 caricature by Al Hirschfeld

RF: Your title sequence truly sets the tone for the whole film, even in terms of spatial design. The tight closeups followed by extreme longshots is a visual choice Wyler also made throughout. And yet you seemed to arrive at this independently, without having seen his footage. How much input did Wyler and Peck actually give you? Did you see a script?

SB: I read the script, of course. But did Willie or Greg have any input? Not really. This was a concept that I came up with. I laid out the storyboard for them, and they agreed with it.

You have to understand my view of what a title is… and I must say that my point of view was corrupted as time went on, not by me, but by others who picked it up as a fashionable rather than a thoughtful thing to do. My view of the title initially was that it had to make a contribution either to framing the film, or creating the attitude that was appropriate for the film. With The Man with the Golden Arm, for instance, the title created a mood. Taking it to another level, the mood could become a metaphor.

In Spartacus, the Roman statuary, which started simply as a historical identification, eventually turned into an extremely important metaphor about the disintegration and decay of Rome. Toward the end of the title the arrogant sculpted heads were superimposed over each other, becoming gossamer-like… they no longer had the solidity of stone sculpture, and finally the last one disintegrated. So that was title-as-metaphor. In the case of The Big Country, I was dealing with what I call “The Time Before,” which I had experimented with previously with The Victors [and later with the prologue to West Side Story] to set up a background for the viewers’ understanding of what was going on.

I never saw titles as being decorative appendages. They had to serve a purpose. And so I had to read the script carefully, talk with the director, and think about the film, to get a sense of what the subtext was. All films deal with events, but these events add up to something, and that’s what we refer to as the subtext of the piece. What’s the point it’s making? What’s the gestalt that emerges from this whole series of events?

The Big Country aka Les Grands Espaces (1958, dir. William Wyler) French cinema display

French cinema display

That was how I approached it. Then, when the stuff began to look quite useful and valuable, every producer and director who felt they had an important film said “Hey, we should have a snazzy title up front,” and you began to see a lot of titles which were irrelevant tapdancing. It was about that time that I lost interest in the whole thing, and went on to make short films and direct sequences within films.

All this happened a long time ago, when I was a good deal younger, and in a way, a sort of idiot savant. While I was tremendously thrilled and respectful to be dealing with people like Wyler and Hitch, and Stanley [Kubrick], I was too young and naïve, and buried in my own work, to fully understand the contribution I was making to film. I’m far more aware of the implications today. I understand what a profound effect it had on a director to entrust us with a beginning of this kind. We weren’t just creating topography—we were making a statement.


The Big Picture

In the early 1950s, a new technology called television caused movie theater closures and box office losses all over the country. The movie studios looked for different ways to lure the public back to theaters, and what resulted was the rapid change in the shape and size of cinema screens, which previously had been dominated by the square 1.33:1 aspect ratio format. CinemaScope, Todd-AO, VistaVision and SuperScope were just a few of the processes developed in hopes of attracting moviegoers.

During this time, the Technicolor Corporation introduced a widescreen system based on the horizontal VistaVision eight-perforation format that Paramount introduced in 1954 with White Christmas. Incorporating a 1.5% squeeze in photography, Technirama was introduced to the industry in 1956. The squeeze, or compression, would be removed at the laboratory stage, yielding a wide image similar to the proportions of CinemaScope, and then squeezed again at the ratio of 2:1 for 35mm anamorphic release prints. The Technirama process could also be used to create a 65mm printing element for 70mm roadshow releases in the guise of Super Technirama 70. Although Technirama pictures were not photographed on 65mm film stock, definition was improved dramatically due to the size of the negative area. The Big Country, shot in 1957 [on 35mm 8-perf Eastman Kodak 5248], was among the first films to utilize this new process.

Widescreen Museum: Technirama

Technirama camera on a film set

The huge Technirama camera on set; more, more, more!

In 1953, 20th Century Fox introduced (with CinemaScope) discrete stereophonic sound on film. Narrow magnetic stripes ran down each side of the film, with four tracks in all. These tracks contained left, center and right channels for placement behind the screen. A [mono] surround channel was also provided for ambient effects around the theater.

At the beginning, no standard photographic optical track was included as a mono source backup should the magnetic system fail. The advantage of magnetic oxide tracks was improved frequency response over the optical tracks, which had dominated the industry since the dawn of sound. Unfortunately, magnetic sound prints were vulnerable to strong electrical fields or badly-serviced magnetic reproducing equipment. Consequently, they could take on inherent problems such as partial erasure, loss of high frequencies and excessive noise. Theater managers were quick to complain about the risks of having magnetic-only prints, which resulted in the development of a combined print known as a CinemaScope mag-optical print.

Any other studio wishing to utilize the CinemaScope program for their productions had to pay a licensing fee to 20th Century Fox. This included all anamorphic lenses for photography and the use of stereophonic sound on film. This forced most studios to develop their own widescreen processes, which incorporated different methods of presenting stereophonic sound.

UK Technirama promotional leaflet by Technicolor

Due to records of studios’ original sound mixes being lost or destroyed over the years, several titles have become the center of controversy with regard to whether they were originally released in stereo. The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Vikings, The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and The Big Country are a few of which no evidence can be found. The Big Country was dubbed at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood. Unlike Todd-AO, which was equipped with six-track recording capability, Goldwyn was only equipped to dub in four-track stereo. A three-track recorder contained left, center and right channels, with a separate roll for the surround track, interlocked to maintain perfect synchronization. MGM also utilized a similar system on their product in the ’50s and ’60s. Again, no records seem to have survived stating that The Big Country was released in stereo. Only a monaural magnetic track exists today, derived from the original dubbing sessions in 1958.

For many years before stereo reached theaters on a regular basis, background music for motion pictures was recorded onto separate tracks. In the days of optical sound, two or more recorders, representing individual microphone perspectives of the orchestra, were mechanically interlocked in perfect synchronization. Surprisingly, this method of recording separate sections of the orchestra dates back to the 1930s. When recording on 35mm magnetic film was introduced in the ’50s, music separations (known as multi-track music) were incorporated onto one piece of film. Any number of tracks (though usually limited to six) could be accommodated, depending on the complexity of the production. Three- track was the norm for an average film.

80 Years of Cinema Surround Sound | Sound Formats Explained | Evolution of Cinema Surround Sound

The purpose of multi-track music is to separate the sections of the orchestra so that during the final dubbing the mixers have the flexibility to alter the balance of the different components. These multi-channel tracks would then be mixed down to monaural when combined with the sound effects and dialogue. The multi-track music recordings were held after the completion of a film for an indefinite period. Ordinarily, studio-owned features retained the final composite mix (magnetic stereo, three-track mono or combined mono), a stereo or mono music track, an effects track for foreign releases, and an optical mono mix. All other dubbing sound elements were usually dismantled and saved. In the case of independently owned films, the materials were usually removed from the studio and stored elsewhere.

Today, nearly all movies are stereo regardless of the subject matter, and to the generations of moviegoers who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, stereo is a way of life. The Big Country certainly qualified for the splendor of a stereophonic mix to match the grandeur of its settings and Jerome Moross’s landmark score. And while evidence has recently confirmed that the music [but not the film] was originally recorded multi-track, the separate music track on the LaserDisc [and remastered German] edition is monaural, taken from a 1/4″ magnetic tape mixed down from the missing stereo units in 1958. An artificial stereo soundtrack album of Moross’s score was prepared shortly after the film’s release. We present on this new widescreen transfer the original 1958 monaural mix. – US MGM/UA LD (1996) by Stephen Pickardbio, pts 2/3/4/5HTF | BritMovie

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