Whenever it's on I pick it up from wherever it is. I can recite lines from it. Heston's best performance in my opinion, and supposedly his favorite as well. He just breaks my heart.
shareI saw this one in the theater during it's original release. There weren't many at the show I was at but, I REALLY enjoyed this movie. From start to finish, it was and IS a wonderfully realistic cowboy movie. I enjoyed Anthony Zerbe's character, Dutchy, quite a lot too. Almost a perfect movie...score kind of sucked.
Just snake a tube down her throat and I'll be there in about four hours! caddieshack
I have never been able to resist watching this movie yet again. To me it seems to realistically depict the life of a cowboy/drifter which has been romanticized many times but seldom shown as done here. It strikes a chord with me.
shareI think it was one of Heston's best roles. That is saying a lot too. He was just perfect. The only thing I didn't really like..and it's barely noticeable is the score...it was too jazzy...I wonder how it would have played with a traditional western soundtrack? Lee Evans and Dutchy were really good. The gal that played the Dr's wife...was Heston's wife in real life.
Just snake a tube down her throat and I'll be there in about four hours! caddieshack
To me, the score worked, because it had a rather depressing effect on me, which reflected the dismal lifestyle cowboys had to deal with at that time. The saddest thing was that his lifestyle seemed to ultimately condemn him to a lonely life. That's not the way it is in the movies that glorify the old west. I can identify with it a little because in younger days I had several jobs on farms, and even a ranch job. These are all right for teens and young twenties, but you need something better as an adult.
shareit certainly wan't a Big Country bombastic, almost spiritual piece, that's for sure. Living in the line shack for a winter...wow..how boring could that have been? He couldn't read nor write so he just had himself/imagination and no one to talk too...the woman and her son had to be a welcome sight for his sore eyes and good company to boot.
Just snake a tube down her throat and I'll be there in about four hours! caddieshack
The music for "The Big Country", by Jerome Moross, was one of the greatest film scores in the history of movies.
shareyou know it might be one of the very first Revisionist westerns made. Nothing glamorous..like the nasty, grimy tavern watering hole he first met the woman and the child at when they were with the conman 'taking' her west. It really was a beautiful story.
Just snake a tube down her throat and I'll be there in about four hours! caddieshack
It was revisionist, if only because of how glamorous our movie-watching interpretation of the old west would have been at the time. This is one of the few movies which explored the cowboy myth and did a good job at debunking it without even trying. Then there's the fact that the cowboy doesn't get the girl in the end precisely because he is the cowboy and it's all he's known.
It's truly a terrific movie with a wonderful script. Will Penny is one of the most underrated movies I can think of. Too few have heard of it.
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Stripping under the name Malcolm Sex, I pleased the ladies by any means necessary.
It's not "revisionist" at all, just honest.
The first fifteen minutes or so are probably the most accurate depiction of what it was REALLY like to be a cowboy ever put on screen -- men cold, uncomfortable, sleeping on the ground, mooching biscuits off a chuck wagon, subject to illness, accident, with no safety net if they get hurt, and no future when they're no longer able to work, something of a metaphor for what life would be like for modern Americans if certain politicians, and the billionaires who fund them, had their way and could eliminate Social Security and Medicare. It gives the lie to the notion, created and perpetuated by Hollywood, that the Old West was full of gunslingers and thundering hooves. In fact, life was cold, hot, uncmfortable, brutal and, mainly, short.
The rest of the film is fairly conventional melodrama, but done extremely well. The film isn't afraid to be melancholy and bittersweet and the studio, to its credit, allowed writer-director Tom Gries to take down that path with no convenient happy ending.
Realistic picture of a life that no.doubt had its points but in
which there was really no hope or future in the long term. How long would 50-year-old Will have had to live? I believe he should have settled down with his new family and tried to.get " static" work on a farm or ranch.Surely then it was work till you drop?
Agreed. Heston brings a touching dignity and resolute conviction to the role of Will Penny. The realistic downbeat ending is simply devastating.
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