This was John Wayne's first shot at a big-budget, 'A' movie. It was a box-office bust for a number of reasons and he wasn't given another chance until "Stagecoach," which finally established him as a star after over a decade in the business. "The Big Trail" is pretty tough sledding on the small screen. It's deathly slow, none of the characters are interesting, and then of course, there's the sound.
We are still very much in the early days of talkies here, and the film's style closely resembles that of a classic Hollywood silent. Huge, elaborate sets provide enormous depth-of-field, but close-ups are few and far between. The blocking is almost always side-by-side 2-shots. In other words, if there are two people having a conversation, they're both going to be on-screen. I counted exactly one shot-reverse shot sequence, and there are no over the shoulder shots to speak of.
Truthfully, at this point in Hollywood history directors had considerably more freedom making silent films because they didn't have to worry about placing microphones everywhere. It's almost as if they feared that viewers would not be able to follow a conversation unless all parties involved were in the shot.
One factor is certainly the novelty of naturalistic sound, seeing the lips move at the right time, while not having to lean into a flower pot or some other microphone "hiding" spot. "The Big Trail's" standard shot is a full body-head to toe-of the Duke and one other character standing either in a big room or a big field, with no obvious spot to hide a mic. Without the use of closeups it is extraordinarly difficult for any of the actors to develop their characters.
As for the story, we're dealing with a standard frontier tale-pushing the white folk deeper into the country than ever before. The film is dedicated to "the men and women who planted civilization in the wilderness," so you can guess there won't be much in the way of respect for native culture in Mr. Walsh's vision of history.
There are some stirring sights, including a Fitzcarraldo-esque lowering of wagons over a huge cliff, and a very nice two-minute re-uniting scene at the film's conclusion. Wayne acquits himself reasonably well, but his persona would not be fully developed for years to come. His female interest Marguerite Churchill is an intersting face, one that I have not previously encountered. She's a beauty, able to radiate no matter how far away the key-light and/or camera is.
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