The Big Trail (1930)
Drama, Western • 2h 2m
Director: Raoul Walsh
Cast: John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall, Tyrone Power Sr., David Rollins, Frederick Burton, Ian Keith, Charles Stevens, Louise Carver, Victor Adamson, Phyllis Bainbridge, Chief John Big Tree, Ward Bond, Nora Bush, Martin Cichy, Don Coleman, Curley Dresden, Adabelle Driver, Emslie Emerson, Alphonse Ethier, Theresa Garon, William Gillis, Dannie Mac Grant, Virginia Griffith, Marcia Harris, Marilyn Harris, Al Haskell, DeWitt Jennings, Jack Kenny, Bert Keys, John Lawrence Kneedy, Ann Kunde, Marjorie Leet, Marion Lessing, Frances Martinson, Frank McGrath, William V. Mong, Pete Morrison, Beth Nagel, Dodo Newton, Artie Ortego, Jack Padjan, Helen Parrish, Harvey Parry, Jack Peabody, Russ Powell, Frank Rainboth, Apache Bill Russell, Lucile Sewall, Andy Shuford, Tom Smith, Jean Stoddard, Gertrude Van Lent, Lucille Van Lent, Sherwood Bailey, Jay Berger, George Ernest, Jackie Lowe, Billy Naylor, Buster Phelps, Buster Slaven, Whitehorse, Bill Wilson
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About the film
Young scout Breck Coleman leads a wagon train along the dangerous trail to Oregon as he tries to get the affection of the beautiful pioneer Ruth Cameron and plans his revenge on the harsh scoundrels who murdered a friend of his in the past.
- Featured Lists
- National Film Registry
Year of Induction: 2006
- Alternative Titles
- Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail
Director: Richard Brooks
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray > Criterion 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray
1991 Orion LaserDisc vs 2024 Arrow 4K Blu-ray
4K restoration from safety preservation elements
Director: Elaine May
Cinématographe 4K Blu-ray > MoC > Olive Films. From nicolas:
The master is good but it’s not that big an upgrade from the Olive Films disc and Vinegar Syndrome’ encode has some blocky highlights. A shame that they didn’t hire David Mackenzie here.
Cinématographe has unnecessary noise gating not present on the previous releases.
Director: Sidney Lumet
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
1.85:1: Kino Lorber 4K / Capelight 4K
1.66:1: Criterion 4K but low pass filtered
Comparison between the 4Ks, Criterion on the AR choice
Other discs have unnecessary filtering and sound worse, the difference isn't substantial but audible
Director: Dennis Hopper
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Flicker Alley 4K confirmed for 2027 https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24404584&postcount=1
MoC audio is better https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=225532&page=3
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Included in the Complete Kubrick box set with FiM encode of the same master from the Universal release without the filtering.
DTS:X mix on Universal 4K Blu-ray most closely approximates original surround mix
Criterion DVD and Universal 4K Blu-ray has additional features not found on the Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
WB 4K
Sources: YouTube (opens in a new tab)
An undeniably significant improvement from the BD yet still severely flawed. See DFIC's review.
4K restoration from original technicolor negatives
Director: Raoul Walsh
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Raoul Walsh
Sources: moma.org (opens in a new tab)
New restoration by MoMA and Film Foundation https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/11558 no release yet
Director: Raoul Walsh
Director: Raoul Walsh
Director: Mike Judge
Video format: 4K Streaming
Director: David Fincher
Digipack release includes an Amazing Amy book the standard edition doesn’t have.
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Video format: 4K Streaming
Director: Terence Young
WB 4K Blu-ray despite frozen grain
Director: David Butler
Video format: Only Unofficial Sources
Sources: archive.org (opens in a new tab)
The DVD isn't an official one, and according to a user review on Amazon:
This DVD comes from Archive.org, where the movie can be viewed for free. The original source, comes from the Fox Movie Channel
Director: James Cameron
Sources: movie-censorship.com (opens in a new tab)
Fox Blu-ray for original cuts without the extra scene added in the re-release and AI upscaling
Newer Blu-ray/4K has the extra scene, but is poor and has excessive AI upscaling
An additional scene was added to the ending of the movie in the 2022 re-release: https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=493908
Director: Peter Faiman
Australia Cut: Australia Fox DVD
International Cut: Paramount Blu-ray
Encore Cut: Germany Winkler Film 4K Blu-ray, censored but good encoding
Sources: movie-censorship.com (opens in a new tab)
US Paramount 4K Blu-ray, is the International US Cut and not the Encore Cut
Australia Cut: Laserdisc
The film exists in three versions:
- the original Australian cut (~104 minutes at 24fps/~100 minutes at 25fps);
- the American/international version (~98 minutes at 24fps/~94 minutes at 25fps) trimming some exposition in the Outback first half of the film and some shorter extensions of a few seconds in the New York section, altering some of the dialogue – including censoring a "fuck" to "screw" – but featuring one additional dialogue extension not in the Australian version (a comparison of the two cuts can be found at Movie Censorship);
- the Australian Encore Cut (~95 minutes at 24fps/~91 minutes at 25fps) which uses the international version source so it already has those alterations but also removes approximately three minutes consisting of parts of two scenes featuring Mick grabbing the crotch of a cross-dressing prostitute and a later sequence when he does the same thing at a party to a woman with a deep voice (a comparison of the international version and the Encore Cut can be found at Movie Censorship).
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