The Way West (1967)

Wonderful character development!

hyped garbage

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

In 1843 Missouri, hot-headed senator Kirk Douglas leads a large group of chosen people across rugged terrain to start "a new Jerusalem" in Oregon; he picks a half-blind pioneer scout (mourning the death of his Indian wife!) to help lead them, but immediately clashes with a family man over incidental matters; meanwhile, a sex-starved teenage girl has a fling with a married man, resulting in personal tragedy and an Indian attack (don't ask). A small pox outbreak is falsely reported, there's a wedding, a frigid woman goes insane, and the trail comes to an end at the Grand Canyon. A.B. Guthrie, Jr.'s book becomes somewhat besotted western epic with star-names, mixing vulgar jokes and inanities with ripe old clichés. A voice-over narration and a patriotic song come clean out of nowhere, while snarling Douglas blames himself for a death and asks a servant to whip him. It's cheap and low-brow all the way, but most viewers in the mood for a picture such as this probably won't be disappointed. There are some solid elements worth mentioning: William H. Clothier's outdoor cinematography is fine in the old-fashioned sense; and, although Bronislau Kaper whips up a dusty frenzy with his ridiculous score, the pacing is jaunty throughout and the wagons roll along at a fast clip. Douglas and Richard Widmark manage to retain their movie star allure, though Robert Mitchum was looking haggard by this time (and his performance is intentionally forgettable--he cancels out all his interest in the proceedings with one heavy sigh). Sally Field makes an inauspicious movie debut which I'm fairly certain she'd rather forget, but Lola Albright has a pleasing smile and Michael Witney does well as the handsome married man who can't get his wife to submit...but why does he shoot blindly into a rustling bush at night when it could have been his wife spying on him? Perhaps he was hoping it was! **1/2 from ****

You know a movie's in trouble when the best thing you can say about it is the scenery's nice.Well,there's plenty of nice scenery in "The way West". Sadly the rest of it's pretty lousy.Kirk Douglas is so bad that if I was a Texas Tadlock I'd be thinking of suing.It's the sort of thing that gives ancestors a bad name.Robert Mitchum looks as though is is just waiting for the cheque to clear - he barely bothers to turn up in some of his scenes,and Richard Widmark shoulda gone easy on the Diazepam (T.M.) Lola Albright looks like she thought she'd signed on for a Disney picture. And poor little Sally Field,long before she realised that we do love her,plays a pioneers' daughter rather keen on a different sort of pioneering.What a mess it all is. Epic Westerns were dead by 1967 - hell,they were probably dead by 1957,but they just hadn't laid down.You could no longer stick a number of big name actors in a wagon train and let them do their thing.Unfortunately,no one had told Andrew V.McClaglen.He was competent enough given more structured material, viz - "Shenandoah",but "The Way West" just rambles on in a perfunctory manner while the audience slumbers. Let's tiptoe away and let them rest until Clint Eastwood comes along to wake them with a kiss.

This film had all to come out as a fine western: big budget, top stars, impressive outdoor locations, great color photography, acceptable stories around the main plot, interesting characters, action scenes and so on. But its a fact it didn't make it and turned out as just an average product and in my opinion director Andrew MacLaglen has to do with it.MacLaglen never was a very imaginative director. He just sort of pushed his films ahead following the scripts and taking no risks at all by including some personal touches or feelings; that's why it is hard to find really bad pictures in his filmography but you also won't find higher than average films either (other examples are "The Undefeated" with John Wayne and Rock Hudson; "The Last Hard Men" with Charton Heston, James Coburn and Barbara Hershey; "The Sea Wolves" with Gregory Peck, David Niven and Roger Moore). "The Way West" is a classical MacLaglen movie, just standard, average and light with no big flaws and no major highlights either.Kirk Douglas, Richard Widmark and Robert Mitchum are good but wasted in the leading parts. Sally Field's early role as a young girl too avid for man's favors showed she had talent and a promising career she certainly fulfilled.All in all, "The Way West" is just for western fans to spend a couple of hours without much expectations.

An attempt at an epic old-style Western from a journeyman director - he made a better stab at it later with Chisum. Perhaps its the lack of John Wayne and the rest of the John Ford rep but this is a film of striking set-pieces separated by far too much time! Douglas and Widmark both do some stirring scenery-chewing but this is a melodrama so that is allowed. Mitchum is laid-back and laconic as only Mitchum could be - and looks wonderful as ever. Not sure why others were surprised to see him in a Western - Mitchum made his share and some very good ones too (El Dorado, Five Card Stud and Bandido are all favourites of mine). The Fort Hall sequence is fun - just as a reminder that the Sioux and the French weren't the only folks that got there before the Americans! ;-)