THE COVERED WAGON (1923)

Granddaddy of the big-budget Wagons West pics, one of the great silent era hits between top-grossers BIRTH OF A NATION/’15 and THE BIG PARADE/’25, James Cruze’s stolid/solid style feels just right for this epic, a pioneers' pageant that holds up surprisingly well.  Especially where the surviving picture elements do full justice to Karl Brown’s Matthew Brady inspired cinematography.  Long dismissed when it was only available in various butchered editions, Kino Lorber’s restoration easily raises its profile with a more or less complete cut.  And while the adventures of its ‘Conestoga’ wagon travelers over the long, arduous trek to the West Coast have by now been done to death: rivers to ford; mountains to pass; scrub terrain to get thru; attacks by Native American tribes fearing the plow as much as the settlers; buffalo hunts; birth & death on the move; banjo tunes & nighttime socials; a romantic triangle between wagon train leaders for the prettiest gal on the drive (J. Warren Kerrigan; Alan Hale; Lois Wilson); Cruze captures even the dustiest trail with the fresh eye of first discovery.  Leading man Kerrigan, off the screen for three years, gets a star’s late entrance, a delayed appearance which only accentuates his over-groomed, pampered look (like an insult to the rest of the men), though by midpoint someone has washed off the pancake makeup, dirtied his outfit and mussed his hair so he’ll fit in better.  Everyone else very believable, even by modern standards, with outstanding (if corny) comic relief from Tully Marshall & Ernest Torrence, both ornery enough to have lived the life.  Hardly a faked shot to be seen in the whole pic (excluding some tricks to make a score of buffalo look like herds), and a documentary texture from having to solve the same logistical problems the pioneers faced in figuring out how to get past, around or thru all that splendid scenery.  For some, a tough act to follow.  Cruze never did live up to its promise; Kerrigan’s comeback proved brief. 

DOUBLE-BILL: Cruze returned to form with OLD IRONSIDES/’26, a grandly entertaining post-Revolutionary War seafaring epic, but a major flop when it came out at the height of the ‘roaring ‘twenties’, wrong pic at the wrong time.  OR: The first Talkie try at a big-budget Way West story, Raoul Walsh’s epic 70mm flop THE BIG TRAIL/’30 with young John Wayne killing his A-list career for a decade.