weezeralfalfa
One of 3 rather unconventional westerns that Kirk Douglas starred in the '51-52 period, the others being: "Along the Great Divide", and "The Big Sky". All 3 are among my favorite westerns, especially this one. Kirk has a great time playing a brazen egomaniacal tightwad Wisconsin lumber baron(Jim Fallon), preparing to move his operation to the newly opened giant redwoods of northern CA. This was a historical trend around 1890-1910, as the most desirable trees in the Great Lakes region had mostly been cut. There seems to be confusion by some reviewers whether giant sequoias or redwoods are involved. This is not helped by the claim by one of the actors that some of these trees are near 4000 years old. That is only true of sequoias, not the featured redwoods! This was a remake of the 1938 Warner's "Valley of the Giants": also shot in Technicolor: a rare luxury at that timeBig Jim Fallon is a charismatic heel, who always seems to be behind in paying his workers, while looking to maximize his near term profits. He offers them a percentage of profits, instead of wages, if they will accompany him to CA. Most sign on. Jim has each sign a claim for a parcel of prime redwood forest, partially occupied by a religious colony who are self-appointed guardians of the biggest oldest trees. Big Jim tries to get friendly with these folks, partially through his folksy charismatic side-kick: Yukon(Edgar Buchanan). He is soon smitten by Alicia, daughter of the colony leader, but is still determined to cut down the biggest trees, by utilizing a new federal law that allows newcomers to appropriate these lands if the present inhabitants don't pay a fee. His bullying tactics cause his buddy Yukon to switch sides, while two of his other partners decide to try to arrange his death.. After Alicia's father and Yukon are accidentally killed by his renegade partners, Fallon is transformed and aids the religious colony, while his former buddies try to stop them from getting their logs to market. In the end, Fallon joins the religious colony and marries Alicia: a conversion nearly as astonishing as that in "3 Godfathers".Edgar Buchanan, as Yukon, and Eve Miller, as Alicia, are really the heart and soul of this yarn. Yukon, as a reformed charismatic gold prospector, who is seduced by the sincerity of the religious cult in their mission to save the biggest trees, and Eve, as a possible love interest, in their separate ways, eventually manage to transform Fallon. Unfortunately, the formulistic script required that Yukon die a martyr to make room for Alicia as Fallon's new best friend.(A similar substitution is evident in "The Far Country", for example).As was the case in many westerns, the lead male gets involved with two marriageable women: one wholesome and the other shady, if flamboyant. Here, Patrice Wymore plays Fallon's long time glamorous shady lady. Eventually, she has to compete with Alicia's wholesome image, and decides to vacate. In the Randolph Scott western "The Man Behind the Gun", Patrice played the winning wholesome gal, while Lina Romay was the losing flamboyant shady lady. Patrice was a striking beauty as showcased in this film, and an excellent underrated actress, with singing and dancing talents, as exhibited in the one number she is given in this film. No wonder Errol Flynn chose her as his last wife. Unfortunately, she caught him during his declining years, with increasing reliance on drugs and alcohol. Also, unfortunately, he would give her a daughter with even greater susceptibility to drug and alcohol addiction, resulting in her early death.Eve Miller, as Alicia, also was perfectly cast, as a wholesome, level -headed, OK-looking woman, though hardly a striking beauty in Patrice's class. Unfortunately, Eve evidently had problems in her real romantic life, and never became a major actress. She never married, and nearly succeeded in a suicide attempt after her suitor wanted to delay marriage. She would succeed in a later suicide attempt. Although major lumber operations did often move from the Great Lakes region to the Pacific Northwest around the turn of the century, the giant redwoods were no longer a virgin resource, as implied in this film. Disappointed CA gold seekers often became lumberjacks in these forests, so that much had been logged by the turn of the century. However, the legal shenanigans over ownership of these forests had some historical reality.Buchanan has one of his more sympathetic and visible roles. Too often he played an ineffective drunkard, cowardly lawman or political blowhard. Perfect as an experienced common sense-dispensing sourdough. Before becoming an actor, he had a career as a dentist!Veteran character actor Roy Roberts had his work cut out for him as Judge Crenshaw, who tried to sort out the snarled land claims and keep the peace between the lumber interests and the religious colony.
James Hitchcock
"The Big Trees" is a Western, set in northern California around 1900. The main character is Jim Fallon, a timber baron who has recently moved to the state from Wisconsin. Fallon's motive is to take advantage of a new law which will allow him to stake a claim to the area's dense forests. Fallon especially has his eyes on the giant redwoods, the world's largest (and among its oldest) trees which he believes will net him a handsome profit. There is, however, a problem. A religious community have made their home in the forest and are determined to save the trees, which they regard as symbols of the power and majesty of God. So sacred are the trees to them that they even hold their services outdoors in a redwood grove rather than in a church. (The sect have some similarities with both the Amish and the Quakers, although they are probably not intended to be identified with either). A further complication arises when Fallon falls for Alicia, an attractive young widow who is a member of the sect.In the first half of the film Fallon is portrayed as a rogue, smooth and plausible but unscrupulous and not always likable. About halfway through, however, he undergoes a change of heart and becomes one of the good guys, fighting alongside the sect in order to save the trees from his former associates, who turn out to be even more greedy and unscrupulous than he ever was.The film has some good points. The photography of the Californian forests is well done and there are some good action sequences, including a scene where Kirk Douglas leaps onto a runaway train . The theme is a potentially interesting one; environmentalism was not as hot a topic in the early fifties as it has become since, so a film with a conservationist theme was something of a novelty. Moreover, the film gives an interesting slant to the subject, showing the religious roots of the environmental movement.Despite this, however, the film also has its weaknesses. The plot is excessively complex; at times it seems as though you need a thorough knowledge of Californian land law in order to understand what is going on. It also goes through too many twists and turns, with characters assumed to be bad turning out to be good and vice versa, with abrupt changes of mood. At times it all seems fairly light-hearted and then turns into serious drama as two major characters meet violent deaths in quick succession. The acting is generally poor. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, Douglas' best film or best performance, but the supporting cast are no better. Overall, "The Big Trees" tries to be unusual but ends up as just a standard action movie, and not a very good one. 5/10
sddavis63
Kirk Douglas offered a very good performances in a movie that I really didn't expect much out of, but that turned out to be surprisingly interesting. Neither the title nor the plot gave me high hopes. The story is about the efforts of a religious community to prevent the cutting down of California's giant redwoods by a Wisconsin lumberman. It doesn't sound particularly exciting, but actually turns out to be pretty good. Douglas is the lumberman - Jim Fallon - a charismatic conniver who seems able to convince anyone of his good intentions, even while he plots to take as much advantage of them as he possibly can. There's some decent enough action, particularly the scene in which Fallon tries to rescue Sister Chadwick (Eve Miller) from the out of control train. There's also good use of humour, provided both by Douglas and Edgar Buchanan as "Yukon" Burns, who becomes first Fallon's right hand man and then his antagonist - and who actually ends up being appointed as a marshall by a local judge (Roy Roberts) who's sympathetic to the religious folk and is willing to twist and turn every law on the book to help them.That evolution is one of the problems with the movie, however. People change too fast from good guys to bad guys, or from friends into enemies, and it's hard to really understand how the changes came upon them, which sometimes makes it hard to keep track of who's on whose side at any given time, and the final evolution of Fallon - telegraphed as it from the moment he arrives in California - is still hard to believe. I also thought that aside from Douglas and Buchanan, the performances were average at best. Still, it's not a bad watch. 6/10
