Across the Wide Missouri (1951)

Director:

William A. Wellman

Writers:

Talbot Jennings (screenplay)
Talbot Jennings (story) ...

Release Date:

23 October 1951 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Western

Plot:

In the 1830's beaver trapper Flint Mitchell and other white men hunt and trap in the then unnamed territories of Montana and Idaho...

Plot Keywords:

Beaver | Trapper | 1830s | Mountain Man | Missouri River

Cast

Clark Gable	...	Flint Mitchell
Ricardo Montalban	...	Ironshirt (Blackfoot war chief)
John Hodiak	...	Brecan
Adolphe Menjou	...	Pierre (French trapper)
J. Carrol Naish	...	Looking Glass (Nez Perce chief)
Jack Holt	...	Bear Ghost (Blackfoot medicine man)
Alan Napier	...	Capt. Humberstone Lyon
George Chandler	...	Gowie (Capt. Lyon's assistant)
Richard Anderson	...	Dick
María Elena Marqués	...	Kamiah (Blackfoot princess [Mitchell's wife])

Runtime:

78 min | Argentina:82 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (certificate #14912)

Filming Locations:

Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, Durango, Colorado, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

Clark Gable personally chose William A. Wellman to direct because he admired Battleground (1949).

Goofs:

Continuity: When the horse with Gable’s son runs away. the child is originally on the right side of the horse. The succeeding shot shows him on the left side of the horse. Later shots show him back on the right side.

Quotes:

Narrator: My dad wasn't just one man named Flint Mitchell. He was a breed of men... mountain men who lived and died in America. He used to tell me about these men he knew. Men who walked the Indian trails and blazed new ones where no man had ever been before. Men who found lakes and rivers and meadows...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Soundtrack:

Across The Wide Missouri

Honesty.

Honesty seems the first quality of this Wellmann work:it uses no less than three different languages:English,Indian language and French:it's really great fun to hear the cast sing on Xmas day the Canadian "Alouette gentille alouette" en Français dans le texte...even if the words have nothing to do with Christ's birth.

The second strong point is scenery:the landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful and the color is splendid indeed.Mountains and forest are lovingly filmed .

A lot of people will probably note similarities with Delmer Daves's famous "Broken arrow" which was released the precedent year .It's almost the same ending.I would favor Daves's work over Wellmann's because his characters are more endearing , his story more absorbing and the relationship characters/nature more convincing.But "Across the wide Missouri" is worth watching :the story is told by Gable's son who appears as a baby in the movie and shortly as a child .One scene is particularly touching,even if we realize it only afterward:Gable and his Indian wife are kissing each other while the small child is watching.There are a lot of deaths in this often cruel story,but neither the White nor the Indians are demeaned.