The Big Land (1957) User Reviews

Familiar but very well done.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 18 June 2009]

When Alan Ladd and his partners bring their cattle from Texas to Missouri, local cattle buyer Anthony Caruso cheats the men and treats them like he's doing them a favor in the process! Ladd, however, doesn't fight--having a live and let live attitude.

Ladd travels to a nearby town and is treated pretty poorly by the locals since he's a Southerner and the Civil War just ended. However, he stumbles into a relationship with Edmond O'Brien--an alcoholic who has a long history of screwing up his life. Ladd is able to help this new friend find a sense of direction and clean up his life, as they both hit on a scheme to build a town in Kansas that will make cattle drives closer AND they won't need to deal with Caruso. Of course, Caruso made it a habit of playing evil jerks in Westerns during the 50s, so it's pretty certain that he won't just sit back and watch as this new cattle town is created. And when he does behave in a naughty fashion, guess who's the guy to bring justice to this new town?

The film is helped by two excellent leads--Ladd and O'Brien. While story elements are often quite familiar here (the tough boss, the hero that is slow to act, John Qualen with his Swede routine, etc.), the film is handled well and is enjoyable throughout.

It's interesting that in this film O'Brien plays an alcoholic (a pretty familiar role for him actually, as he played this type character in several films) but in reality Alan Ladd was destroying himself with alcohol. He looks pretty lean in the film, but in subsequent films he became puffy and sometimes slurred his lines. It's really sad to see when you are a fan--fortunately, there isn't much evidence of this decline in THE BIG LAND.

An undistinguished star Western!

[Nazi_Fighter_David · 7/10 · 1 July 2001]

Director Gordon Douglas, one of Warners' more versatile directors, teamed previously Ladd on 'The Iron Mistress', 'McConnell Story' and 'Santiago'...

Alan Ladd has the familiar assignment of a man of action who has seen enough of killing in the late war... He brings it off in his smoothest style...

Here, he is a six-shooter with no alternative, in a tale about cattlemen and wheat growers, who join forces in building a railroad near their land in an attempt to crush the activities of ruthless cattle-buyers... Ladd is forced to take action against Anthony Caruso and his henchman before settling down to marry the lovely Mayo and rebuild the new town...

Virginia Mayo gives the film its few moments of sensitivity in the scene where she takes out on Ladd her grief over her brother's execution...

Edmond O'Brien is cast as an educated man turned alcoholic... He is a wanderer disgusted by his cowardice, and gunned down when he makes a hopeless attempt to stand up to a heavy, bad man...

Despite a few pretentious moments, 'The Big Land' is, on the whole, an undistinguished star Western..

Why,........."Cause the East Needs Beef."

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 25 November 2006]

The Big Land is a western that has Alan Ladd as a war weary Civil War veteran who wants to go into the cattle business. He's had enough of killing over five years, but in the end Ladd has to let his skill with a gun settle the usual problems of the frontier.

Anthony Caruso, a good friend of Ladd's in real life, has control of the rail shipping head where the Texas cattle arrive to be sent to the slaughterhouses in the east and he's not letting go. Of course the thing to do would be to just have it out right then and there with Caruso. But Ladd's had enough of killing from the Civil War and besides there would be no picture.

He persuades a group of settlers to found an incorporate a town where the railroad will eventually be coming to. Designing and planning the town is a dissolute architect played by Edmond O'Brien. O'Brien's got a pretty sister in Virginia Mayo which is another reason Ladd stays interested and around.

The thing I most remember about The Big Land is that constant repetition of the phrase, "the east needs beef." It's the reason Ladd, O'Brien, Mayo, are doing all that they are and enduring all the hardships. It's almost like no one will have a protein component in their diet unless Alan Ladd accomplishes what he sets out to do. It seemed to be a bit silly at times.

There's enough action though for any good western fan to overcome a rather trite story. American viewers would soon be seeing all about cattle drives in the western television series Rawhide. And on the silver screen, cattle drives were the background for much better films like John Wayne's Red River.

Not a bad film

[vincentlynch-moonoi · 7/10 · 31 August 2018]

I know. That title isn't very enthusiastic, but it's how I feel. It's an okay film, nothing special, and without Alan Ladd it would probably have gone nowhere at all. But Ladd was a fine actor, talented at being subtle...and that makes the film worthwhile.

I know this is a vague statement, but there's just something not quite right about this film. Maybe it seems a little to fairytale-ish. You almost expect Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney to jump out of the scene for a ho-down when they're building the town. Okay...I jest. But something's just not right about the plot.

And even though he was one of my favorite character actors, and could play the part of a drunk magnificently (think "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" and "Seven Days In May"), his drunk act here didn't quite ring true.

The rest of the cast was adequate. Virginia Mayo was "okay" as the love interest. Anthony Caruso did not impress me as the main "bad guy". John Qualen played his typical Sweede role...always entertaining. And interestingly, David Ladd is here as "Echo"...Alan Ladd's real son.

As Westerns go, this is not one of the great ones. But it's also a little more than one of the "just another Western" films that were in overabundance in the 1950s. It's good for watching...once.

BTW, the print shown on cable is not good. The color changes drastically, and some scenes are in very good shape, while others seem terribly faded and a bit blurry. It need at least a basic restoration.

The big land

[coltras35 · 7/10 · 20 March 2023]

When Chad Morgan (Alan Ladd) rides home to Texas after the Civil War, he finds another enemy to battle: Brog, a corrupt cattle buyer who forces honest ranchers into financial ruin. Morgan thinks he can thwart Brog by building a town at a new rail spur where cattlemen can safely bring their herds to market. But Brog and his henchmen set out to destroy the town and it may take a gun-blazing showdown to vanquish him.

Familiar yet well-made western with some good characterisations that stars Alan Ladd and Edmond O'Brien, who does some scene chewing as Edmond O'Brien as an alcoholic architect with the know-how to construct the town. Virginia plays his sister who is engaged to another man but falls for Ladd. A unique feature is the town construction element, which isn't covered much in westerns. Can be a bit slow in spots, a bit talky, however it's pleasant viewing and ends with an exciting cattle stampede sequence.

The Big Land is a big joke!

[jordondave-28085 · 4/10 · 20 April 2023]

(1957) The Big Land WESTERN

It opens with Chad Morgan (Alan Ladd) getting a real crappy deal regarding selling some cattle to Brog (Anthony Caruso). For it doesn't explain why Chad couldn't have sold the cattle to someone else. We then find out that Chad used to fought on the side of the Confederacy, and because the civil war had just ended, much of the pro-Yankee residents of some of the current towns he's stopping by do not respect him. He does however manage to find a barn and strikes up a friendship with an alcoholic named Joe( Edmond O'Brien). Because Joe was looking for more liquor, he manages to get out of a hanging when Chad intervenes. And after they ride off together, we learn more things about Joe, that he has some connections to the railway station, and coincidentally Brog suddenly becomes involved.

This is one of those movies where one can predict when bad things start to happen, it is when good guys stand there doing nothing until good people get killed. Therefore, it's very routine stuff. Alan Ladd's actual son have a pretty funny scene except that it's not another "Shane" western.

A Shade of Shane

[drystyx · 9/10 · 2 September 2014]

There is a lot about this sprawling Western that resembles SHANE.

Again, Ladd plays a quiet man who is tired of killing. Here, though, he is not a gunfighter, but rather an experienced soldier who learned to use a hand gun very well.

The real star of this film, though, isn't either hero Ladd or heroine Virginia Mayo, but Edmond O'Brien.

O'Brien's character becomes a parallel to the Stonewall character of Elisha Cook, Jr. in Shane. The similarities are more in what happens with the character than in the character.

However, unlike Stonewall, who is simply a pathetic doomed soul with little input in SHANE, O'Brien is given a chance to eat the scenery here, going from drunk to respected architect to manager of a new town to peace keeper for the town.

The story is his. We even get to see him with family. He begins at the low end of the totem pole, then rises to great achievement, only to find himself in a situation where he must make a terrible decision.

In ways, this film is superior to SHANE, and SHANE is a classic. The bad guys, however, were cloned too much after Jack Palance's Wilson, and therein lies the weakness. There are two sadistic bad men here, and their characters just aren't fresh, and too much like Wilson.

Still, it's got a lot of character, and a lot of characters who make this a top Western.

The worst...

[grayneon-99064 · 1/10 · 11 September 2018]

I love a good western but this one is not it. Slow moving with a robot performance by Alan Ladd. Do not waste 90 minutes of your life watching 2 bad guys (dressed in black of course) kill good people, control the entire cattle business, burn down a fledgling town while Alan Ladd is always calm and never around when you need him. When this was over all I could think of was where were all of the Civil War vets living out west? I am sure two bad cowboys running amok would not have had all of them cowering behind little Alan Ladd...Pathetic waste of time.

the big land

[mossgrymk · 5/10 · 21 September 2021]

The more I see of Alan Ladd the more I come to regard him as the male Kay Francis; a good actor who made a cargo ship full of mediocre to crappy movies. This is yet another, a fifties western from Gordon Douglas that, aside from early intimations of a homo erotic relationship between Ladd and Edmund O'Brien that is snuffed out the moment curvaceous Virginia Mayo arrives on the scene, is at best a "Shane" with tired blood. Give it a C.

PS...This is the second time that Edmund O'Brien has played a possibly, if not plausibly, closeted character in a Gordon Douglas film. The first was "Between Midnight And Dawn", made in 1950, in which O'Brien's cop had an unusually strong interest in keeping his partner away from marriage to Gale Storm.

A Big Movie

[Richie-67-485852 · 8/10 · 18 April 2017]

Westerns of the 40's and even better the 50's held their own for entertainment and pleasure. Who doesn't like a story involving outdoors, cattle, the untamed west, shoot-outs, ranching, a love interest and more that when thrown together well gives us a memorable good time of it all. This is not a magnificent western but instead a standard for the western itself. On that note it delivers. Alan Ladd has a quiet type nature that is easy on the viewer and even when he gets mad he is still a nice guy. By contrast, the bad guys are just bad and stay that way all the time. In the background is still the civil war that is over but bad will is still harbored which in time goes away as we know. We get to like the characters and care about them having spent some background time getting to know them. This movie works and for that reason you get to spend your precious time watching a worthy movie. Everyone wins including the happy ending which wont let you down. Be clear that towns sprung up all over and it was the people in those towns that made sure they survived this difficult time in our history. It wasn't easy but then, anything worth having has a price beyond what we can see. The question is: Will we pay that price to have it? You see that is the true test of how bad you want it. In this movie, men on both sides risk their lives but the side that stuck up for law & order, for what's right and true will win every time. Good slow-eatin popcorn movie or delicious snacking with a tasty drink here. Mount-up and lets ride!

too big

[SnoopyStyle · 5/10 · 13 August 2023]

The Civil War has ended, but residual hatred remains. Texas cattlemen are driving their herds towards Missouri. Chad Morgan (Alan Ladd) is a former Confederate officer leading a cattle drive. Cattle baron Brog cheats him out of a fair price. He is forced to back down and his men blame him for it. He befriends local drunk Joe Jagger (Edmond O'Brien). As he heads home, he encounters farmers who can't get their grain to market and comes up with a mutually beneficial idea.

This sets up an interesting conflict at the beginning. Almost as quickly, the movie drops this idea and moves away. Morgan needs to stay in that town and fight back against Brog. The good early tension is lost and it never truly recovers. The Billy Tyler character is idiotic and he flips so quickly. Alan Ladd is a low energy lead. The story is a lot of little jumps and it feels jumpy. The story is too long and the slow pacing feels the length. Brog is a fine villain, but the other cattle buyers should be more hardened. It's not their first time tangling with Brog. The climatic gunfight is so short that it feels anti-climatic. This western story is too big for its own good.

Enjoy Alan and David Ladd

[starwoodyorkies · 8/10 · 4 August 2021]

Too many good points already listed. Good redemption movie about beef, wasted time and sleeping past 5AM. Easy to believe business could ever be so simple. Easy to see how Alan Ladd became so popular.