Most Westerns are set during the period 1865-1890, the quarter-century immediately following the Civil War. The settlement of the Midwest during the first half of the 19th century has never been a popular subject, allegedly because the Hollywood-based studios did not want to send film crews so far from home. "Across the Wide Missouri" is one of the minority of Westerns set before 1850; like "The Mountain Men" and the more recent "The Revenant" it is set against the background of the fur trade in the Rocky Mountains during the 1820s and 1830s, long before white Americans began to settle the area.
There is a curious disconnect between the film we actually have and the film which seems to have been planned. Many features of the film are the sort of thing one would expect to find in a major epic- the spectacular Technicolor photography of the Rocky Mountain scenery shot entirely on location, the presence of a major star (no less a personage than Clark Gable, His Majesty the King of Hollywood), the grandiose musical score based upon the folksong "Oh Shenandoah". (The film's title is taken from a line in this song). Yet the film we actually have is far from being an epic. It is little more than an hour and a quarter long, B-movie length, although this was officially an A-movie, and tells a simple story about the romance between Flint Mitchell, a fur trapper, and Kamiah, an Indian princess from the Blackfoot tribe. (The story is narrated by their son).
At this period the Production Code officially forbade depictions of "miscegenation", but an exception was made for Westerns which were allowed to show romances between white men and Native American women. Such romances were common in the Old West, especially among fur trappers who worked in areas where there were few, if any, white women. The actresses involved, however, were not normally Native Americans themselves; Kamiah is played by the Mexican actress María Elena Marqués.
The director William Wellman does seem to have had the ambition to make a large-scale epic, but his footage was severely recut by the studio to produce something much more small-scale to what he had envisaged. Wellman, apparently, was not happy with the way in which his film had been treated and always refused to watch the finished product, saying that it was not his work.
We cannot, of course, know what Wellman's "director's cut" would have looked like, but the film that we actually have is not particularly interesting, with a rather dull story and a star not at his best. The most one can say about it is that it is a small film with a big one trying to get out. The Rocky Mountains have laboured and brought forth a little mouse of a movie. 5/10
There is a curious disconnect between the film we actually have and the film which seems to have been planned. Many features of the film are the sort of thing one would expect to find in a major epic- the spectacular Technicolor photography of the Rocky Mountain scenery shot entirely on location, the presence of a major star (no less a personage than Clark Gable, His Majesty the King of Hollywood), the grandiose musical score based upon the folksong "Oh Shenandoah". (The film's title is taken from a line in this song). Yet the film we actually have is far from being an epic. It is little more than an hour and a quarter long, B-movie length, although this was officially an A-movie, and tells a simple story about the romance between Flint Mitchell, a fur trapper, and Kamiah, an Indian princess from the Blackfoot tribe. (The story is narrated by their son).
At this period the Production Code officially forbade depictions of "miscegenation", but an exception was made for Westerns which were allowed to show romances between white men and Native American women. Such romances were common in the Old West, especially among fur trappers who worked in areas where there were few, if any, white women. The actresses involved, however, were not normally Native Americans themselves; Kamiah is played by the Mexican actress María Elena Marqués.
The director William Wellman does seem to have had the ambition to make a large-scale epic, but his footage was severely recut by the studio to produce something much more small-scale to what he had envisaged. Wellman, apparently, was not happy with the way in which his film had been treated and always refused to watch the finished product, saying that it was not his work.
We cannot, of course, know what Wellman's "director's cut" would have looked like, but the film that we actually have is not particularly interesting, with a rather dull story and a star not at his best. The most one can say about it is that it is a small film with a big one trying to get out. The Rocky Mountains have laboured and brought forth a little mouse of a movie. 5/10