The success of the journey focuses on keeping the Indian girl alive as well as themselves to complete trade with the Blackfeet.The success of the journey focuses on keeping the Indian girl alive as well as themselves to complete trade with the Blackfeet.The success of the journey focuses on keeping the Indian girl alive as well as themselves to complete trade with the Blackfeet.
- Nominated for 2 Oscars
- 3 nominations total
- Blackfoot Dancer
- (uncredited)
- Horse Trader
- (uncredited)
- Tavern Patron
- (uncredited)
- Tavern Proprietor
- (uncredited)
- Tavern Patron
- (uncredited)
- Jailer
- (uncredited)
- Blackfoot Subchief
- (uncredited)
- Pascal
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaWhile shooting Red River (1948), there was a scene that director Howard Hawks unsuccessfully urged John Wayne to do. It involved his getting a finger mangled between a saddle horn and a rope, resulting in Walter Brennan's amputating it. Hawks reportedly told Wayne, "If you're not good enough, we won't do it", but Wayne wouldn't do it. According to Hawks biographer Todd McCarthy, Hawks did get Kirk Douglas to do that scene in this film, and it came off so funny that Wayne later declared to Hawks, "If you tell me a funeral is funny, I'll do a funeral."
- GoofsJim expresses amazement at the size of St. Louis. However, he had just come from Louisville, which in 1832 was about twice the size of St. Louis, so it should not have been a source of such astonishment.
- Quotes
Zeb Calloway: Blackfeet... proud injuns. They ain't gonna let no white man spile their country. The only thing they'a feared of is a white man's sickness.
Boone Cardell: What's that?
Zeb Calloway: Grabs. White men don't see nothing pretty unless they want to grab it. The more they grab, the more they want to grab. It's like a fever and they can't get cured. The only thing for them to do is to keep on grabbin' until everything belongs to white men and then start grabbin' from each other. I reckon injuns got no reason to love nothing white.
- Crazy creditsOpening credits prologue:
The early history of America is a tale of great first times. There were men who were the first to cross new prairies and new mountains, the first to find gold, silver and copper; to plow new wheat fields and build new settlements.
This is the story of another of the great American firsts-- the tale of the first men who took a keelboat up the wild and unexplored Missouri River--who poled, pulled and rowed their way from St. Louis through 2000 miles of hostile Indian country to the hills of Montana and opened a new land for the future - - The Great Northwest.
- ConnectionsReferenced in To Kill a Cop (1981)
But in my opinion The Big Sky stands on the level of Howard Hawk's best work remarkable for its visual beauty (though filming it in colour would definitely improve it), fine performances (Kirk Douglas is magnificent here and it's hard to imagine other actor playing this role), wonderful music from Dimitri Tiomkin and interesting story of, basically, friendship, that even might be called love, between the two main characters of Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) and Dewey Martin (Boone Caudill) but friendship on a background of a perilous and adventurous journey up the Missouri river to the Indian territory where no white man ever set his foot before, with a group of peculiar French adventurers and an Indian princess Teal Eye (Elizabeth Threatt) who steals their hearts and threatens their friendship.
A must see classic. 9/10
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $2,000,000 (estimated)
- Runtime2 hours 20 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1