Tickets $10/$9
In Widescreen 70MM and starring John Wayne in his first role!
Experience the sweeping adventure that introduced John Wayne in his first starring role! The Big Trail (1930) follows young scout Breck Coleman as he guides a wagon train across the American frontier, confronting treacherous terrain, dangerous river crossings, romance, and a quest for justice. Directed and produced by Raoul Walsh, this monumental Western stars John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, Tyrone Power Sr., Tully Marshall, El Brendel, and Ward Bond. Its writing team included Jack Peabody, Marie Boyle, Florence Postal, and Fred Sersen, with Arthur Edesonphotographing the groundbreaking widescreen version and Jack Dennis editing. Upon its original release, The Film Dailyhailed the picture as “stupendous” and “awe-inspiring.”
The Park Theatre presents the restored version of the film’s extraordinarily rare 70-millimeter Fox Grandeur widescreen edition—a remarkable cinematic innovation for 1930, more than two decades before Hollywood widely embraced widescreen. Filmed separately from its conventional 35mm counterpart, this expansive version captures vast Western landscapes and breathtaking scenes of wagons being lowered down sheer cliffs with a scale designed for the big screen.
The widescreen film was restored in the 1980s through work led by Peter Williamson at the Museum of Modern Art, collaborating with Ralph Sargent and others. Time Out celebrated its return to “spectacular wide-screen glory,” while Fred Camper, writing in the Chicago Reader, praised the restored widescreen presentation as “well worth seeing.” Discover a pioneering screen spectacle—and a youthful future legend—in all its restored grandeur.
