The first sound-era epic Western was produced in two versions-a widescreen 70mm spectacle and a 35mm version reduced in both screen size and length. Only the reduced version has been widely seen, but we can savor the original thanks to this Museum of Modern Art restoration (which transferred the 70mm original onto 35mm CinemaScope). Twenty-two-year-old John Wayne had his first lead as scout for an 1840s wagon train, which faces every obstacle that nature and villainy can throw at it. Variety, spotting a star, predicted that “the entirely unknown young Wayne…can be built up.” Shot during a year in locations across Arizona, California, Wyoming, and Utah, the $2 million production proved a box-office disaster. Wayne and the genre itself were relegated to the B-feature treadmill for most of the 1930s (until both were rescued by John Ford's Stagecoach, see July 23). Today, the qualities that doomed The Big Trail on release-its un-modern, crowded, rough, documentary textures-are what save it from its early-sound dialogue (“Oh, you've made me the joke of the plains!” shouts our heroine at Wayne). In a holdover from the silent era, the film maintains an ambiguous attitude toward Indians but is otherwise a bald defense of Manifest Destiny: “We're blazing a trail that started in England,” Wayne reminds discouraged pioneers. What remains breathtaking is the widescreen spectacle: the battles with rain and blizzards, the river crossings, and the lowering of wagons down Grand Teton cliffs.