Screenshot for the Week of 22 June 2020: "THE BIG COUNTRY" (1958)

Steve Leech and Jim McKay (Charlton Heston and Gregory Peck or their stunt doubles) fist-fighting in The Big Country (1958).

There is an art to taking a great screenshot.  Of the screenshots I have taken, this is one of my favorites.  Jim McKay has just thrown a right cross (a powerful punch) and landed it on Steve Leech's jaw.  Leech is knocked backward, falling down several frames later.  McKay's momentum while throwing this punch has bent him over like a baseball pitcher who has just thrown a 100 mph fastball.  To capture this perfect moment, I took at least half a dozen screenshots of the punch, eventually discarding all but this one.

I have seen hundreds of screenshots taken by dozens of people, and I have rarely seen any that were taken with perfection, much less art, in mind.  The overwhelming majority appear to have been taken by rote, with no discernible interest in capturing the best frame in the scene.

My best screenshots are a collaboration between me and the cinematographer.  When the cinematographer has done great work, he or she will have given me many chances to take great screenshots.  The rest is up to me.  A poorly shot movie might give me little raw material for art.  After all, I just follow the cinematographer around and shoot what he or she shot.

I can tell when I am following a master craftsman around after he or she has done stellar work.  The better the work, the more screenshots I take.  The cinematographer for The Big Country was Franz Planer.  And I took more screenshots of The Big Country than any other film thus far, 125 in all.

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An entire filmmaking course could be taught using The Big Country alone.  It is not the only one-film filmmaking course that comes to me, but every element is masterfully accomplished.  The cinematography is first rate.  So is the art direction, indoors and out.  The musical score is rousing.  The script is a powerful allegory for the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.  The dialogue is economical.  Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston put on an acting clinic.  Heston's performance is easily his best.  There are moments when he is so good it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  William Wyler's direction is an artistic success all around.  None of the above artists, however, won an Oscar.  Burl Ives, God bless him, won the film's only Oscar, for Best Supporting Actor.  Oddly enough, I thought his performance, like that of Chuck Connors, was a bit cartoonish.  I would have nominated Charlton Heston instead of Ives.

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[SPOILER ALERT!] The fist-fight scene is the entire film in microcosm.  The two men—one, an angry man spoiling for a fight and the other, a self-assured man of principle who fights when all peaceful alternatives have failed—trade knock down punches for so long they punch themselves to exhaustion.  When they cannot go on any longer, and both are almost prone on the ground, the principled man looks up and asks, "So tell me, Leech—what did we prove?"

C: Franz Planer.  D: William Wyler.