Western · Drama
American
1931 · Directed by Wesley Ruggles · 123 min
In 1889 a charismatic lawyer, editor and part-time gunman joins the great Oklahoma land rush and carries his genteel wife and young son into a raw new town. The film follows the settlement and the people who make it over several decades, on a scale far larger than the usual Western.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining prestige film of Hollywood's early sound years. It showed that the Western could carry big-budget, literary ambition and awards-level respectability, long before the genre was widely treated that way.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a portrait of how a town and a country are built, with the Western's hero as one part of a wider picture.
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