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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Warner)
Salesrank: 27226
Released: July 28, 1998 |
| Our Price: $13.49 |
| Used Price: $3.99 |
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MPAA Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The first feature film to be photographed and projected in the panoramic three-camera Cinerama process, this epic Western is almost as expansive as the West itself, chronicling a pioneering family's triumphs and tragedies in numerous episodes spanning three generations and a half century of westward movement. Divided into five segments directed by veteran Hollywood filmmakers Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, and the legendary John Ford (and including uncredited sequences directed by Richard Thorpe), the film was one of the most ambitious ever made by the venerable MGM studio. Its stellar cast reads like a virtual who's who of Hollywood's biggest stars. Debbie Reynolds plays a sturdy survivor of many pioneering dangers, and the eventual widow of a gambler (Gregory Peck), who is later reunited with her nephew (George Peppard), a Civil War veteran and cavalryman who heads for San Francisco as the transcontinental railroad is being built. Many more characters and stories are woven throughout this epic film, which is dramatically uneven but totally engrossing with its stunning vistas and countless outdoor locations in Illinois, Kentucky, South Dakota, Monument Valley in Arizona, California, Colorado, and elsewhere. --Jeff Shannon
How the West Was Won Reviews:
fascinating , "trippy" , inexpensive discovery 
2009-11-07 - this film (not the JOHN WAYNE collection pictured near it) was released the year of my birth . it's the same film as the WAYNE one . to characterize it as a WAYNE feature is extremely misleading . he's bairly in it . i'm not going to address the transfer as i'm not that sort of "PHILE" to whom these things are of the least import . hell . when i was a youth we were perhaps begining to examine color as a television option . there were no remotes or cable . nothing was letterboxed but our U.S. MAIL. i read a swell write up about the film on an online film site in which the author praised the film (i paid three dollars new at a discount store) as "trippy" . that's a pretty good and accurate description . the film required three fine directors including JOHN FORD to make . to me , the most interesting thing about the film (besides the involving and compelling story it tells) is the median age of the (allegedly) desirable male leads . with the exception of a very youthful GEORGE PEPPARD , these men are all in their 50s . simultainiously , all the certainly desirable women are in their late 20s to early 30s . perhaps that was how the west was won ? perhaps that's how the men who made the film would like to envision it ? worth a look and some reading for the unusual technique used to make this and less than twenty other films . recommended .
Historic Panorama 
2008-10-16 - These days, American history has been minimized in schools, under the guise of "cultural diversity." This film may not fully correct this, but it does provide an idea of what the United States' cultural roots have been.
The story begins tracing the story of a family migrating from the eastern states to the frontier of the time, and of a mountain man, a trapper who interacted with western American Indians well beyond the explored lands. The family meets tragedy, with one of the daughters and the mountain man falling in love, and the other daughter -- a free spirit of the time -- living a wilder life as a singer and entertainer.
From the post-revolutionary world through the Civil War and beyond, the stories of the two branches of the family are shown, covering the sweep of historic events until the close of the 19th Century, not counting a rapid epilog.
The film was sjot in Cinerama, using the original three-camera process, so thwere is a discernable jiggle at the two joins between the photos, and naturally, the scope of the original is literally minimized on the average video screen. Yet this is counterbalamced by really striking scenes of the untamed wiorld of the pioneers.
The film is also more honest than many is the dealings between the settlers and the American Indians, showing cases of how treaties were broken, and the natural reaction for such actions.
The film has formidible star power, with many of the top stars from the time it was shot present in significant roles.
Hardly a perfect film, but it does provide some perspective of how the nation developed.
CORRECTION ON THIS FILM'S HISTORY
2008-09-10 - As an admirer of the original film since seeing it in the original three-screen Cinerama process when I was a kid, I hate to inform you all that, although released in Europe first, it was NOT the first feature film in the three-screen Cinerama process (although it was the last).
George Pal's "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm" was the first -- released in 1962 in the three-screen process. I still have the original road-show souvenir book and it states it clearly. "Bros. Grimm" was the first, "How the West was Won" was the second -- then, because of so much revenue being generated from its "ordinary theatrical release" the company was forced to make a compromise: A single-lens, single-curved screen process for future Cinerama productions. This was initiated with Stanley Kramer's "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and followed by such films as Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and John Sturges' "The Hallelujah Trail". I just needed to get the facts straight here.
Incidentaly, this three-lens, three-screen process of "Bros. Grimm" and "How the West Was Won" is why the DVD release has unavoidably two lines running down the middle, and the strange effect of, say, a wagon rolling horizontally seeming to be constantly riding in a warped circle. This is because of the three screens being flattened back onto a straight surface.
One more thing: Alfred Newman's great score for "How the West Was Won" is truly one of the greatest western film scores in history (even quoted in other films as a quintessential western score -- check out the Western fantasy sequence in "Romancing the Stone") and to hear it in true 5.1 sound is worth the price alone!
As Advertised 
2008-09-01 - I should have waited for the enhanced version. The product arrived promptly and was as advertised. M Carter
How The west Was Won 1962 
2007-08-03 - With Courage . Sinew and Conflict : That's how the West was won . With Three Directors . Five Interlocked stories . Some of the most legendary action scenes in the movie history and constellation of acting talent: that's how the west was won was filmed . Henry Fonda (1905-1982), Gregory Peck (1916-2003) , Debbie Reynolds (1932 - ) , James Stewart (1908-1997),
and John Wayne (1907-1979) are among the big name in this big- event saga following a dauntless family's move West through generations- underscored by spectacles of heart-pounding raging river ride , a thunderous bufallo stampede and a bracing runaway train shootout . How The west was won was a box-office winner . High Quality Transfer . Recommended
