 | |
List Price: $12.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 43140
Released: May 22, 2007 |
| Our Price: $9.99 |
| Used Price: $3.35 |
|
MPAA Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
From 1839 to 1889, this epic story follows four generations of a courageous New England farm family as they travel to the fertile Ohio Valley during America's westward expansion. This wondrous historical saga is set against the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, buffalo hunters, the Pony Express and the first transcontinental railroad. How The West Was Won won three Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Best Sound and Best Editing.
Description of How the West Was Won:
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:
A Slice of Americana 
2009-11-30 - This portrayal of different stages in the settling of America's interior includes a mixture of acting-reenactment and documentary. It begins with the period after the Revolutionary War, when even places such as St. Louis were considered far west, and ends with the modern urban-industrial complexes that characterize the USA coast to coast.
There is a re-enactment of a battle during the Civil War. John Wayne has a brief appearance as General Sherman.
The settling of the west shows both the peaceful and non-peaceful aspects of the same. We see the stagecoaches, the telegraphs, the Pony Express, the first trains, etc. Unfortunately, no scene is shown of the Golden Spike being driven in to connect the first west-to-east and east-to-west railroad into a single USA-spanning railroad.
The American West was characterized by gold rushes, farmers vs. ranchers, the buffalo drives, and much more. The Indians are portrayed not so much as persecuted as victims of a changing society that many of them could not adapt to. Gone forever were the wide-open spaces conducive to a nomadic lifestyle. Treaties with them were broken less out of deliberate dishonesty as changing economic circumstances that prevented their fulfillment.
No western would be complete without a shootout. We get one near the end of this work. It occurs on a train that is waylaid and attacked.
Has its moments but ultimately not worth watching 
2009-10-26 - The Bottom Line:
How the West Was Won was a high-concept, star-studded, old-time epic composed of five different segments designed to showcase the three-strip Cinerama process and viewed today it's little more than a curio: the lack of continuity between the segments and the fact that the best two come first unfortunately make this distinct but overlong picture more fitting to be the answer to trivia questions than as Friday night's entertainment.
2.5/4
A BLU-RAY REFERENCE! 
2009-09-03 - When high-quality, low-speed Kodachrome slide film became available many years ago, that product was a justification for photographers to invest in the best 35-mm. cameras available, such as Leica. Kodachrome film shot with a Leica camera became a reference.
The TV western classic of the late 1950's and 1960's, "Bonanza", with its wonderful color photography, provided many an American family with justification to invest in the emerging technology of color television. "Bonanza" was the reference TV show that displayed what color televisions of the time could do.
"How the West was Won", a contemporary along with "Bonanza", went to great lengths to show how beautiful the American West was, using the three-camera process of Cinerama to demonstrate to the public this cutting-edge method of cinematography. Today, Cinerama still remains the best process ever invented to film a Hollywood epic, surpassing even that of IMAX. It is too bad that it was a cumbersome and expensive process to work with, and did not meet with the full approval of the three directors involved with the filming of HTWWW. But what visual magnificence is evident in this film! Thank goodness that Time-Warner went back to the original Eastman negative and developed technology to eliminate or minimize the disconcerting film joins of the three Cinerama projectors in transferring this classic to DVD and Blu-Ray. The results of their efforts are evident, and based on the other Blu-Ray movies I have and have seen, HTWWW can justifiably be considered as a Blu-Ray reference!
Other reviewers critical of the "Smilebox" process transferring HTWWW onto a second disc that mimics the Cinerama curved screen should give it a second view. The reason I say this is because I've noticed that object movement on the right and left panels of the 3-camera film joins is less distorted in the Smilebox transfer than on the normal screen transfer. Give the same scenes another look in both versions (such as the river raft sequence) and compare.
Regardless of your age and film content preferences, if you are just starting into Blu-Ray, make this film one of your "must-purchase" items! You will not be disappointed, and will definitely see how the Blu-Ray HTWWW shows off the capabilities of your high-definition TV or computer monitor.
western movie
2009-08-30 - Still enjoy those grand scale western adventure movies. They just don't make-em like this anymore.
Suggest buying this one, if you like westerns.
Cinerama lives again!
2009-08-29 - Wow! I'm old enough (don't ask!) to remember when this movie was first released in Cinerama and it was a huge hit! Over the years I've seen it on TV and occasionally in theaters in Cinemascope but it was never the same. But now when large screen TV's are affordable this new release appears which simulates the Cinerama experience pretty effectively! The very handsome package includes a souvenier booklet and two blu-ray disks which contain the movie in the usual letterbox format but also in the new "Smilebox" format which simulates the curved screen of Cinerama. And it really works! It was great fun to see this great classic again the way it was intended to be seen and at Amazon's price it's a bargain too. BTW, there's a feature length documentary about Cinerama included which also demonstrates the "Smilebox" process.
