THE COVERED WAGON
starring J. Warren Kerrigan, Lois Wilson, Alan Hale, Ernest Torrence
NEW YORK TIMES
March 17, 1923
The years 1848-49 are as deeply stamped in American history, perhaps, as any other period, even including that of 1776. The story of the sweep across the continent, for the opening of Oregon and the wresting of gold from California, is one of the high romantic chapters of Western chronicle to which every human being of the iron-railed and paved-street age responds. The men, women and children of 1848-49 lived an epic - and it is the spirit of this epic, the magnitude and meaning and vivid reality of it, that James Cruze and his associates have caught and preserved in "The Covered Wagon," which opened at the Criterion Theater last night. It is a tremendous picture.
Emerson Hough wrote a story. Presumably he wrote the story - the story of the pioneers who set out in the long wagon trains across the unknown prairies, mountains and streams that separated them from the promised land of Oregon, the story of their dangers and struggles and perseverance, the story of their failures, too, and the story of their division when news of the discovery of gold in California lured many from the Oregon goal to the glittering land of quicker wealth.
This is the story that Emerson Hough wrote, and so to him must go first credit for what the screen now possesses. But when James Cruze undertook to put this story into motion pictures, his task was only begun. He had to comprehend the epic, he had to visualize it in its vastness and its vivifying details, and he had to translate what was expressed in words into living, speaking motion pictures. And this is what he has done. When you see the scenes of "The Covered Wagon," you may think, at first, that such pictures make themselves. A long train of prairie schooners streaming across the open landscape, the wagons floating on a broad river through which the horses and oxen pulling them swim, prairie fires, fights with Indians, a buffalo hunt - these things compose themselves into stirring scenes - or so you think.
But the very size of it all, the necessity for coherence and individuality in the story and all the parts of it, make the job exceedingly difficult. Any one might have gotten pictures, perhaps, no one could have failed to get something with such material, but if Mr. Cruze had not mastered his subject, if he had not managed and handled it at every point, the result would have been a hopeless jumble, an amorphous mass of big scenes and trivial details, meaning nothing and tiresome to the most faithful spectator. That he was able to take such a big subject, and, while keeping it big, yet control it and vitalize it with separate people, little incidents and connected events, entitle him, the director, to unstinted credit. He made a motion picture. He didn't just muddle through one.
He didn't do the job alone, of course. His scenarist, Jack Cunningham, and the cameramen can take all the credit they desire, for they deserve it, and the cast, the people who characterized pioneers of the story, became in reality the people of a real adventure, and, being necessary to the life of the thing, made it live.
It is impossible to deal in full with the acting. Standing out in the excellent field is Ernest Torrence, as a true old Western scout. He is the Torrence of "Tol'able David" and other works, but not a villain this time. He is hard and rough and raw, but right. And how Torrence does do him. There's Tully Marshall, too, as an eccentric trader of the plains. With Torrence, he takes much of the picture and makes it go.
Alan Hale as the villain of the plot is effective, so is Charles Ogle as the captain of the train, Ethel Wales as his wife and John Fox as the irrepressible kid. Lois Wilson, the heroine, is more than acceptable. You take her gladly as the girl the hero must love, and J. Warren Kerrigan meets the requirements of the hero's part.
Thus, you see, there is a story. It's nothing amazing, but it isn't cheap. It's interesting, it gives you something detailed and definite for your interest to center upon, and it never gets in the way of the bigger story of "Westward Ho," of the push of Americans across the continent.
And the best part about the photoplay is that it is a motion picture. Its scenes speak to you. Many of them have the quality of greatness. Minor faults might be found with the production, but it would be quibbling to introduce them here. "The Covered Wagon" is a big picture done, as is not often the case, in a big way.
Video source: Critic's Choice, Facets, Movies Unlimited, Amazon.com
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