It’s a Big Country: An American Anthology (1951)
(On Cable TV, July 2021) Watching many Hollywood movies requires, in some ways, buying into the self-aggrandizing mythology of the United States as the shining beacon on the hill. Over time, you often get used to it and maybe even stop noticing the unspoken assumptions… until an even more blatant example of the form comes along and strips away the pretence. I realize that there’s some irony in watching as blatant a propaganda piece as It’s a Big Country: An American Anthology on July 1st (Canada Day), but sometimes celebration is calibrated by comparison. Meant as a big showcase of MGM stars celebrating various aspects of American life through an anthology of short segments, It’s a Big Country remains a nexus for anyone trying to complete filmographies for stars as varied as Gene Kelly, Gary Cooper, S.Z. Sakall, William Powell, Ethel Barrymore, Janet Leigh, Fredric March or Van Johnson. If nothing else, you get snippets of familiar actors usually playing their screen personas in small roles — and there’s some fun in seeing Kelly romancing Leigh and going head-to-head with Sakall, or Gary Cooper playing a rancher “dispelling” some Texas-is-bigger myths. (It’s easily the best segment of the bunch.) But I suspect that that biggest issue with It’s a Big Country sixty years later isn’t as much the depth of its America-can-do-no-wrong attitude (which is not unprecedented), but the spectrum on American values that the film tries to address. A segment purports to showcase black Americans, but plays more as an itemized list of “valuable citizens” making contributions to a country that still had institutionalized segregation. Another segment deals with a grieving mother being reassured that the war in Korea was about the values of America being projected upon the world. A late segment explicitly links religion (but a very specific religion) to the President of the United States. It’s quite a lot to take in at once, and few segments have the ironic humour of the Texas-is-best one to diffuse the earnestness. After a while, it’s a relief to see more dramatic segments that don’t explicitly wrap themselves in the flag and the cross — It’s a Big Country is best when it deals with characters rather than national virtues. It’s still worth a look if only for the talent assembled, but contemporary viewers may have a hard time not criticizing what the film ignores or sweeps under the rug.