The Big Sky (1952)
Average Rating: 7.1/10
Reviews Counted: 7
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 2
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 0
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 675
Movie Info
The Big Sky is based on a popular novel by A.B. Guthrie. Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin play a pair of Kentucky frontiersmen who embark upon the first keelboat trip up the Missouri River way back in 1830. Joining Douglas and Martin are Martin's grizzled old uncle Arthur Hunnicutt and garrulous Frenchman Steven Geray. Running afoul of various Indian tribes, Douglas nonetheless romances Sioux princess Elizabeth Threatt (their off-screen relationship was on the kinky side, as an embarrassed Douglas
Aug 6, 1952 Wide
Turner Home Entertainment
Cast
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Kirk Douglas
Jim Deakins -
Dewey Martin
Boone Caudell -
Elizabeth Threatt
Teal Eye -
Arthur Hunnicutt
Zeb -
Buddy Baer
Romaine -
Hank Worden
Poordevil -
Jim Davis
Streak -
Steven Geray
Jourdonnais -
Henri Letondal
Labadie -
Robert Hunter
Chouquette -
Booth Colman
Pascal -
Paul H. Frees
McMasters -
Frank de Kova
Moleface -
Guy Wilkerson
Longface -
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Don Beddoe
Horse Trader -
Barbara Hawks
Indian Girl -
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The Big Sky Trailer & Photos
All Critics (10) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (7) | Rotten (0) | DVD (2)
A saga as long as the day and as big as all outdoors.
Though this sublime 1952 black-and-white masterpiece by Howard Hawks is usually accorded a low place in the Hawks canon, it's a particular favorite of mine -- mysterious, beautiful, and even utopian.
This is a rousing, good-time adventure tale with two Hawksian buddies making their way through the untamed wild.
This is not one of Hawks' great films, but it's one of his most visually satisfying.
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Foreign Titles
- The Big Sky (DE)
- The Big Sky (1952) (UK)


Top Critic
Jim and Boone live out under the open sky. They feel uncomfortable in the big city and comment on how "city men walk" and how the women are cinched up in their dresses like sacks that've been tied up too tight. There is a particular irony to Boone, who hates injuns (they killed his brother, and he carries the scalp of the one who did it, according to his uncle), yet there burns within him the desire to live as they do, simply and off the land. The indians in Big Sky are treated not as "the bad guys" as they so often were in films from this period, but as individuals and individual tribes, some good, some bad. Probably the most fair treatment native Americans had received in the movies at the time. But more than anything, it's the journey upriver that features so heavily in this film. It's a journey fraught with indians, rushing waters, rattlesnakes, fires, bullets and arrows... and it's quite a satisfying journey at that.