dglink Legendary star Kirk Douglas now nears his 100th birthday, and he has left a legacy of great performances in both classic and routine movies over his long career. Douglas was skillful at playing the dastardly villain, who could convincingly convert into a stalwart hero after some life-altering event. His broad toothy grin and dimpled chin were enigmatic enough to suggest either the dark side or the light. Jim Fallon, the greedy lumber baron turned tree hugger, is one of those Douglas roles that shift from the darkness to enlightenment. Set around 1900 in California, "The Big Trees" follows Fallon from his pursuit of government land, where he wants to cut down giant Sequoias and profit from their lumber, to his unlikely romance with a Quaker widow, played by Eve Miller, who wants to save the sacred trees. Of course, love casts out greed in this routine, predictable, but entertaining film that feels like a western, although set too late in the 19th century to fully qualify for the genre.Douglas dominates the movie, and he is fun to watch. Douglas is ably supported by colorful veteran Edgar Buchanan as his gun-slinging sidekick and by such other familiar players as Ellen Corby and Alan Hale. Trees fall, babies are born, and tragedies strike, which alter the course of events and character motivations. Director Felix E. Feist maintains a decent pace, and a climactic runaway train generates some suspense and excitement. "The Big Trees" may not be among Douglas's timeless films, but this tale of logging days in California is better than average, and Douglas is in fine form and always engaging to watch.

Robert J. Maxwell Somewhere near the opening, in 1900, the sly and manipulative young money monger, Kirk Douglas, bamboozles the good folk of the Wisconsin town into following him out to northern California where Congress has just unfettered the lumber companies and enabled them to make fortunes by destroying the ancient redwood forests.In Douglas' maturity, after he'd achieved stardom, an interviewer asked him which was the worst movie he'd ever made. Douglas didn't have to think long before coming up with either "The Indian Fighter" or "The Big Trees". The brain is a curious organ. I can't recall which movie Douglas was more ashamed of but I can remember learning in the sixth grade that a single giant Sequoia, cousin to the redwood, could provide lumber enough for seven houses or seven million toothpicks. Do you realize how much seven million toothpicks is worth? Of course, the wanton destruction of the redwood forests costs nothing because you can't put a dollar sign in front of something whose only value is spiritual and symbolic. Those redwoods were fully grown when William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066. There's a bristle-cone pine in the nearby Sierras that is older than Cleopatra. But it's small, knotty, and gnarled. I doubt you'd get many good toothpicks out of it but I imagine we'll get around to replacing it with a shopping mall sooner or later. Douglas salivates at the prospect of chopping down all these trees. It's a short-term position. As E. B. White wrote: "I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management."Thank you for your kind attention, and now if someone will help me down from the speaker's platform? Thank you. Wait -- my foot. Okay.Douglas has sent a good-natured sidekick, Edgar Buchanan, ex-dentist, ahead to set the stage for the arrival of him and his lusty crowd of lumberjacks. I suppose it could be argued that the name of the town in which Buchanan intends to locate the business is coincidental, but really -- San Hedrin? Wikipedia on the sanhedrin: "The Sanhedrin (Hebrew: סַנְהֶדְרִין sanhedrîn, Greek: Συνέδριον, synedrion, "sitting together," hence "assembly" or "council") was an assembly of twenty to twenty-three men appointed in every city in the Land of Israel." They were a kind of court, as old as the redwoods, and managed to condemn the founder of Christianity, so the tellers of tales say.So with the blessings of McKinley's congress, Douglas and his men lay claim to the redwoods, despite the objections of the religious sect that has been homesteading there. It turns into a legal tangle, with bills, claims, filing of ownerships, and the like. Three sides emerge. Douglas and his smooth instrumentalizing of the law; a gang of hooligans who'd love to get rid of Douglas and file their own claims; and the religious sect with their lofty but dull pieties. Some people shift their allegiances. Buchanan sides with the sect, and Douglas' timber boss colludes with the gravel-voiced roughnecks.Pretty Patrice Wymore sings the requisite saloon song on a stage; there is a fist fight on a footbridge; a falling tree that crushes a cabin and the man inside it; a trestle collapses under a runaway train and everything falls down into a river; a friend loses his life protecting Douglas and Douglas sees the light.It must have been "Indian Fighter" that Douglas put at the bottom of his list because, despite the pedestrian direction, often clumsy dialog, and hackneyed plot, this one is kind of exciting. First it's a quiet duel of writs. But it turns action packed and noble.

bilowkojy In a respective recorded events that occur at the turn of 19th to 20th century in the United States in California during the conflict how the collective, that personal ambitions and interests with the social norms, laws and moral principles they the first are the winners. The movie "The Big Trees (1952)" attempts to provide answers to above question. This is the weaker the developed film, which is the biggest drawback inconsistent flow of the plot with the result that the action is difficult to connect. However, if the creators of this, still under a mediocre film, viewers would like to point out the moral dilemmas of the actors in this drama they are somewhat succeed. Unscrupulous Jim Fallon, greedy of money, wants to be all they could enrich the exploitation of the giant sequoias whom opposes the Quaker colony which considers that is the sequoia tree a sacred tree. In the ensuing conflict gradually come to see the moral problems of almost all characters and even members of the Quaker community, led by their leader Alicia Chadwick. How many events are taking place most of the characters , because its personal interests, till the end discovers and shows their hypocrisy. Mainly guilt of Jim Fallon many have died in the conflicts, between them is and the father of Alicia Chadwick, which again at the end of the movie, in a well-recorded breakneck ride the train, the unfortunate J. Fallon saves life, so she finally rejects of what little of its moral scruples. Despite everything, she married J. Fallon! The events typical for the liberal capitalism in the USA from 19th and early 20th century, whose protagonists are the ones most are subject finally to its rules, rejecting their moral principles and they are caught in its vicious network. A serious drawback of the movie is a mediocre photography and especially poorly recorded a numerous night scenes. The main actors are more or less succeed to act out characters that have starred. Among them are Kirk Douglas (as Jim Fallon), which is otherwise many times successfully played the violent and unscrupulous characters in its rich film career. There are Eve Miller (as Alicia Chadwick,) and Edgar Buchanan (as Walter 'Yukon' Burns).

dbdumonteil The scene when the people from the forest "read" history on a redwood may have inspired Hitchcock and his screenwriters for a famous moment in "Vertigo" when Kim Novak and James Stewart walk through the trees(it is not in the original French novel)Deforestation has become one of the main concerns of our time,which gives "the big trees" a contemporary ecological feel.Kirk Douglas portrays a greedy man one of his rare parts of a disagreeable man (however there were three of these nasty persons in his 1952 work "ace in the hole' aka "the big carnival" "detective story" and this movie).In " the big trees" ,it will take tragedies and the love and faith of a woman to take him back on the right track.The forest landscapes are splendid and make the viewer feel how much people need the protection of these big trees.