It's a Big Country (1951)

IT'S A BIG COUNTRY  (1951)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Charles Vidor, Richard Thorpe, 
    John Sturges, Don Weis, Don Hartman,
    Clarence Brown, William Wellman
    C: William Powell, James Whitmore, Ethel Barrymore,
    George Murphy, Keenan Wynn, S.Z. Sakall,
    Janet Leigh, Gene Kelly, Marjorie Main,
    Keefe Braselle, Gary Cooper, Van Johnson,
    Lewis Stone, Nancy Davis, Frederic March
This is like the movie equivalent of the fourth-grade civics textbook I remember from my time as a kid at St. Bernard's. The textbook predated us - I'm pretty sure it was from the 1940s - and it was definitely a good-parts-only take on American government and culture. It was also, from what I remember, extremely boring. To be fair, the movie isn't nearly as dull as that textbook. It's an anthology of feel-good short pieces designed to shed a patriotic light on the American experience. So William Powell and James Whitmore share a seat on a train and wrangle over the meaning of "E Pluribus Unum." Ethel Barrymore complains about not being counted in the 1950 census. Hungarian farmer's daughter Janet Leigh falls for a Greek ice-cream vendor played by Gene Kelly. Marjorie Main plays the mother of a G.I. killed in Korea. Gary Cooper's a Texas cowboy. Van Johnson's a young minister assigned to a Washington, D.C., church. Future first lady Nancy Davis plays a schoolteacher. There's a documentary segment devoted to black Americans, who do not otherwise appear. Indians are mentioned, but you never see any. No Asians, either, that I recall. Arabs, forget it, not in 1951. The stories are innocuous, but they don't last long, and the actors do what they can with what's there. Coming from Hollywood at the height of the Red Scare, a movie like this has a political context that can't be ignored. It's not just a flag-waving celebration of American greatness. As an implicit response to HUAC and the blacklist, it's an act of self-defense.