‘The Big Sky’: An Adventure as Big as the Great Northwest

Director Howard Hawks knows how to pack intrigue, action, and a good tale into a movie.

(L–R) Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas), Zeb Calloway (Arthur Hunnicutt), and Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin), in “The Big Sky.” RKO Radio Pictures

NR | 2h 2m | Drama | 1952

One of the characters in the “The Big Sky” muses, “Sure is big country. Only thing bigger is the sky. Looks like God made it and forgot to put people in it.” Beneath that big sky, producer-director Howard Hawks’s epic Western depicts the coming together of whites and Indians, and women and men in miles and miles of country; it was once hidden, now wide open, but everywhere untamed.