Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

gavin6942 In 1900, unscrupulous timber baron Jim Fallon plans to take advantage of a new law and make millions off California redwood. Much of the land he hopes to grab has been homesteaded by a Quaker colony, who try to persuade him to spare the giant sequoias, but these are the very trees he wants most.Kirk Douglas says this was a "bad movie" he made simply to get out of a contract. Well, I have to disagree with him. While not a great movie, or one that stands out as the best of his career (like "Ace in the Hole"), it is far from a bad movie. At the very least, it is on par with any other western of its time (though this is not a "western" in the strict sense).I don't know enough about Quakers to know if they were in California in 1900 or had some special attachment to old trees. I suppose at least some had to be there, but the tree part seems odd. But I really don't know much about modern Quakers.

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.

wes-connors In 1900, lumber mill owner Kirk Douglas (as James "Jim" B. Fallon) moves from Wisconsin west, where he hopes to make a fortune chopping down California's giant sequoia trees. After surveying the timber, Mr. Douglas learns religious homesteaders consider the 4,000 year old redwood trees to be a sacred, historical testament of God. Douglas is attracted to what he calls "wonderfully proportioned" widow Eve Miller (as Alicia Chadwick). She's a hugger, but Douglas thinks, "A tree's a tree." Arriving later, blonde showgirl Patrice Wymore (as Dora "Daisy Fisher" Figg) carries a torch for Douglas. His former goodwill ambassador Edgar Buchanan (as Walter "Yukon Lucky" Burns) decides to do the Lord's work. "Tom" the cat gets tossed on screen. While anything's possible, "The Big Trees" is apparently the last re-make of Wallace Reid's "The Valley of the Giants" (1919). This well was definitely dry.*** The Big Trees (2/5/52) Felix Feist ~ Kirk Douglas, Eve Miller, Patrice Wymore, Edgar Buchanan

Snow Leopard While certainly watchable, "The Big Trees" had the makings of what could have been a better, perhaps much better, movie. With Kirk Douglas in the lead role, a supporting cast of solid character actors, settings that lend themselves to visually appealing scenery, and a story that raises worthwhile environmental and ethical issues, it could have been quite good.As a predatory but charismatic lumberman, Douglas has a role that allows him to use some of his best strengths as an actor, and the scenario provides him with two main characters to play off of, with Edgar Buchanan as a loyal but incorruptibly honest associate, and Eve Miller as an idealist determined to save the redwood forest that Douglas's character plans to exploit. Buchanan is especially believable in his role.The story and script, though, don't give Douglas or the others a lot to work with. The story never tackles the most important issues head-on, nor does it explore the most significant of the possible tensions in the characters' relationships with one another. The important environmental questions and other such topics are dealt with only on a surface level, and aside from Douglas's own character, who changes rather abruptly and unconvincingly, there is little character development. The religious angle was certainly well-intentioned, but it never seems to fit in comfortably with the other story elements.It's still all right for lighter entertainment, and there are some good scenes. Then too, when Douglas gets the chance, he can be quite interesting to watch in this kind of role. As long as you don't expect too much, it might be worth seeing, but it missed quite a few opportunities to be a much more substantial movie.