The Big Trail (1930)

John Wayne takes the lead in this very early widescreen western that depicts the westward expansion as a Wagon Train travels The oregon trail. Filmed on location with practical effects and no CGI trickery, this is as close to witnessing the trek in person.

Playing Breck Coleman, Duke is on the trail of the scoundrels that killed his mentor and stole his wolf pelts along the way he joins a wagon train and extracts vengeance on a trio of scooundrels. He winds up winning the girl and triumphing over the villains. One of whom, Red Flack, is played to the hilt by Tyrone Power. Sr (Father of Tyrone "Zorro" Power. Jr) coming across as a living cartoon and appears to be searching for Popeye and Olive Oyl. He's basically Bluto from Popeye.

The second badguy is the romantic rival Bill Thorpe, played rather stiffly and stagebound by Ian Keith. Who John Wayne would evenually doube as the dead body for in a later picture. 

The third is a rather forgettable hispanic character, Lopez, played by Charles Stevens who plays him as a stereotypical bandito type. 

The movie is at heart a survival film as Coleman tries outwit, outlast, survive the machinations and schemes of this dastardly trio all the while trying to win the heart of Ruth, while guiding settlers through treacherous territory and keeping them alive. 

 The plot is rather thin and instead focuses on the interplay between the characters with a heavy focus on three particular groups, the rivalry between between Coleman and Thorpe for the heart of Ruth: The dastardly trio of of Thorpe, Lopez, and Flack, and lastly Coleman's friendship with Tully Marshall as Zeke.

There are also two comedic side characters played with varying effectiveness by Russ Powell as Windy, the master of animal sound effects, and the very tiresome antics of El Brendal as a Swedish immigrant with an overbearing mother-in-law. His scenes are not very well developed and drag things down. 

 Another issue with the movie are the three wildly different acting methods on display, you have Silent style, Stage style, and the just developing Talkie Style. They really don't mesh well, with the three styles best being exhibited by Power Sr. (Silent), Kieth (Stage) and Marshall (Talkie). 

Marguerite Churchill as Ruth Cameron is firmly in the stage camp and doesn't really have a spark with Duke who is trying his best to do the Transatlantic accent foisted upon him by the studio and an overbearing dialect coach. He also wavers between the stage and talkie styles coming across uncertain at times of what is being expected of him.  Nonetheless, he comes off as the best along with, Tully Marshall, of the bunch as he slowly seems to get a grasp on an early form of his screen persona. 

The Big Trail is a fascinating peek at the development of a screen icon that would continue to grace the screen for over 45 more years. And considering that he was ill with dysentery and lost 20 lbs during filming, he does a fantastic job. 

 Other interesting points (Which I am copying from the Wikipedia Page) 

Ward Bond has a few scenes in this movie and even a line of dialogue or two. One of his earliest movies in support of Duke who he would last work with on Rio Bravo (1959) For the film, 

Walsh had employed 93 actors and used as many as 725 natives from five different Indian tribes. He also obtained 185 wagons, 1,800 cows, 1,400 horses, 500 buffalos and 700 chickens, pigs and dogs for the production of the film. 

Filming on The Big Trail began on-location just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico in April 1930, which was unheard of at the time  

The film was shot in an early widescreen process called 70 mm Grandeur film, which was first used in the film Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, The Big Trail was the last time it was used. Grandeur proved financially unviable for an industry still investing in the switch to talking pictures It would be over 20 years after the release of The Big Trail before the concept of widescreen films was revived; the same Grandeur lenses were eventually used for The Robe. 

Beyond the format difference, the 70mm and 35mm versions vary substantially from each other. They were shot by different cameras, and footage for each format was edited separately in the cutting room. Some scenes were shot simultaneously by both cameras, the only difference being the angle (with the better angle usually given to the 70mm camera). Some scenes were shot first by one camera, and then retaken with the other camera. The 70mm cameras could not focus well up close, so their shots were mainly panoramas with very few close-ups. The 35mm cameras could move in and focus at short distances. Thus, scenes in the 70mm version might show two characters talking to each other in the same take, making greater use of the widescreen frame, while the 35mm version would have close-up shots cutting back and forth between the two characters. This may have been an artistic choice as much as a technical one. 

 A fairly common practice in the early sound era was to simultaneously produce at least one foreign-language version of a film for release in non-English-speaking countries; an approach later replaced by simply dubbing the dialogue. There were at least four foreign-language versions made of The Big Trail, all filmed in 35mm, 1.20:1 ratio and using different casts and different character names:  

My rating 6/10. An interesting experiment and peek at epic filmmaking before the advent of CGI this is always worth a look to see a young Duke learning his trade and the beautiful location cinematography