Free William Wyler by Gabriel Miller

valley, McKay and Julie rein in their horses, look significantly at each other in separate shots, and then head down toward the Big Muddy together. They will, no doubt, marry and live together in the peaceful country. After seeing the final print, Wyler wrote to Swink, expressing his delight with the scene: “I can't begin to tell you how pleased I am with the new ending…. The shots [you] made are complete perfection. Exactly what was needed.” 29 Whether Wyler truly meant that or was just happy to be rid of the film is open to question.
    Wyler's letter to Swink camouflages the mood on the set, which seems better suited to the feuding Terrills and Hannasseys than to a famed director and his handpicked cast. The set was tense, as ego-driven fights erupted between the assembled stars, and even Wyler's friendship with Peck was affected. In an early scene, McKay and Patricia are seen riding in a buckboard back toward the ranch, when they are accosted by Buck and some Hannassey hands; McKay is tied up, dragged around, and humiliated. Objecting to one of the close-ups, Peck asked Wyler four or five times to retake the scene, and the director finally relented, agreeing to redo it before the company went home. When it became apparent that Wyler had not scheduled the retake, however, Peck left the set. The close-up was never reshot. Heston later defended his costar's reaction, explaining, “To him, I think, it was a question of ethics, not art. I agree—you have to keep your promises.” 30 After this incident, Peck and Wyler did not speak to each other for three years.
    The film opened to mixed reviews, but in spite of the critics—and the fact that westerns were a television staple and hardly a novelty anymore—business at the box office was brisk. Audiences thrilled to the colorful, widescreen splendor of Wyler's landscape, accompanied by Jerome Moross's Oscar-nominated score (which Heston considered the finest ever composed for a western film). Despite winning one Oscar—for Burl Ives as Best Supporting Actor—and finishing in eleventh place among top-grossing films that year, The Big Country barely broke even. Neither Peck nor Wyler participated in any profit sharing.
    Like many westerns made in the 1950s, The Big Country grapples with the notion of negotiating with the enemy rather than engaging in violent confrontation, debated in response to various international conflicts arising during the decade. As in the global political aftermath of World War II, peace on the western frontier would require a spirit of mutual understanding and a desire to forgo violence. This pacifist inclination is clearly reflected in McKay's attempts to avoid violence even in self-defense, as it is in the stubborn Quaker faith of Amy Kane (Grace Kelly) in High Noon and Friendly Persuasion's Eliza Birdwell. In each of these cases, however, the pacifist position is finally undercut. When faced with an implacable and irreconcilable enemy, the nonviolent position proves untenable. Interestingly, The Big Country's most memorable sequences, including Peck and Heston's fight in the moonlight and the final shoot-out in Blanco Canyon, make their own statement about the inevitability of violence in a “pacifist” film.
    Wyler would reconsider these questions one more time in what became his most honored film, Ben-Hur (1959). Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), a Jewish merchant of royal blood, reunites after many years with his close boyhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd). Messala has returned to Judea, where he and Judah grew up, as the newly appointed Roman tribune. It is Messala's job to put down the locals, who are planning to rebel against the Roman occupation. Messala wants Judah to inform on the rebel leaders and persuade the rest of his countrymen that they should simply accept Roman rule. When Messala insists that “you are either for me or against me,” Judah chooses to be “against.” Later,