It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Stars upon stars upon stars. Rarely does a movie come around with this many established stars. Packed with star power and amazing camera filming locales. The buffalo stampede is pretty amazing as well. I'd have loved to see this in its original Cinerama presentation with today's sound. Then n now need to be experienced.

Really, all these rave reviews?! Did I watch the same movie?Apparently this was a grand spectacle at the time it was released. Twenty Four amazing actors and the filming of all the broad vistas were meant for the audience to ooh and ahh...But the story, oh the story is a mish mosh of plot points that in the end don't add up. Yes the writers and directors manage to pull the film full circle revolving mostly around one family.But ugh. Parts of the film were downright painful. Three to four different directors does not make for the most cohesive film!

I am a truly big fan of a good western, and not so much an enthusiastic fan of a musical themed western but "How the West Was Won" combined an all star cast of veterans such as Karl Malden, James Stewart, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, George Peppard and the always nasty screen villain Eli Wallach with just the right mix of a very boisterous and cantankerous singing Debbie Reynolds which made this 164 minute film a memorable western classic.This film is the way all great and classic films should be made with a grand musical score opening the film, another musical score to allow for a short break/interlude at the mid-point of the film, and to close with a memorable music score as this great western film classic ended with.Yes, this film depicts the struggles of four generations of the Prescott family as they travel by make shift rafts, horse and buggy, wagon trains, and the earliest designs of locomotive engines on freshly laid railroad tracks. The four generations of the Prescott family fought Indians, the U.S. Civil war, gunslingers, bandidos and corrupt businessmen, and what the viewer is left with by the end of the film is a good reminder of what many of our own families predecessors endured to allow us to live a good life that we live today.How the West Was Won combined the experience of four directors of which one director managed the films musical scores and the other three directors basically directed one generation of the Prescott families life until the story line was passed on to the next generation of the Prescott family.Although the films length at 144 minutes is approximately one hour longer than most feature length films, I for one would have gladly paid a premium to have been able to see this film in one of the classic movie theaters on the large panoramic movie screens that were ever present in all large cities and even in smaller towns during the 1960's era before VHS/DVD/BluRay/HBO/NetFlix/streaming swallowed up the now long forgotten true movie fans atmosphere of the physical movie film theaters. Don't even get me started on how limited the availability of the Drive-In theaters are lacking today.I digress, but there is a parallel that I draw from the pioneers such as the four generations of the Prescott family depicted in How the West was Won and our waning film industry. It now seems to encourage rather than discourage the flagrant pirating of film producers intellectual property and the ridiculous costs associated with the more simple and in my opinion cartoonish CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) so-called action/adventure films that are so popular at the box office today. As the buffalo and native Indians disappeared from the western prairies and plain fields, so too will great films such as How the West was Won, so take the time and enjoy their simplistic but more factual story lines because in a few decades the art of film making may be lost to future generations and replaced with films based on CGI games like Donkey Kong. I rate How the West Was Won a 9 out of 10 rating and I hope that future generations will grow to appreciate the picture quality and the history of the great old western for what it was intended. Rolling, rolling, rolling, ♬♪♩ keep those wagons' rolling ♬♪♩ rawhide!!!

HOW THE WEST WAS WON was the 8th and final Cinerama film. Six travelogues preceded it, as well as MGM's only other feature in the process, THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM (1962), released the year prior.MGM had taken a chance on the process to be able to satisfy the widescreen and stereophonic craze for epic films, but abandoned it due to its unsatisfactory performance next to its rival, Ultra Panavision 70, in which MGM produced MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, also in 1962. The use of one camera, one strip of film and no curvature, and the ability to bring back close ups and medium shots sealed Cinerama's fate.This was a grand way to go out though. Five periods of the taming of the West: The River, The Plains, The Civil War, The Railroad, and The Law, and a roster of stars (13 leading, 10 supporting, plus a narrator). It had everything; story, cohesion, thrills – and all in enormous curved screen and Technicolor glory. At two hours and 44 minutes, it was the longest of the 8 Cinerama films and with its final shots (taken from or re-taken as a tribute to the America The Beautiful sequence ending THIS IS CINERAMA (the initial film in the process), it brought the Cinerama story full circle.Sad though that Cinerma cameras had a tendency to be covered with splotches of dirt in its aerial shots. This is rampant throughout the travelogues and here we can see it during Spencer Tracy's initial narration and at the end montage. How digital clean-up for Smilebox DVD presentation could have ignored these obvious defects is beyond my imagination.The image still needs some color correction and the images need sharpening, but the Smilebox DVD release is the best we have so far. The superlative score by Alfred Newman (one of his very best) is in turns stirring and sentimentally moving. Probably the most wrenching scene is Zeb's departure for the war, in which direction, score and the subdued performances of Carroll Baker and George Peppard bring tears.It is recommended to every lover of western films and to those in love with wide screen photography. The locations are gorgeous and always there to look at if one gets bored with the acting, direction or story line. All the actors do a creditable job, with the exception of Debbie Reynold's "old Lilith" at the end of the film. She did go on the next year to earn her only Oscar nom – for THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN (which used the same mansion exterior as her San Francisco house in WEST, by the way).It is interesting also to note upon reading these almost 150 reviews on the IMDb pages, that there seems to be no middle ground. Either reviewers loved the film or hated it. It's up to you to decide for yourself, but you must not miss it.