Load of rubbish!!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

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

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

In 2011, "Time" magazine listed this as one of the 10 historically misleading films! As a retired American history teacher, it's pretty obvious what I think about the film!! Some of the ridiculously wrong portions of the film include a romance between Clark and Sacagawea (she was pregnant and married to Charbonneau in real life) as well as having the Donna Reed play this lady!! It's hilarious hearing her, with her perfect diction and Midwestern accent, playing a native. So how do they make her look like an Indian? LOTS of paint and a wig! I think Divine would have been about as convincing (and a lot more entertaining)!! Despite this romance NEVER occurring, it is the main focus of the film! And, despite the nasty natives in the film, for the most part, the tribes the expedition encountered were very peaceful.If you can completely ignore the film's MANY inaccuracies, it is a very nice looking but dull film. The color is amazingly nice--and has that nice 1950s color scheme. It also has many lovely location shots and is HUGE in scope. And, if you ignore most of the details, the film did get the gist of the actual story! There were folks named Lewis and Clark and they did explore the western portion of the United States. As for the acting, it was generally good, but Fred MacMurray didn't seem to have a lot to do but scowl. Poor guy. And William Demarest sounded VERY peculiar--with an accent that came and went and seemed like it was part Irish, part Scottish and part....God knows! Heston and Reed were fine.Note: Although the film is VERY pretty, sometimes the images are blurry. Apparently this is caused by differences in shrinkage rates of the color strips put together to make a full-color film. In other words, the red or blue layer might shrink at differing rates in portions of the film--giving a few scenes an odd look today.Another Note: Films about this expedition neglect to mention that not too long after it was complete that Captain Lewis committed suicide! This dark event was apparently the result of his lifelong struggle with clinical depression. Pretty sad....

I can see when you want to take liberties with certain historical films but this was absolutely ridiculous.Despite beautiful cinematography, what natural resources do we see depicted in this 1955 blunder of a film.Not only are there historical inaccuracies, this film is made into some sort of love triangle that never existed. It's really about Lewis fending off suitors for Sacajawea.Donna Reid looks haggard in the role of the great Indian woman. Whoever made her up should really have been dismissed from the make-up department. William Demarest delivers his lines as if he is coming straight out of Brooklyn, New York. I haven't stopped laughing when he said Louisiana Purchase. The "ur" in that word was made to sound like "oi" instead.Fred MacMurray and Charlton Heston do their best with the exceptionally bad screen writing. At least, Heston had good thoughts-his next project would be the awesome "The Ten Commandments."This film was in Vista Vision. For the life of me, I never quite understood what that film process was all about. No wonder it quickly went out of vogue. The picture should have followed.

A crucial event in American history is rendered dull and unexciting by Hollywood convention; the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition which in the early 1800s conquered unclaimed territory for the ever-growing United States. Production values are glossy and there are a few action highlights, but the handling is uninspired and the slowly-paced film emerges an undistinguished effort overall.Casting is variable: Fred MacMurray makes for a staid Lewis but Charlton Heston's Clark is, as ever, at home in such larger-than-life surroundings; Donna Reed (as an Indian squaw!) and Barbara Hale provide the none-too-convincing romantic interest - which actually takes up a good deal of the running-time (before the expedition, both men love Hale but she prefers Heston; when the latter meets up with Reed, they fall for each other - but complications of the boring variety arise when it's revealed that she's been promised by the tribe which has abducted her to a villainous French trapper/guide and, even when she finally escapes and goes back to her people, she's spoken for by a rash young Indian brave!). This allows Heston to engage in fisticuffs and he even falls out with MacMurray, but the audience's interest is never more than dimly aroused; however, veteran William Demarest is on hand as a level-headed sergeant who actually keeps the company together during such trying times.Anyway, the film is watchable enough in itself - though it's better approached, perhaps, as a Western rather than a widescreen spectacular (with which Heston would soon come to be identified)...and, in any case, it's miles behind such celebrated 'epics' of American colonialism as John Ford's DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (1939) and King Vidor's NORTHWEST PASSAGE (1940).

"The Far Horizons", made in 1955, is based on the 1803 to 1806 Lewis and Clark expedition to discover a water route from St Louis to the Pacific ocean. It is a nice vehicle for the three stars of the movie.Fred McMurray had already made 70 movies, and Donna Reed 35 movies, when they made this one. Charlton Heston had only made 13 prior, and a age 30, this one was made right before he became a giant star in the "biblical" series of movies.Shortly after this movie, McMurray went on to star in the TV series "My Three Sons", and likewise Donna Reed in the "Donna Reed Show" TV series. In this movie, at age 34, she plays the teenage Sacajawea, and does it very well.Recall that in the 50s most western movies played on the "savage Indian" theme and this one fits that description too. The writer and director took lots of "literary license" with the Lewis and Clark story so it is not to be considered historically accurate. Still, it gives a good, meaningful dramatization of a great historical event in the USA.In addition, most of the journey filming was done at or near the original Lewis and Clark trail, and the movie contains great scenery of mountains and rivers.Overall I found the movie very enjoyable, 7 of 10, and fun to watch such veteran actors in a movie almost 50 years ago. And especially since the USA just this year (2000) released the new one-dollar coin commemorating Sacajawea.