The American West has a mighty and turbulent history, some of which is told, in story and folk song, in this epic movie, originally in Cinerama and photographed in gorgeous Metrocolor which is somewhat dampened down in transition to wide screen - though some early scenes still rate with the best of the West. The storyline is inevitably somewhat bitty: the Civil War is the shortest section and the weakest, and somewhere or other there's a pocket version of every western you ever saw. Not many of the actors have a chance to register (and certainly not Henry Fonda under a yard of beard), but Debbie Reynolds, surprisingly, is supreme here in a performance that epitomises the spirit of the early West - at least as Hollywood saw it.

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