The Big Trail is the seminal depiction of the migration journey along the Oregon Trail and the most important Western of the early 1930s. It was also the last of a small handful of films shot with Movietone sound and Fox's short-lived 70mm Grandeur film, a pioneering widescreen process that created notorious focal challenges at close range. Director Raoul Walsh and his cinematographers developed a new compositional strategy: using increased distance and breadth to orchestrate astonishingly elaborate, interlocking movements.