How the West Was Won

How the West Was Won (1962) is a sprawling Western you can watch online on iFILM. Shot in three-panel Cinerama, it packs roughly fifty years of American expansion into one frame, following a single pioneer family from the 1830s to the close of the century.

The story moves in chapters: a treacherous river run, the gold rush, the Civil War, the railroads pushing across open country, and the outlaws waiting along the way. Three directors split the work — Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall — and the cast reads like a roll call of an era: James Stewart, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, with Spencer Tracy narrating off-screen.

If you want the Western at its biggest and most carnival-like, this is it: a runaway-train shootout, buffalo stampedes, vistas that needed three screens to hold them. The film took home three Oscars and remains a showcase for what wide-format Hollywood could pull off. Stream How the West Was Won (1962) online on iFILM.