WCC Film Series: The Missouri Breaks

This summer, the Wachholz College Center is excited to launch the WCC FILM SERIES, an ongoing series featuring a variety of films and film themes throughout each season. Each film will feature a short talk-back to begin the evening, providing the audience with important information and interesting facts about the film(s) they are about to view.

The theme for the summer of 2025 is MADE IN MONTANA - featuring a selection of cinema highlighting several lesser-known movies that were shot under the Big Sky! While production crews often utilize Montana's stunning backgrounds to set the scene before retreating to the comfort of a studio lot, the seven feature films of this summer were created almost entirely in the Treasure State. Therefore, each one taps into the same culture and landscapes we all share and relates it back to us in new and surprising ways. We hope that by curating a lineup of Montana-centric cinema specifically for the community, audiences might find something new and surprising about our home state in each one of these films.

FEATURED FILM:
Title: The Missouri Breaks
Year: 1976
Director: Arthur Penn
Starring: Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson
Rated: R (Violence, Language, Brief Sexual References)
Run Time: 2hr 6mins

The Missouri Breaks (1976), directed by Arthur Penn, is a revisionist Western featuring powerhouse performance from Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. Brando portrays Robert E. Lee Clayton, an enigmatic “regulator” hired to hunt down a gang of cattle rustlers led by Nicholson’s Tom Logan. Set in the rugged and morally ambiguous frontier of the 1880s, the film weaves themes of justice, revenge, and the clash between authority and outlaw culture. Its unusual pairing of two Hollywood legends—Brando with his offbeat mannerisms and Nicholson with his roguish charm—creates a dynamic tension that underscores the film’s unsettling take on frontier myth, further enhanced by John Williams’s evocative score.

Montana is not just a backdrop in The Missouri Breaks; it is fundamental to the film’s very identity. The title itself refers to the dramatic eroded cliffs, canyons, and badlands carved by the Missouri River in north-central Montana. Principal photography took place across multiple authentic Montana locations—including Billings and its surrounding ranches, Red Lodge, Virginia City, Harrison, and the historic Bovey Restorations in Nevada City—grounding the narrative in real frontier spaces. This genuine sense of place reinforces the film’s depiction of the vast, untamed landscape as a character in its own right: a harsh, unforgiving territory where law and survival are inseparable, mirroring the internal fractures of its protagonists.