This isn’t really a formal review; it’s more of a rambling appreciation—perhaps that suits better, because the film has a rambling, hard-to-identify quality of its own. The basic premise is simple: after the murder of his youngest brother, Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) takes a job as marshal of Tombstone, with his brothers Morgan (Ward Bond) and Virgil (Tim Holt) as his deputies. They form an unlikely alliance with melancholy, alcoholic gambler “Doc” Holliday (Victor Mature), and eventually evidence about the murder leads them into the famous showdown with the Clanton family, led by sinister Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan) at the OK Corral.
If you’ve done any amount of reading about the historical OK Corral shootout, which I haven’t, you’ll know right away that the characters and events presented in this version are largely fictional. And I didn’t mind that. Taking it as fiction frees you to simply enjoy it as such.
I don’t know whether My Darling Clementine is a film that would appeal to every viewer. It’s a surprisingly quiet film, in that it has a rather slow, measured pace; it’s made up of a series of small scenes and incidents that connect loosely to each other. The style reminded me a little of They Were Expendable, another Ford film I love, though the latter has a much stronger thread of actual historical events holding it together. (There’s some visual similarity too—the likeness between these two shots jumped out at me right away.) Much of the dialogue is brief and spare; there is a good amount of time spent in silence, simply observing the actions of the characters. And yet at the same time, it takes the time for a full rendition of Hamlet’s soliloquy, begun with pathetic dignity by an inebriated traveling actor (Alan Mowbray) atop a table in a smoky saloon, and quietly finished by Doc Holliday, in a scene that somehow tells us everything we know or need to know about Holliday himself. (It was a curious coincidence that I had just finished reading Hamlet the very day I watched My Darling Clementine.) The inevitable confrontation with the Clantons is always coming, always hanging in the background, though it’s put aside for quite a while to focus on Holliday and his own troubles.Yet in spite of its understatedness, or perhaps because of it, the film can still hit hard when necessary. There’s perhaps one of the most shocking murders you’ll ever see on film—not shocking in a graphic sense but simply in its jump-out-of-your-seat unexpectedness and cold-bloodedness (and I even knew that that particular character was going to die; I just didn’t know how and when). The two most tragic moments are silent, framing striking, wordless shots that convey the stunned grief of the characters involved.
But the real star of My Darling Clementine is the visuals. It’s probably the most beautiful black-and-white cinematography I’ve ever seen (where in the world was the Oscar nomination?). The opening shot of the cattle coming up over the hill with Monument Valley in the background almost literally took my breath away, and throughout the whole movie I just loved looking at it. The atmosphere of the Tombstone scenes is crammed with detail—the night scene where the Earp brothers first ride into town, for instance, the streets seething with activity and raucous with music and voices. Then by contrast, a bright, quiet morning with crowds of the more upstanding settlers walking, riding and driving into town to attend a social on the site of the town’s first church. Every shot is framed in a way that makes you pay attention to detail.This post is a contribution to Legends of Western Cinema Week, hosted at A Lantern in Her Hand and Meanwhile in Rivendell, so be sure to hop over there and see what movies other participants are talking about!
I would like to see this again some time. I watched it once, and was underwhelmed, but perhaps I would appreciate its aesthetics more now.
This one sounds interesting. I must add it to my list of westerns to watch in the near future.
I want to see this now!;)