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45 out of 58 people found the following comment useful :- ARCHTYPAL WESTERN, 9 July 2004 Author: bluesdoctor from A Place is Just A Place
Saw "My Darling Clementine," yet again, yes, but this time on the big screen, not on TV, which was like listening to an old favorite recording on a super stereo system and noticing all sorts of details that in the aggregate make it like watching an entirely new film for the first time.John Ford is so AMERICAN. It's just all there: the black, the shining; the pure, the defiled. I'm tempted to call him the Norman Rockwell of film, but that would diminish him. Simple, yes, but simplistic, never.The plot is merely a framework, firm, pure, austere, functional, fairly disappearing, invisible, an excuse for the real fun, film for film's sake, the pure joy of seeing and imagining.Ford foregoes the extraneous; chatty dialogue is dispense with for what's really important, the eyes, the faces, the body language. Damn, why have movies become so complicated, so noisy?Henry Fonda's diffident but sure slowhand is classic -- the laconic American. Victor Mature's Mediterranean sensuality is the foil to Fonda's Puritan austerity, (the same north-south polarity is echoed in Cathy Downs as Clementine vs. Linda Darnell as Chihuahua). But, hell, let's not get analytical or intellectual. The movie is instinctual. It's the grown-up version of kids' play-acting, subconscious, freeing.The images are stunning: a stagecoach whipped into demonic fury, a possessed Doc Holliday riding shotgun over a hurricane of dust and horse hooves. Injustice is blunt: cold summary execution with a shot in the back. American decency is unabashed: an aw-shucks square dance beneath fluttering Old Glory's. Love is a dream we cannot reach, are not worthy of.Every scene is caught in midstream, in the act, in motion. Damn, it seems so fresh.This is the Western all others imitate.PS. Also by John Ford, and essential in the American repertoire: "Young Mr. Lincoln," "Grapes of Wrath," "Stagecoach," "The Searchers," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," "Rio Grande," & "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."
37 out of 48 people found the following comment useful :- Wyatt Earp cleans up Tombstone, 14 July 1999 Author: Cameron Koo (camkoo@ion.com.au) from The Gold Coast, Australia
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE ( rating, * * * * ½ out of 5 )Adapted from the book 'Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal' by Stuart N. Lake, writers Samuel G. Engel, Winston Miller and Sam Hellman, and the great director himself John Ford, offer this most atmospheric depiction of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the most famous of shootouts in Western folk-lore.The story basically covers the period when Wyatt Earp cleaned up Tombstone and wiped out the Clanton gang at the OK Coral. This is time-honored stuff. Nostalgic dramatizations that romanticized the Wild West while creating unforgettable heroes and notorious villains.John Ford's handling of this motion picture is done with great care and obvious affection. Significant endeavor and attention to detail has gone into the period's reconstruction and the result is what can only be described as lyrical. A synchronous composition of sight and sound that produces a mesmerizing effect which in turn forces any viewer to fall instantly in love with this film.Henry Fonda's portrayal of Wyatt Earp is without doubt the best that has ever been attempted and Victor Mature's Doc Holliday has him in rare form. Add cast members Walter Brennan, Linda Darnell, Ward Bond and John Ireland, and this film just crackles along.There is one interesting irony I have noted. In John Ford's celebrated history as a director, particularly in the days when he was making silent films, the real Wyatt Earp acted as Ford's technical adviser bringing a new level of authenticity to gun play that Hollywood in the past had only guessed at. But in 'My Darling Clementine', the final shootout although well done, has a fantasy-like quality about it that avoids a sense of violent realism and adopts a surreal quality - as if seen through a dream.Because John Ford knew all too well how to make a gunfight look believable, maybe this film allowed him to go beyond what was expected and to produce something a little special, and maybe it was shot in the way that Wyatt Earp wished it could have really happened. To successfully bend the rules, it really helps to have written them in the first place.'My Darling Clementine' is a joy to behold. Sure, there are a few moments when minor cracks appear, but for pure entertainment value, it is unsurpassed. This movie is what going to the pictures on a Saturday afternoon was all about - those delightful matinee sessions when you'd load your arms up with confectionery, scramble for the best seats in the back row and experience the escapism that made growing up in the suburbs almost tolerable.
40 out of 54 people found the following comment useful :- Flawless acting, direction and photography combine to produce the pinnacle of the western genre., 28 May 2001 Author: Steven Mears (rmears@worldnet.att.net) from Clifton, Virginia
Absolute perfection. Without a doubt, `My Darling Clementine' has secured its place in film immortality, resting proudly at the top of the list of the finest westerns ever made. It represents the genre at its peak and the career high point of all involved, including director John Ford and star Henry Fonda. `Clementine' achieves the difficult blend of drama, action, romance and occasional comic relief necessary to appeal to all viewers. This is the kind of film at which Ford excelled - straightforward and powerful, sentimental but never maudlin. It is needless to say that this is the definitive portrayal of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral. It may not be the grittiest, most penetrating or historically accurate rendition, but it mixes just the right quantities of realism, legend and Hollywood magic. Its characterizations leave no room for improvement. Henry Fonda was born to play Earp. His folksy, unpretentious demeanor, coupled with the hard edge of a man who must occasionally deal out justice through the barrel of his gun, produce a multidimensional performance that others approaching the role could only dream of. With his portrayal of the tubercular Doc Holliday, Victor Mature forever shed his light image and began a series of solid dramatic roles. Other actors have played Holliday as flamboyant and eccentric, but Mature is effective in approaching him as a fatalist who has relinquished his aspirations of greatness and now lives life one day at a time. He forms an alliance with Earp because he has nothing better to do, and nothing else to live for. Walter Brennan's Old Man Clanton is a study in evil personified, and will certainly shock viewers who know him only as the crotchety but lovable grandfather he played on so many occasions. The rest of the cast is uniformly fine, featuring many members of Ford's `stock company' which followed him throughout his career. Ford's direction is strong and sure-footed. Although this was familiar territory for him, he was careful to instill each scene with a certain degree of uniqueness so the film would never appear routine. In this he was entirely successful, and a brief glance at his filmography confirms that this holds true throughout his body of work. The cinematography is breathtaking. Vast outdoor imagery and intimate gatherings of people are conveyed in an equally compelling manner. Earp's soliloquy at his brother's gravestone, a church dance sequence and the gunfight itself are among the film's many highlights. Only so much praise can be given in a review such as this; it must be seen to be appreciated.
24 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :- An archetypal Western mood piece!, 10 August 2001 Author: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
'My Darling Clementine' is easily one of Ford's best Westerns, and quite certainly the best of all the Wyatt Earp films... To most modern audiences, the Corral incident and the confused events and motivations which led to it have been best presented by two motion pictures, John Ford's 'My Darling Clementine,' and John Sturges' 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.'Ford makes a fine account of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday's legendary defeat of the Clanton gang... By now, despite the film's climactic shoot-out at the OK Corral, Ford's talents lay less in action scenes than in playing endless variations on community rituals... Dances, church-meetings, saloon brawls and funerals are utilized to define social hierarchies and relationships, and to emphasize the role of tradition in the molding of America's heroic culture...Ford makes much of the visit of a pretty graceful lady named Clementine searching for her presumably long-lost love, none other than the consumptive Doc Holliday, now, devoted to the bottle and hidden under a huge white handkerchief... Victor Mature gives a touchy performance as the wild and reckless Doc seeking death... Holliday sways between two kinds of women: The Eastern, fair and respectable Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs), and the wild dark-eyed dancing girl 'Apache' Chihuahua (Linda Darnell), one of the sirens of the 1940s whose rose-at-twilight looks seem to stimulate every cameraman... Earp, the marshal of Tombstone, deliciously played by Henry Fonda, and Doc Holliday track down the Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan-in one of his finest performances) and his infamous four sons...There is deviation on the way... A revenge motive attributed to Fonda, and the jealous intervention of Holliday's Mexican mistress... But the path is well and truly pointed to that challenge at the corral...The action is firm, nicely photographed in Ford's favorite locale, the rugged Monument Valley in northern Arizona... The story is also well told... But the film will be always remembered for its fine sensations and curiously captivating moods... This is Ford indulging himself, as was his habit, but on this occasion the indulgences all come off and are imparted with pure magic...It's a film of touches, simple and beautiful... Ford often likes to slow his Westerns down... Edged deeper into the American myth, Ford makes Fonda sit precariously on the veranda, adjusts his boots and balances himself while the world, such as it is, goes by... Fonda, with quiet persuasive self-confidence, is the imperturbable peacemaker, who walks a lady to church... Fonda-shy and slow-moving, with delightful intonation of short words, and an old-world frontier concept of courtesy, leads Clementine in a delightful two-step open-air dance...Filmed in gloriously rich black and white, 'My Darling Clementine' is an archetypal Western mood piece, full of nostalgia for times gone by and crackling with memorable scenes and characterizations...
28 out of 38 people found the following comment useful :- Classic western, 13 April 2003 Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK
Wyatt Earp and his brothers are driving cattle to California. They stop off at Tombstone and go into town, leaving the youngest brother behind to mind the cattle. On their return they find their brother murdered and their cattle stolen. Wyatt decides to stay in town with his brother as the town's marshal to bring law and order and catch the murderer. In the town he not only comes up against the hard-drinking Doc Holliday but also the Clanton's.Easily the best film that tells the story of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Coral. There have been more action packed versions or more ponderous versions but this is still the best. The shootout itself is supposedly the most accurate, as director Ford said `I talked to Wyatt Earp, he told me how it was and that's how we did it' (I'm paraphrasing cause I can't remember the direct quote). However the shootout is not as dramatic as a result – in fact it is very short and straightforward. The strength in the film is the wider story. The story is well told with attention to character and has a good comic feel running right through it.The script allows for good dialogue and the actors bring it to life well. Fonda was always at his strongest in these type of roles and is morally strong. His easy screen toughness really holds the attention. Mature has a good role in Doc, but is not the best doc ever I think. The Clantons are all underused and don't really make a big impact until the final section. Darnell makes a big impact and Downs is good despite being more subtle.The film is as much Ford's as Fonda's. His black and white film is as lush as many colour films you see. His use of shadow is powerful – witness his death shroud on Holliday's face as he talks to Chihuahua who is literally and metaphorically entering into the light. The old west looks as sparse as I imagine it was. Ford's only weakness is that he doesn't bring much tension to the actual gunfight, but his warming, comic telling at other points means that his strengths vastly outweigh the odd weakness.Overall this film is rightly a classic that appears in many critics top 100 lists. I was surprised to see it not in the top 250 of imdb (at time of writing). I guess that when modern films are `good' hundreds of thousands of people see it and it moves quickly up the internet polls, however older classics like this can tend to be forgotten as those same users slowly discover it. However, regardless of on line polls this is a very good film that is easily the best telling of the Wyatt Earp story.
22 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :- no doubt one of the greatest, 13 July 1999 Author: Robert D. Ruplenas
I'm not a huge fan of westerns, but the info on this from IMDb drew me to watch it when it showed up on American Movie Classics, and I was richly rewarded. This is truly a beautifully done film, and makes one understand John Ford's reputation in this genre. The understated Henry Fonda and the volcanic Victor Mature somehow work well against each other. The script is low-key and naturalistic, allowing the action to stand out. The cinematography is spectacular, both in the wide open panoramas and in the more intimate personal scenes. Interior lighting, in particular, is very skillfully used. Seeing Walter Brennan, playing against type, makes one appreciate how much better an actor he was than in the amiable, doddering bumpkin roles he got so typecast in later on. To use an overworked term, a classic.
16 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :- Shakespeare In Tombstone, 25 April 2006 Author: Lechuguilla from Dallas, Texas
Set amid the sweeping vistas and the towering sandstone buttes and spires of Monument Valley, this John Ford film, about Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his encounters with the Clanton gang in rowdy Tombstone, Arizona, fulfills our need to experience the Old West as mythic romanticism. The visuals are striking. El Greco skies oppress a majestic and lonesome landscape of rock, dirt, dust, and cattle. Ghostly human figures confront death in heavy rain. Indoors, small, overhead lanterns emit soft light in tough barrooms. The B&W cinematography conveys a somber, moody, idealized vision of the nineteenth century American frontier.But the film's romanticism is not just the product of adroit cinematography. The relaxed narrative weaves multiple, seemingly insignificant plot lines into a unified whole, and thus depicts the Old West as a place and time of humor, wit, religious faith, amiable conflict, even poetry and philosophy.And so, in his heartfelt soliloquy of "the undiscovered country", Granville Thorndyke (Alan Mowbray), that congenial thespian rogue who quotes Shakespeare and who seems so out of place, adds texture and soul to the script, as a precursor to violence and death. This is after all ... Tombstone.Inspired by the real life gunfight at the OK Corral, the story is less factual than suggestive. It's not just the film's fanciful portrayal of the shootout that abets credulity. It's the setting ... Tombstone is nowhere near Monument Valley.But this is not a textbook. It is a romanticized cinematic interpretation of a long-ago culture, using a textbook incident as a premise. The film's theme centers on the nobility of outcasts and the basic goodness and humanism of frontier people. It's a broad-brush character study of historical figures like Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan), the Clanton sons, and of course Wyatt Earp and his sons. Although one could argue that Fonda lacks the tough guy strength and roughness that we would expect for a frontier legend, the casting and the acting are overall quite good. Editing, costumes, and production design also enhance the film's credibility.Understated and meditative in tone, "My Darling Clementine" is a different kind of Hollywood western, one that conveys a humanistic theme with emotional depth. Characters are multi-dimensional, unvarnished, and as striking and memorable as the stately buttes and spires of Monument Valley.
20 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :- Casts such a spell., 30 April 2006 Author: bungalow16 from Austin, TX
I find this film entrancing. Smoke rising. The desert at night. Clouds at midnight. This new (to us) version is quieter, less score. I would love to be out there on that porch, tilting my chair back, waiting for the stage to come in. Beautiful transfer on the DVD, I found myself struck, moved by frame after frame. The sound of a single horse across monument valley, the fury of Doc Holiday's stage coach tearing through the landscape. A lamp-lit bar and a woman moaning under the knife, like a dying ember. Three figures stepping out like giants into the landscape. Robert Ryan seated in the wind and dust at the end of the Wild Bunch, it all comes from here. There is so much to learn from this film.
14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :- "When You Pull A Gun, Kill A Man", 3 October 2006 Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York
The movies sure do love telling and retelling the story of the OK Corral shootout. Most versions never do it with any degree of accuracy. This film is one of the least accurate, but maybe one of the most poetic. That's almost a given when you consider John Ford directed it.My Darling Clementine is based on the book Stuart Lake wrote as an official biography of Wyatt Earp. A year or two before Earp died, he gave a series of interviews to Stuart Lake and gave his version of his life. The book is a good account of all the events of Wyatt Earp's life, his whole life as a frontier marshal before and after the OK Corral affair. Earp outlived just about all his contemporaries on the western scene so he got the final word in for the most part. There have been revisionist stuff done that show that the brothers Earp might not have been as noble as all that. But saying the Clantons and their satellites were any model citizens is just plain ridiculous.20th Century Fox bought the rights to the Lake book and made two other films entitled Frontier Marshal in 1934 and 1939 starring George O'Brien and Randolph Scott respectively. Basically they bought the rights to the Earp myth, because none of this is in My Darling Clementine. Note also those are the ONLY Wyatt Earp films that are credited to the Lake authorized biography.The myth of Earp is so overwhelming that you can't play it any other way but noble. Henry Fonda is certainly no exception here. But it's a good portrayal of the cowboy hero. Doc Holiday is always the character that is most complex and Victor Mature does well by Holiday. He's a surgeon here, not a dentist as in real life and part of the plot calls on him to operate on his girl friend Chihuahua played by Linda Darnell. Her death is what compels him to join the Earps in their meeting with the Clantons.The best acted role in this film belongs to Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton. In real life Old Man Clanton was killed several months before the OK Corral gunfight, but Brennan is fascinating as one evil human being. His portrayal of the Clanton patriarch makes his Academy Award winning Roy Bean in The Westerner look like Mary Poppins.John Ford got a great performance from Brennan, but it was the one and only time they ever worked together. Brennan refused to ever work for him after that. Ford could be a bully on the set and sometimes downright sadistic. Some actors took to him, some didn't and Brennan with Academy Awards under his belt felt he didn't have to.I've seen My Darling Clementine, dozens of times, but I still jump when Brennan kills Virgil Earp played by Tim Holt by shooting him in the back. Actually the scene as great as it is shows one weakness in the screenplay. Virgil Earp would NEVER have ridden up to the Clanton ranch alone as he did, he was an experienced peace officer in his own right. But when Brennan takes that shotgun from under the blanket draped over his lap and shoots as Holt is leaving, I guarantee you will jump with fright. It's a great cinematic moment, but Ford should have had a better premise leading up to it.My Darling Clementine is a wonderful poetic retelling of the great western myth about the OK Corral, a great classic western.
14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :- John Ford's Most Poetic View of the West..., 17 August 2003 Author: Ben Burgraff (cariart) from Las Vegas, Nevada
If you're looking for a straight-forward, fairly factual presentation of the events leading up to the 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral', watch 'Wyatt Earp', or 'Tombstone'...But if you prefer your history more spiritual, and want to see a master storyteller paint a visual canvas of a West that may never have existed, but SHOULD have, then this film should be a treasured part of your video collection!John Ford knew Wyatt Earp personally, and was familiar with the events surrounding the Tombstone shootout, but one of his greatest assets as a director was his ability to look beyond simple facts, and focus on what 'made' a legend. 'My Darling Clementine' is a story of icons, of Loners, accepting their own weaknesses and limitations, yet willing to risk their lives and abilities to aid others, then to walk away, allowing Civilization to grow. It's a classic theme of most great westerns, particularly in Ford's work (he would return to it in 'The Searchers', and 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'), as well as other directors ('Shane', 'A Fistful of Dollars', 'Unforgiven', and 'Open Range' are a few examples).Wyatt Earp (wonderfully portrayed by Henry Fonda) and his brothers have an aloofness that makes their characters both deceptively simple, yet enigmatic at the same time. At the film's start, Wyatt's a cowpuncher who had walked away from the responsibilities of being a lawman, finding satisfaction with his brothers in the hard work and solitary life of the range. When the Clantons (led by Walter Brennan, in one of his greatest, yet most vicious roles), first approach the brothers on the range, they accept the old man's invitation to get a taste of city life, but it's clear that it will only be a brief stay before they move on, and Wyatt brushes aside any overtures of friendship.Wyatt's lack of desire to commit to a larger community is stressed when he subdues an armed, drunken Indian with his bare hands in a saloon (based on an actual event in Earp's life), then turns down the city council's plea to accept the Marshall's badge. Only after a brother is murdered do the Earp brothers decide to clean up the town, as it had become 'personal'.In counterpoint to Earp is another 'loner', Doc Holliday (sensitively portrayed by Victor Mature), an intellectual who fled the South, and had found his solitude through his guns, his gambling, and his illness. While Wyatt is a true 'Man of the West', however, Holliday is simply a lonely man with no place to go, only comfortable at a poker table. He is doomed, more by his own shrinking world, than by the disease that forces him to cough into his handkerchief.The scenes of Wyatt in Tombstone are wonderful, as Civilization grows up around the uncomfortable stranger. Yet he toys with the idea of settling into this world, through his polite yet obvious attraction to Doc's lost love, Clementine. The scene of the outdoor church dance, where the stiffly formal Earp dances against the vista of a West being 'boarded in' is symbolic of what his own life, and the West, itself, was becoming, and is classic Ford!The climactic shootout at the O.K. Corral is both powerful and raw, ultimately fulfilling the Earps' commitment to a world that needed their aid, and ending the downward spiral of Holliday's life, in a heroic and theatrical gesture.It's often asked why Wyatt leaves, afterward, when Clementine and Tombstone are so attractive...The answer is simple, really; his work is finished, and his participation was no longer necessary. Civilization could now grow, unimpeded. The Loner would have no place there. Like Ethan, or Shane, or 'The Man With No Name', he must return to the solitary vistas that are his true home.John Ford has truly created the 'Stuff of Legends' with this beloved classic!
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