'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...
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...