Michael O'Keefe This is director Anthony Mann's reboot of the 1931 Oscar-winning saga about frontier life in Oklahoma. Glenn Ford plays Yancey 'Cimarron' Cravit, a survivor of the Old West with a devil-may-care attitude toward life and the future. His wife Sabra (Maria Schell) leans more toward a civilized way of living. The couple will join family and friends in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. Yancey does his best to stabilize a free thinking, free speaking newspaper; get in the middle of mixed feelings towards the Native American Indian and flirt with thoughts of being the governor of the young state. Based somewhat on the writing of novelist Edna Ferber and the almost 2 and 1/2 hour long film will afford a myriad of stars like: Anne Baxter, Arthur O'Connell, Mercedes McCambridge, Charles McGraw, Vic Morrow, L.Q. Jones, Russ Tamblyn, Henry Morgan, Royal Dano, Aline MacMahon and Edgar Buchanan.

rpvanderlinden "Cimarron" is the saga of a couple who head West for the great Oklahoma land grab and the life they carve for themselves after failing to get the piece of property they wanted (it's been snapped up by the husband's ex-girlfriend, a hooker named Dixie). More specifically the movie deals with the husband's wanderlust and penchant for taking up lost causes, which doesn't sit well with the wife, who desires security and respectability. They fight a lot and make up, and it gets tiresome after awhile. The couple is played by Glenn Ford and Maria Schell. Ford plays a man who deals with things, and one wonders how this couple ever got together in the first place. Dixie is played by Anne Baxter, but her presence in the film barely registers.There's a scene where the wife confronts Dixie in her "social parlour" (Dixie has sold the coveted land in order to pursue her former career choice, and hubby's been off adventuring for five years, and there's been no mail). After more histrionics and a torrent of tears, in a scene without much purpose, the two gals see eye to eye. One knows this because, as she exits the "social parlour", the wife is dissed by two respectable ladies, which prompts her to wiggle her you-know-what so violently I feared she'd get whiplash.This train wreck lurches ever onward in fits and starts. Characters come and go, and none of them gets the screen time to establish a real presence in the story. Sub-plots are snuffed out when characters simply fail to show up again. Even the protagonist/hero (Ford) goes MIA for a huge stretch, which finally derails the film. It feels as if a lot of scenes were cut out, making me wonder if this film was initially longer - and better - and the studio hired someone with a scythe to "trim" it. I like director Anthony Mann's more modest 50's westerns very much, but the mega-budget "Cimarron" seems to be the one that got (taken) away from him.

bkoganbing I've always liked the 1960 remake of the RKO classic Cimarron and have never understood why it gets panned by so many people the way it does. Director Anthony Mann who got fired towards the end of the film's production did a very good job with both the cast and the spectacle. The Oklahoma land rush scene was as thrillingly done as it was in the 1931 version.In fact truth be told, Glenn Ford did a better job as frontier renaissance man Yancey Cravat. Richard Dix though nominated for Best Actor in 1931 never did quite master the art of sound film and his star progressively sank lower and lower in Hollywood. Glenn is a strong heroic figure cursed with the fatal flaw of wanderlust.Truth also be told is that many different accents made up the western pioneer population. Maria Schell's German accent is most assuredly not out of place here and she holds her own with Irene Dunne's portrayal of Sabra Cravat.All the characters present in Edna Ferber's saga of the transforming of Oklahoma from territory to state made it from the first film. All of them meet during the Oklahoma land rush and while Glenn and Maria are the leads, the story of the film is what happens to all of them.One character is expanded considerably from the 1931 film. Edna May Oliver was Mrs. Wyatt who was a pioneer woman whose husband we never did meet. Here Mrs. Wyatt is played by Mercedes McCambridge who is married to Arthur O'Connell who is very important to the story. They're this hardscrabble share cropper family who get a real scrubby piece of land at the beginning of the land rush, mainly because O'Connell falls off the stagecoach right at the beginning of the land rush and Mercedes runs across the starting line and she claims the land right at the line.It turns out the land has oil and these people become the proverbial beggars on horseback. McCambridge remains unchanged by their sudden wealth, O'Connell is very much like that other nouveau rich oil millionaire that Edna Ferber created, Jett Rink. From people who the Cravats lent a hand to back in the day, O'Connell at least becomes an opponent.One character that was eliminated thank the Deity was the black kid Isiaih who hero worshiped Richard Dix in the 1931 version. In 1960 that kind of racial stereotype would not have been tolerated.The cast includes also such fine people as Anne Baxter, Edgar Buchanan, Russ Tamblyn, Vic Morrow, Aline McMahon, Robert Keith, Charles McGraw, all ably filling out parts from the original version. The land rush scene is every bit as good as the first time around.I'm at a loss as to why this film was panned the way it was. It's a very good western and fans of the genre will appreciate it.

hamletmachin Martin Scorcese has called Anthony Mann Hollywood's most underrated director. He's right of course. Mann is a God. It's a shame some of his Westerns have never been released on DVD or that some of his widescreen Westerns such as The Far Country and Bend in the River have only been released on pan and scan full frame videos and DVDs. At least Cimarron is available on video in widescreen. Perhaps you need to have seen a number of Mann's films in order to appreciate Cimarron, Mann's last Western, and how moving it is at certain points. There's an amazing shot of Glenn Ford leaning against a post in his home as he waits for his wife to see that he has finally returned home after being gone for five years. Glenn Ford plays a typical Mannian hero who is on the side of the law but not a lawman himself and who is unable to settle down in a home with a family. The only other Western Mann made with a happy ending is The Tin Star. There Henry Fonda (the hero) rides off with his wife after putting on a sheriff's star to help out the local sheriff. But even this happy ending falls short. Fonda takes no action, and the young lawman (Anthony Perkins) does the job just fine all by himself. Cimarron is kind of a sequel to The Tin Star. It begins with Ford playing a family man going out West with his new wife. But things quickly get rough. The Oklahoma stampede looks like the chariot race in Wiliam Wyler's Ben-Hur. Ford upholds morality and civil rights, but not as a lawman. After killing the bad guy, he becomes a crusading, liberal newspaper man. He's Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne in Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence rolled into one. But unlike Stewart, who goes on to be a politician, he turns down a job as governor. (Ford won't accept the reward money for killing outlaws either.) His long suffering wife finally leaves him, and he never reappears as a character in the film except in a voice-over. What is most haunting about the film is Ford's disappearance form it for long stretches. He basically abandons his family, fighting first as a rough rider in the Spanish- American War and then again in WWI. Mann goes into the melodramatic territory of Douglas Sirk, with Mann as a failed authority figure and patriarch. He fails to save the son of an old friend from becoming an outlaw. Ford loves his one child, a son, very deeply, but he nevertheless is not exactly an ideal father given his absences. Anthony Mann was an orphan who went to the school of hard knocks in New York. It's hard not to see Cimarron as his own love letter to the father who abandoned him as a child. In any case, Cimarron is a haunting film, well worth seeing, just like Mann's other films.