Leofwine_draca MY DARLING CLEMENTINE is a pretty good western from iconic director John Ford, benefiting from some strong actors and bolstered by some fine tunes being played throughout, but I found the definitive version of this story to be Costner's Wyatt Earp, which just seems more layered, more detailed, and with better characterisation to boot.Henry Fonda is a good choice for Earp, bringing exactly the right level of gravitas to the role, although Victor Mature's Doc Holliday is something of a more controversial choice for the role. The requisite number of familiar faces play in support and there's a woman with the bizarre name of Chihuahua. A lot of purists have complained that Ford changed a lot of the facts to fit the film, but that's not something that particularly bothers me.

Ersbel Oraph Over the years I have seen probably much of the John Ford's Westerns. I never felt a particular connection with the genre, simply I think I used to watch too much TV.One day I said to myself: gotta watch John Ford. Everybody that is someone talks about him. This is the first in a series. And it looks like a good idea.Thanks to this movie I finally got what Western is: a way to express ideas in a virtual world. It used to look so cliché. Than it look like there is no real connection with what happened in the historical West. But no, this is not about the historical West anymore than the Kurosawa historic movies are about the Feudal Japan. Some choose SciFi and dream about distant Worlds. This movie is about a virtual World. Where the good guys wear white hats. And the bad guys wear black hats. And the in-between guys change hat color without changing the model.I did not like the movie. But without John Ford I feel there wouldn't be a Dead Man.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

James Hitchcock Despite the title, this film does not tell the story of the "miner, forty-niner", who dwelt with his daughter "in a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine" during the California Gold Rush. It is rather one of several Westerns about Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the OK Corral, although "Oh My Darling, Clementine" serves as the theme song, even though it was not written until 1884, three years after the Gunfight. That, however, is far from being the only liberty which this movie takes with history. In this version the Earp brothers are driving cattle to California and are passing through Tombstone when their cattle are rustled and James, the youngest brother, is shot dead by the Clanton gang under the leadership of their patriarch Old Man Clanton. Seeking to avenge his brother's murder, Wyatt takes the job of town marshal and makes the acquaintance of Doc Holliday, originally a surgeon from Boston but now a local gambler. The two men initially take a dislike to one another, but realise that they need to work together against the Clantons, especially after another Earp brother, Virgil, is murdered by them. During the Gunfight Wyatt, his surviving brother Morgan and Doc take on the Clantons; they emerge victorious, but Doc is fatally wounded. Another important theme involves a love-triangle between Doc, his former sweetheart from back East, and his mistress Chihuahua, a fiery Mexican girl. (And, in the universe inhabited by Hollywood screenwriters, what Mexican girl is anything other than "fiery"?)What is wrong with the above synopsis? Well, from a historical perspective, just about everything. The Earps were never cattle drovers. James Earp was the oldest of the brothers, not the youngest, and was not murdered. He died of natural causes at the age of 85 in 1926. Old Man Clanton died before the Gunfight. Wyatt was not town marshal of Tombstone; Virgil held that position. Wyatt and Doc were close friends and knew one another before the Earps arrived in Tombstone. Doc was originally from Georgia, not Boston, and was a dentist rather than a surgeon. He survived the Gunfight unscathed, dying of tuberculosis six years later. Like James, Virgil was not murdered; he survived an attempt to kill him several months after the Gunfight (not before it) and lived until 1905. The film even gets the year and time of day wrong. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place on October 26th 1881, at about 3 pm, but here the date is given as 1882 and the Gunfight takes place at dawn. Chihuahua and Doc's ex-lover are both fictitious characters. The latter is given the name Clementine Carter, presumably because the filmmakers needed to find some justification, however spurious, for their title and for using that song. There is, however, no rule which says that historical films have to be 100% historically accurate or which forbids directors and scriptwriters from rearranging historical fact in order to suit the story they want to tell. If there were such a rule, some very great films could never have been made. There seems to be a widely-held opinion that "My Darling Clementine" falls within the category of Very Great Films; an opinion I am unable to share. It may be a good film, but falls some way short of being a great one, although my reasons for saying so have nothing to do with its lack of fidelity to historical truth. Nor do they have much to do with political correctness, even though, if judged by the standards of 2014, John Ford would certainly be found wanting on that particular score, both here and in many of his other movies. Quite apart from the ethnic stereotyping of Mexican women we also have the scene where Chihuahua is unceremoniously dumped in the horse-trough and there are disobliging references to Indians as violent drunkards who should stay on their reservations and out of any places where decent white folks might live. Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp was perhaps rather too quiet and restrained for my taste; I preferred the interpretations of Burt Lancaster in "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and Kevin Costner in "Wyatt Earp", both of whom seemed to bring a greater presence and solidity to the role. I felt that the powerfully built, healthy-looking Victor Mature was miscast as the supposedly frail, tubercular Doc; a few obviously feigned coughing-fits were not enough to convince me that he was seriously ill. The changes to the historical facts made in this film have the effect of making Holliday a tragic hero and a central figure in the story, arguably more important than Wyatt Earp himself, and I felt that Mature did not really have the scope as an actor or the range of emotions needed for the role. On the positive side the black-and-white photography of the Western landscapes is, as one might expect from Ford, wonderful, although all those shots of Monument Valley suggest that he has relocated Tombstone from Arizona into Utah. (Is it a Federal offence to transport a town across State lines?) The gunfight scene is well staged, the musical score is a fine one and there are some good performances in supporting roles, notably from two lovely young actresses, Linda Darnell and Cathy Downs, as Chihuahua and Clementine, and from Alan Mowbray as the eccentric British actor Granville Thorndyke. (His name is derived from two real British actors, Harley Granville Barker and Russell Thorndike). "My Darling Clementine" is not my favourite version of the Wyatt Earp story; that would probably be "Gunfight at the OK Corral" It is a very decent Western adventure, but I just can't see it as a great all-time classic. 7/10

tieman64 Regarded as one of director John Ford's finest westerns, "My Darling Clementine" stars Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp, the legendary lawman who becomes sheriff of Tombstone, a small town in Arizona. Wyatt appoints several family members as his deputies, befriends the sickly Doc Holiday and shoots dead the Clanton family, a bunch of mean guys responsible for cattle thievery.You'd think a director who'd won three directorial Oscars in the space of six years would be free from studio interference, but no, producer Darryl F. Zanuck loved sinking his meddling claws into Ford's flicks. Zanuck's alterations to "Clementine" include the adding of unnecessary kisses, emphatic musical cues, the shortening of several wordless scenes and the removal of several natural/ambient sounds. In each case, Zanuck attempted to "make things more obvious", a contrast to Ford, who was attempting to craft a muted, restrained western.Still, Zanuck's meddling doesn't distract too much from "Clementine's" better qualities. Ford focuses on mood, ambiance, on creating a sense of place, and his film is purposefully diffuse, his characters seemingly drifting through life without rhyme or plan. Elsewhere Ford gives us a number of communal scenes, like those in which towns gather at theatres, saloons or for dances amidst skeletal churches. Other iconic scenes watch as Wyatt positions a chair at the head of his town and sits himself down like a lazy landlord, gazing as townsfolk walk wordlessly by. Ford's interested in Tombstone's flow of life, and the leisurely, unhurried tempo of the Old West."Clementine" was shot by cinematographer Joseph MacDonald, who paints a number of wonderful scenes. The reveal of Tombstone, in which the distant town flickers in the night, is particularly excellent (George Lucas' Mos Eisley would be based on Ford's Tombstone). When he's not serving up low-key sequences, Ford takes us to the town's more festive areas, which are filled with tobacco smoke, dim lanterns, hootin', hollerin' and convey well the hustle and bustle of the frontier.Most Westerns are elegiac, the genre overly preoccupied with mourning the passage of the Old West. These are nostalgic pictures which pine for something that never quite existed, glorifying frontier justice, outlaw values and a violent masculinity which "regretfully" fades come the arrival of trains, power lines, steam engines, machine guns, pickup trucks and modernity in general. "Clementine's" melancholia, however, is rooted in something more specific. Ford's characters mourn lost lovers, family members, and everyone's weighed by both loss and life's frailty. Epitomizing this is Tombstone's comical barber, whose faulty "modern" chair perpetually threatens to slit his customers' throats. Later he slaps cologne on our heroes, Ford's men on the verge of passing into civilisation, domestication and even comical dandyism.As history, "My Darling Clementine" is nonsense. Wyatt wasn't the marshal of Tombstone (his brother was), Holiday and Old Man Clanton weren't killed at the infamous OK Corral, and Wyatt wasn't praised as a hero but put on trial after killing the Clantons. The Earps were themselves a group of violent drunks, law breakers, woman-beaters, murderers and brothel owners. Ford, of course, portrays them not as multiple felons (the real Earps eventually became corrupt lawmen who worked for bankers), but as something else: genteel custodians of civilisation who turn to violence only when necessary and always reluctantly. The Western genre has itself always salivated over sheriffs and deputies, foot-soldiers of a Law which has, historically, never been the public's bedfellow. Originating in slave patrols, beholden to the economic interests of land owners, and designed to maintain class stratification, the business of policing has always been policing for business."My Darling Clementine" stars Victor Mature as Doc Holiday. It's a hard role to play, and Mature isn't up to the task (perhaps modern audiences have been spoilt by Val Kilmer's electric Holiday in "Tombstone"). Fonda is better as Wyatt, playing his character as a mild-mannered, righteous romantic. The film co-stars Linda Darnell as Chihuahua, a voluptuous prostitute with a fondness for low-cut blouses."Clementine" would prove a huge influence on subsequent Westerns. The Sergio Leone rule-book was practically born here, Ford's film filled with drawn out sequences, sexy wistfulness, tactical uses of silence, portentous one-liners, strong silent-types and an aesthetic which alternates between serenity and sudden flashes of violence. This being John Ford, the film is also preoccupied with bogus notions relating to "what it means to be American". In this regard, Ford's Tombstone is steeped in barbarity until our heroes kick an Indian out (played by Charlie Stevens, grandson of Geronimo), visit an erected Church and bring co-operation, family and law to Tombstone's god-fearing townsfolk. For Ford, the Earps (and a woman named Clementine) occupy the film's moral high ground, a dominant white, religious culture which discards or reforms all outsiders. And so a Mexican prostitute, ostracised for her racial origin, dies, the disreputable Clanton family is murdered and the morally moribund Doc Holliday finds himself grave-bound. With the film's climax – a type of regenerative violence typical of Westerns – a great purge has been exacted in the name of "decent" values.8.5/10 – See Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "Wagon Masters". Worth two viewings.