Cimarron

Cimarron
by Nick Grinde, Rudolf Ising, Wesley Ruggles

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Estelle Taylor, Irene Dunne, Nance O'Neil, Richard Dix, William Collier Jr.
Director: Nick Grinde, Rudolf Ising, Wesley Ruggles
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Leon Schlesinger
Writer: A.B. MacDonald
Writer: Edna Ferber
Writer: Fred E. Sutton
Writer: Howard Estabrook
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 123 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-01-31
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video

Movie Reviews of Cimarron

Movie Review: When the Old West was much less Old
Summary: 4 Stars

I decided that I wanted to watch all the Best Picture Academy Award-winning films from the very first one. Unfortunately, like many of my generation, the older a movie is, the less I can tolerate it. This is not something I'm proud of, but it's just the way it is. But I was pleased that CIMARRON was an exception. It is in fact the oldest film (talkie) I have ever seen all the way through.

When I first sat down to watch it, I didn't even know how to pronounce it: SIMMER-ON. At the risk of sounding clich?, CIMARRON is a grand, sweeping epic that spans the time of over forty years. The plot revolves around Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) and his wife Sabra (Irene Dunn) and their adventurous life together picking up stakes in Kansas to settle in Oklahoma after the massive land rush. This part of the film, along with many, many other scenes, was incredibly filmed, especially when one remembers that this was several decades before what we now call computer graphic imagery (something which in my opinion is working very hard on ruining the movie industry).

Yancey Cravat is the quintessential Dudley Do-right. He reminds me of a mixture of Charles Ingalls, Rocky Balboa, and Roy Rogers. He's the tall, buff, proud man in the White Hat. He can draw a six-shooter in a blink, fire it with dead aim, print and edit a picture-perfect newspaper, present a jury-convincing impromptu defense argument, deliver a standing-room only church sermon, and stand up for the poor, needy, and under-privileged in a way that would have made Father Flanagan blush.

The movie does have a few slow moments, as any great epic might. But they always pass, and the film is overall very enjoyable. One thing that struck me as very interesting is that this movie about the Old West was made only a few decades after the time of the Old West. In fact, many people from that time period were probably around (and might have even lended their advice and insight) when CIMARRON was made. It would be no different than someone making a movie today about World War II.

Many will criticize this movie as politically incorrect. But the funny thing about political correctness is what is politically correct today will be politically incorrect tomorrow. The same goes with CIMARRON. I have no doubt that when this movie first appeared in the early 1930s there were many critics who thought the film was far too-sympathetic toward black citizens and Native American Indians. It was very rare back then to have such a film. Now, the scales have tipped toward the other direction, and CIMARRON is not progressive enough.

I don't watch movies to be enlightened in a social or political manner. I watch them for entertainment and for great storytelling purposes. And for these two reasons I can call CIMARRON a four-star film.

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Summary of Cimarron

Spaces were neither wide nor open in most early Sound Westerns. Not so in Cimarron. It starts with one of the most renowned giddy-ups in cinema history: a thundering recreation of the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush. From there Cimarron, based on the bestselling epic by Giant and Show Boat novelist Edna Ferber, traces the generations-spanning saga of that land. There rugged Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) and his resourceful pioneer wife Sabra (Irene Dunne) sink roots, persevere, give shape to their dreams. It's a saga of change, told with an authenticity that moviegoers who had lived through that era recognized - and told with a skill that earned it three Academy Awards * including Best Picture!

This epic Western won the 1931 Academy Award for Best Picture. Heartthrob Richard Dix plays Yancey Cravat (yes, really, that's his name) a frontiersman, newspaper editor, and former gunslinger who's studly enough to fill in as preacher or lawyer should the situation demand. Yancey brings his young bride Sabra to the wild Oklahoma territory to taste the adventure, crusade for social justice, and leave his family for years at a time. Modern viewers will have trouble making it past one or two horrifying racist caricatures at the start, made doubly odd because of the film's intended message of tolerance. Once it gets underway, though, Cimarron can be quite a bit of fun. Most of its pleasures are of the guilty variety--Dix's performance in particular is endearingly huge--but there are a few genuine highlights. The Oklahoma Land Rush sequence is still exciting and wet blanket Sabra turns out to have far more gumption than anyone imagined. --Ali Davis

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