Cimarron
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Movie Reviews of Cimarron
Movie Review: Great but marred
Summary: 4 Stars
Some great moments punctuate this movie but it also has many flaws. The land rush scenes were just spectacular, and used literally thousands of extras, who seem to stretch to the horizon in one shot just before the starting guns go off. The wagons race across the landscape, many careening and flipping over in spectacular fashion, and reminding me of nothing so much as the famed chariot race in Ben Hur.
But the movie fails to develop many of the characters, who just come and go. And even Glen Ford disappears for years at a time, especially toward the end. Still, most of the actors do well with their parts. The one exception is Maria Schell who is just tiresome as the whiney wife who simply doesn't belong on the frontier and should have stayed in her stuffy high-society cocoon back east.
Maybe that isn't her fault if the character was written that way, but by the end of the movie you are really tired of her character, who is constantly whining, complaining, and caterwauling about something that a real frontier wife would have taken in stride.
The cinematography is great though, and some of the character actors who appear throughout the entire film, such as David Opatoshu, Ann Baxter, Arthur O'Connell, Henry Morgan (of Dragnet and Mash fame) and Edgar Buchanan, do provide some continuity and development. But without Maria Schell's character the movie would have been so much better. Still, the movie has more good points than bad points and if you're a Glen Ford fan is certainly worth your consideration.
Movie Review: Cimmaron
Summary: 4 Stars
I don't remember when this movie reached the general public but I do remember that I was quite young at the time. I was in the Army and it was soon after I left high school(it only cost a quarter to see a movie then). I was impressed to see a story of a man who was so independent. He was so independentthat it worked against his family. However, the story depicted the the raw individualism of the typical westerner of our great country. Life and times were difficult in those days and westerners refected their moral beliefs in their daily lives. Yes, it did strain their family life but to this day it shows the strength of the western conservatism.
Things re changing but you can still see the ruggedness of the families who were born and raised here and are generations old.
I will get this movie and view it several more times before I die.
L. M. Dreyer
Movie Review: The last and least of Mann's Westerns
Summary: 3 Stars
The last and least of Anthony Mann's Westerns, 1960's Cimarron was originally intended by MGM as a Rock Hudson vehicle after the success of Giant. It's at once a lavish film and an undernourished one, not least because of the production problems that saw Mann's run of bad luck with epics repeat itself: after being fired from Spartacus at the start of shooting by Stanley Kubrick, on Cimarron he was replaced towards the end of shooting by an uncredited Charles Walters. It's all to easy to spot the join, with the many early exterior scenes that are very obviously and artificially shot on interior sets at the studio sticking out like a sore thumb with Mann's signature location filming.
Though remembered today, if at all, as doorstop soap operas, in their day Edna Ferner's novels were hugely controversial, and Cimarron was no exception, dealing along the way with racism, anti-Semitism and Indian land rights, though these are treated rather less boldly here than in the 1930 version (especially in the general release and European versions that trimmed a subplot with the leads' son marrying a Native American girl, though these scenes are in the Region 1 DVD). What's left is an ambitious saga, charting the changing face of the wilderness from the Oklahoma Land Rush to the 'civilisation' that comes with the discovery of oil and the big money to be made by a few, taking in the winners and losers strewn along the path of progress along the way, all nominally held together by the restless figure of Yancey Cravat (Glenn Ford). A man who tries everything but can never stay the course before chasing the next dream, he's held as the pioneer ideal, but it's clear that his long-suffering wife (Maria Schell) is the saga's real hero, setting roots and building a future. Structurally it's one of those books better suited to a mini-series than a film, while the rootless nature of its hero - who vanishes from the last third of the film almost entirely - leaves it feeling very unsatisfying. It doesn't help that the film's most spectacular scene, the truly epic land rush sequence, happens so early in the film that everything that follows seems an anticlimax.
Unfortunately the casting doesn't help. While Ford isn't as insufferably hammy as Richard Dix in the original, he never lives up to the great claims made for his character, and he's not helped by a bad haircut that makes him look like Oliver Hardy after a diet (it's no surprise that this film and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse pretty much ended his career as a top box-office attraction). And for all her efforts, Schell isn't able to exert the kind of charisma or star power that the problematic last third desperately needs. The supporting performances are highly variable too. David Opatashu, Arthur O'Connell, and Charles McGraw offer dependable turns but Russ Tamblyn is shockingly bad.
But ultimately the problem is that the film never seems to quite decide what it wants to be or what parts of the story it wants to tell. It just sprawls out in all directions, never building up much sense of drive or purpose, and even Mann's visual imagination deserts him for much of the film. Instead it's a film with a handful of memorable moments - the land rush sequence, played more for chaos and carnage than exhilaration, one terrific shooting after a lynching and an excellent scene with Aline MacMahon at a makeshift grave - stranded in a rather forgettable film.
Boasting a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer, the only extra on the Region 1 disc is the original theatrical trailer.
Movie Review: New DVD release planned for Summer 2008
Summary: 3 Stars
Maybe I was spoiled by the 1931 version of this film. In particular the very hammy portrayal of Yancey by Richard Dix has come to grow on me just as Irene Dunne's wonderful portrayal of Sabra. That film won an unbelievable Best Picture Oscar and even a Best Actor nomination for Dix. This movie is far superior to the original, especially with Glenn Ford as Yancey playing it straight this time. It confronts head-on the social issues that the original just skirts around, yet in doing this it just seems to take on too much. The film is about an ill-matched couple that settles in Oklahoma during the land rush years and how things progress between the two of them as the years roll on. Yancey is a wanderer at heart, and can't help taking off every time a new frontier beckons. His wife, Sabra, wants Yancey to settle down and raise a family. As a result of Yancey's adventurous ways it is left to Sabra to bear the burden of taking care of the business and the children. You'll probably like this one more if you haven't seen the original.
This film is being released on DVD both individually and as part of Warner Home Video Western Classics Collection (Escape from Fort Bravo / Many Rivers to Cross / Cimarron 1960 / The Law and Jake Wade / Saddle the Wind / The Stalking Moon). If you like western classics, buying the boxed set might be a more economical way to go. There are no extra features in the boxed set or the individual movies except a theatrical trailer per film.
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