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Simply A Masterpiece

Instant Favorite.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The original movie, made in 1930, won the Best Picture Oscar in 1931, and even though that movie is the lowest-rated Best Picture winner, I thought I watch the 1960 remake as a substitute.Turns out there's a reason why the original has such a low rating...Epic in its historic time span but mostly dull and badly done. Covers 25 years, from the first western settlement of Oklahoma in 1889 until the start of World War 1 in 1914. The historical aspect - the settlement of Oklahoma and its subsequent development - is interesting, but this has a small part in the movie. The main part - the Cravat family - is kind of so-so. The father, played by Glenn Ford, has good intentions but seems incredibly naive. The mother, played by Maria Schell, whines a lot and seems quite bigoted, yet is portrayed as a hero at the end.The whole thing just seems clumsy. Acting is quite hammy. Worst offenders are the guys who played the two gangsters who hid out in the school. Ridiculously over-the-top performances.Best performance comes from Anne Baxter, as Dixie. Convincing, and easy on the eyes...This said, it has its moments, so isn't all bad.

I saw this film recently for the first time. I could see the parallels to Ferber's other very famous work, Showboat, which likewise sweeps an epic camera across decades of development in American history. But what really struck me was reading the commentaries by other viewers. Some went to great lengths to summarize Anthony Mann and his directorial career. But despite the numerous titles of his other films which were listed and judged not a single commentator mentioned what just might be his greatest film of all, Devil's Doorway (1950) starring Robert Taylor as a dispossessed native American and war hero. Please go to that movie's IMDb website and read my and others' very admiring reviews of this classic film. I saw Mann's commenting in Cimarron too about race prejudice and legal chicanery and couldn't help but be struck by those echoes of his 1950 masterpiece.

There is a lot right with CIMARRON, but a lot wrong too. Now on DVD in a great transfer/wide screen/stereo sound, it's interesting viewing. Not having read the book I can't compare, but there are several plot doings that don't have any conclusions. The movie is an epic of sorts and would have run hours if everything came together. A bit illocgical at times. Main plot line is Glenn Ford and Maria Schell a newlyweds coming to settle in Oklahoma when free land is available. In the span of over 30 years there is much going happening both good and bad, just like in real life. If I hadn't seen Glenn Ford in so many films I would think his performance would be excellent, but he kind of mumbles and hems and hahs every other sentence in every film he's in. He acts very much like he did in TEASHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON just a few years earlier. Better direction was needed for his character. Maria Shell was quite wonderful in a difficult role and she's in almost every frame the last 1/4th of the movie. The support actors are all good to fair. Russ Tamblyn disappoints as the baddie. Anne Baxter does well in an ill-defined role. Looks like most of her performance ended up on the cutting room floor or wasn't even filmed. Too many conflicts go unresolved...but it's still an interesting film with much to admire, especially the the cinematography and music score. Worth a look.

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.