MY DARLING CLEMENTINE: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox 1946) Fox Home Video
The American
west knows no greater champion than John Ford. It’s a bold statement, perhaps,
given the illustrious and iconic past of that untamed Eldorado – its heroes and
desperadoes with names like Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday living
on in perpetuity. But Ford’s name arguably rises above the rest; resurrecting
this pantheon of legends and crystalizing the stark natural beauty and harshness
of that frontier existence - uniquely American - and as fully realized as any
painting by Frederic Remington. With the movies, John Ford has imbued the west,
not only with his own clear-eyed vision fully formed, but he is also able to give
it renewed meaning, interpretation and life; a showcase for his great love of
these wide open spaces and the rugged individualism they inspired. There are
too many fine examples from John Ford’s repertoire to recollect; My Darling Clementine (1946) among them.
Movie audiences from this period were undeniably spoiled by Ford’s paradigmatic
portraits. Indeed, we can almost forgive noted film critic, Bosley Crowther for
saying Ford “almost matched” his 1939
classic, Stagecoach with My Darling Clementine.
Pausing for just
a moment on that other monumental achievement, there is little to deny Stagecoach it’s importance in the
annals of the Hollywood western; a trend-setting piece of spectacular fiction,
elevating the stature of both its star – John Wayne – and the western genre
from B-grade kiddie fodder at the matinee to a bona fide American art form
worthy of the adult adventurist in us all. My
Darling Clementine is something quite different; a deepening of Ford’s comprehension
and love of the western milieu; also a decided departure in tone from that
time-honored mythology surrounding the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. By
most any standard one might care to ascribe, My Darling Clementine remains a masterpiece. With its finely
wrought screen intimacy, its’ supremely concocted screenplay by Samuel G. Engel
and Winston Miller; Joseph MacDonald’s exquisite B&W cinematography, and,
finally, galvanized performances from Henry Fonda and Victor Mature (never
better than as this decidedly beefy and morose incarnation of Doc Holliday), My Darling Clementine reveals just how
far Ford had managed to mature the Hollywood western into a relevant and iconic
art form.
From its’
opening moments, Ford’s juxtaposition of Wyatt and his brothers set against the
windswept, solitary landscape of Monument Valley, trailing their herd of cattle
- careworn, weather-beaten, weary and unshaven – Ford gives us a pictorial tome
imbued with his own inimitable brand of western authenticity. What follows, gradually
evolves into an intensely sentimentalized, though never sensationalized portrait
of the male figure; viewed from Ford’s own keen and sensitive camera eye, and,
with a sincere respect for these roughhewn frontier men and their hearty and
steadfast women. There is, to be certain, an underlay of the noir style
permeating My Darling Clementine;
Joseph MacDonald’s day for night photography producing ominous overtures to the
mounting sense of dread and foreboding as the Earp clan rise up to challenge
the corrosive Clantons (fronted by the peerless character actor, Walter
Brennen, positively despicable as the nameless, ‘old man’).
My Darling Clementine is, of
course, based on Stuart Lake’s 1946 novel of the same name. Considered
biographical in its own time, the tall tales spun by Lake in both this and his
1931 book on Wyatt Earp – published two years after Earp’s death – have been
largely dispelled since as glamorized fiction. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral
was, in fact, virtually unknown to Americans until Lake’s novels made it the
star attraction of his own western mythology. But Ford had had the great luxury
of actually meeting and somewhat befriending the real Wyatt Earp while he was a
prop boy at Monogram Pictures. “I used to
give him a chair and a cup of coffee,” Ford would later recall, “…and he told me about the fight at the
O.K. Corral. So in My Darling Clementine,
we did it exactly the way it had been.” Ford’s interpretation of the event
is perhaps stained by his own awestruck admiration for Earp as a young man;
also tinted by his own curmudgeonly charm to ‘make it real’ or rather, as ‘real’
as he desired it to be; for there is no denying My Darling Clementine’s raw and, at times, unsettling
verisimilitude.
In viewing,
and accepting My Darling Clementine
as ‘history painted with light’, we
should, of course, remember another famous quote from another legendary Ford western,
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
(1962): “This is the West, sir. When the
legend becomes fact, print the legend”; also, Ford’s own natural affinity
to preserve the legacy of a man he so clearly regards as the forthright
personification of American integrity. In the waning years of his life, both Wyatt
and his wife, Josephine diligently endeavored to expunge their personal
histories of the more unflattering facts; all references to the couple’s
previous ‘relationships’ with Johnny Behan and Matty Blaylock removed. As such,
when Stuart Lake undertook to pen his accounts after Wyatt’s passing his
efforts were met with Josephine’s considerable resistance and scrutiny;
endeavoring to preserve and maintain her husband’s image and legacy.
And Ford was
not above tinkering with even these alterations to suit his own artistic sense.
Nothing would get in the way of Ford telling us a good story – not even history.
So, the entire film is essentially predicated on a lie; the fictional
character, Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs) having no counterpart in the
historical record, although it has been speculated she was an amalgam of two
women; one of them, Josephine Earp. Discrepancies abound, beginning with Ford’s
depiction of the Earps as cowboy cattle owners. They were, in fact, neither,
but drifters on the plains and lawmen through and through. Also absent from
Ford’s retelling herein are Doc’s common-law wife, Big Nose Kate and Wyatt’s
Josephine; the two men depicted as bachelors in this movie; the former carrying
on a rather tempestuous affair with the Chicana spitfire, Chihuahua
(Linda Darnell).
All this is
artistic license of a kind. And yet, the film does not even adhere to the basic
facts – the real gunfight occurring in 1881, not 1882 as depicted in the
movie’s timeline. Old Man Clanton was already dead by this time and never even
met the Earps, much less becoming their arch nemesis. Doc Holliday – a dentist,
rather than a surgeon – survived the gunfight only to die of tuberculosis in
1887. Finally, James Earp (Don Garner), whose premature death in the movie is
employed as Ford’s deus ex machina to get his Shakespearean revenge tragedy
rolling, died of natural causes in 1926. Does any of this really matter to My Darling Clementine? Hardly, Ford
successfully bypassing history, transposing fact to fiction and making the
demarcation between these polar opposites wonderfully blurry and forgivably
forgotten besides. Ford’s interest in the film is, therefore, meant to stand in
for and as the truth; merely to evoke ‘essence’ with the broadest of brush
strokes, dedicated to valor, dignity and the moral high ground of his own principled
craftsmanship.
History is,
arguably, far richer than this – also, more grandly flawed and tragically
imperfect. Ford is more interested in telling us a good yarn; and in My Darling Clementine he succeeds
beyond our wildest expectations. Under his expert tutelage, the towering
buttresses of Monument Valley become bastions of multi-textured escapism for
the imagination let loose like a Mustang; our collective hunger to believe in
the nobility of man left to his own devices on this desolate range, given rise
and helping to perpetuate the myth: that such greatness is not only possible,
but at some level, perhaps even still attainable in the present. The
iconography of the American west in a John Ford movie in general and My Darling Clementine in particular, is
always depicted as vibrant, earthy and genuine. The film is a reflection of
Ford’s disciplines as a film maker; pure art of the highest order. What he
doesn’t know, or chooses to disregard, he makes up and out of the nothingness
that is his fertile imagination.
My Darling Clementine opens on a
spectacular vista; Monument Valley in the background and in all its glory;
Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers, James (Don Garner), Virgil (Tim
Holt) and Morgan (Ford favorite, Ward Bond) shot at a low angle by
cinematographer, Joseph MacDonald and just as craggy, gorgeous and untamed as
the wilderness that surrounds them. The
Earps are driving their cattle on to California, momentarily caught unawares by
the appearance of Pa Clanton (Walter Brennen); a very scruffy and
weather-beaten codger, accompanied by his steely-eyed son, Ike (Grant Withers)
riding shotgun. Clanton presents himself as a benevolent sage – also, an
interested party, offering Wyatt three, then five dollars a head for his gaunt
livestock. Wyatt, however, is no fool. He knows what his beef will be worth in
California and kindly declines Clanton’s offers; the old man now directing him
to the nearby town of Tombstone, where he and his brothers can rest up, get
cleaned up, and have themselves a very good time.
Later in the
evening, Wyatt and his brothers go into town, leaving James behind to tend the
cattle after he’s already made everyone dinner around the chuck wagon. James
intends to marry his sweetheart when the cattle drive is over, showing off a
piece of Aztec jewelry – a pendant – he’s bought for $25. All the brothers have
a gander at this hunk of jewel-encrusted metal, soon to play a pivotal role in
the plot. Wyatt’s first order of business in Tombstone is to have himself a
shave. Ford, already knowing the weightiness in his tale that is to follow, indulges
in these early scenes of richly amusing comedy; the barber (Ben Hall) narrowly
tipping Wyatt over in his new chair; applying a healthy lather to Wyatt’s
unruly beard before the moment is interrupted by liquored up Indian Charlie
(Charlie Stevens), shooting up the town and frightening Tombstone’s inhabitance
half to death.
No one, not
even the town’s Mayor (Roy Roberts), acting as the law, is willing to
intercede. Wyatt isn’t much for standoffs, however, and after a few pensive
moments he sneaks around the back of the Opera House Saloon, disarming and
knocking Indian Charlie unconscious. Wyatt is immediately offered the post of
lawman, but respectfully declines; he and his brothers returning hours later,
and, in the pouring rain to their base camp, only to discover the cattle are
gone and James is dead. It’s personal now, and Wyatt accepts the position of
town marshal. A short while later, he befriends the notorious gambler, John ‘Doc’
Holliday (Victor Mature); or perhaps, makes his acquaintance is a better way of
putting it. Doc is slowly dying of consumption; his fling with sultry Spanish
chanteuse, Chihuahua (Linda Darnell) already on the wane. Wyatt forewarns Doc
that Tombstone will be a law abiding town from now on and that any misguided
notion Holliday may have about their ‘friendship’ overriding Wyatt’s duty to
the tin star is grossly misguided.
Chihuahua is a
spitfire, and attempts to create a ruckus, interrupting Wyatt’s card game. He
tries to be civil with her out back, but she slaps his face. In reply, Wyatt
submerses Chihuahua in a nearby horse trough, wounding her pride more than
anything else. A fly in the ointment arrives on the noonday stage, Clementine
Carter (Cathy Downs) whom Doc has promised to marry. Jealousy clouds
Chihuahua’s judgment and she threatens Clementine in an attempt to crystalize
for both Clementine and Doc the depths to which she is willing to go to prove
her love for him. Bitterly, both women are in for their own disillusionments.
For Doc is conflicted from within, determined to hasten his tuberculosis with
strong drink. Wyatt attempts to reason
with Doc, but to no avail. After Holliday gets liquored up at the saloon, Wyatt
knocks him out and has him carried back to his room at the Mason Hotel.
Clementine decides she has made a mistake by coming to Tombstone. Alas, even
she can see how much Chihuahua loves Doc. Mercifully, fate intervenes. There
are no noonday stages out of Tombstone on a Sunday.
Wyatt takes
Clementine to a social dance where the townsfolk have gathered to raise money
and the roof of the new church; Virgil and Morgan stunned to see their brother
duded up and taking a cordial spin around the plank dance floor. Again, John
Ford knows precisely when to insert such moments of relaxed domesticity to
break the tension in his otherwise tautly scripted showdown western. Recovering
in his hotel room, Doc decides he’s had quite enough of Tombstone. Moreover, he
seems to have finally made up his mind to make an honest woman out of
Chihuahua; much to her giddy excitement and personal satisfaction. But he’ll be
moving to Arizona; Chihuahua hurrying to pack. Alas, the sight of Wyatt and
Clementine enjoying themselves is enough to sour Doc on delaying his trip any
longer. He leaves Tombstone with only the stagecoach driver (Robert Adler);
Chihuahua bitterly disappointed as she watches her man vanish in a cloud of
dust on the horizon. Confronting Wyatt with her spite and disappointment, he takes
notice of the pendant hanging around her neck – the same one his late brother,
James intended to give his beloved before he was murdered in the desert.
Forcing
Chihuahua to divulge who gave her this jewelry, Wyatt is told it was Doc and
immediately, he sets off for the stage to apprehend Doc and bring him to
justice. After some aggressive riding, Wyatt is successful at stalling the coach,
ordering Doc to accompany him back to Tombstone. Alas, Doc doesn’t know
anything about the pendant, but is forced to return to town to straighten out
the situation with Chihuahua. Both Wyatt and Doc confront Chihuahua upon their
return to the hotel; she stalling them from entering her room while she urges
Billy Clanton (John Ireland) to leave out the window. Presumably, Billy is another
lover Chihuahua has acquired to make Doc jealous. Told by Wyatt the pendant is
evidence against Doc in an investigation of murder, Chihuahua confesses Billy -
not Doc - gave it to her. She is shot by Billy through the open window; Billy
escaping on horseback as Wyatt instructs Virgil to bring him back to town.
In their race
across the desert, Virgil manages to mortally wound Billy; his horse
instinctively bringing the body back to the Clanton’s homestead. Unaware he has
killed Billy, Virgil bursts in on the Clantons. Pa invites him into Billy’s
bedroom where Virgil discovers the body already laid out. Believing his badge
protects him from any reprisals, Virgil tells Pa he is sorry things had to turn
out this way. As he turns to leave, Virgil is ruthlessly shot in the back by Pa
Clanton, who now orders his motley brood of ruffian sons, Ike, Phin (Fred Libby)
and Sam (Mickey Simpson) to saddle up their horses for the penultimate showdown
at the O.K. Corral.
Back in
Tombstone, Wyatt encourages Doc – who, in this movie, at least, was once a
practicing physician – to operate on Chihuahua to remove the bullet and save
her life. Clementine, also a trained nurse, prepares tables in the saloon for
the surgery; Wyatt observing as Doc diligently goes to work, applying his
skills. There is no chloroform for the operation; the dowager, Kate Nelson
(Jane Darwell) telling Chihuahua to bite hard on a stick of wood as Doc
proceeds to cut out the metal lodged in her stomach. In the aftermath, Kate
promises to look after Chihuahua during her recovery; a short-lived commitment
when Chihuahua expires from septic shock; Doc, now brutally invested in seeing
the Clantons are brought to justice.
Arriving in
Tombstone, Pa Clanton tosses Virgil’s corpse off his saddle at the foot of the
hotel, shouting to Wyatt he will be waiting for him at the corral. Doc arrives at the sheriff’s office, prepared
to stand tall with Morgan and Wyatt; the three men waiting until early dawn to
confront the Clantons. Making his inquiries first as to which Clanton is
responsible for Virgil’s death – and told by Pa he committed the murder of both
Virgil and James – Wyatt, Doc and Morgan proceed to thin out the Clanton clan
in a hailstorm of bullets; dispatching with the sons in short order, but
regrettably, not until Ike has shot Doc dead in the stables. Wyatt corners Pa
Clanton and disarms him, taking unexpected pity on the old codger and ordering
him out of town. In reply, Pa draws a concealed weapon from his saddle holster
and Virgil unapologetically avenges his brothers’ murders by killing the spiteful
old man.
A short while
later, we see Wyatt and Morgan packed and ready to leave Tombstone – to what
future, this remains unclear. John Ford’s western milieu usually concludes on
such ambiguous finales; no fanfare or grand finale – just a simple and
understated statement on the fragility of life and one’s own destiny in it.
Ford, however, does not leave our hero wanting for purpose, possibly to return
to Tombstone in the distant future. As such, the final moments of My Darling Clementine are committed to
bittersweet understanding between Wyatt and Clementine Carter. Having
surrendered her romantic ideals and considerably matured in her outlook since
arriving in Tombstone, Clementine has decided to remain behind and establish
the town’s first school. Wyatt is pleased to discover this, offering this woman
who may have become something finer in his eyes, but certainly no less
impacting on his heart, a tender kiss on the cheek as he rides off for the
distant horizon.
Like all of
John Ford’s westerns, My Darling
Clementine is imbued with the director’s vivid command for the lay of this
land; the dessert and mesas, the adobe village and corral, all characters in
our story; lived-in places that speak of a nameless – even godless – history,
but also offer the fertile promise of better things to come. Ford doesn’t
‘pretty’ these locations for the audience’s benefit. These are not, or rather
never appear to be, Hollywood sets; but dusty/lusty, thriving and writhingly
enclaves of humanity carving its niches into the inhospitable clay.
Apart from
John Wayne, Henry Fonda is the only other actor to become John Ford’s personal
favorite; a perennially renewable repository for Ford’s vision of the old
west’s everyman. Unlike Ford’s caustic and confrontational ‘friendship’ with ‘Duke’ Wayne, his
working alliance with Henry Fonda was predicated on a deeper admiration and
respect. While Ford would always consider himself as chiefly responsible for
molding the persona we think of today as John Wayne – in later years,
frequently reminding the actor he owed his start to him - Henry Fonda came to
Ford already fully formed; an actor of considerable stature when Ford cast him
in the lead of two of his major contributions from 1939: Young Mr. Lincoln and Drums
Along the Mohawk. 1939 was also the year of Ford’s Stagecoach with Wayne, whose reputation as a star was, in fact,
cemented on the success of that picture; Wayne’s lengthy and indentured tenure
as the king of the serialized B’s at Monogram come to an end.
The other
performance of outstanding merit in My
Darling Clementine belongs to Victor Mature; an actor, who by his own
account, never took acting seriously and enjoyed the perks and on set
camaraderie as opposed to the work itself. Indeed, while making Million Dollar Mermaid in 1952, Esther
Williams was to refer to her costar as Victor ‘Im-mature’. And yet, in My
Darling Clementine, Mature is every inch the embodiment of this embittered
card shark of ill repute but professional courtesy. The real Doc Holliday was
far more anemic in stature; a lanky rogue, cultivating a very thin veneer of
gentile southern charm that could just as easily turn toward callousness and
violence. The movie retains Holliday’s battle with consumption, also something
of his offhanded way with the ladies, but jettisons just about every other
aspect of his personal life and character. Mature gives us a brawny, sullen
brute with doleful/soulful eyes that can twinkle with larceny but just as
easily wound and penetrate in sharp and penetrating glances.
In retrospect,
the narrative structure of My Darling
Clementine is a tad wonky; chiefly because the movie’s title suggests a
focus on Cathy Downs’ Clementine Carter. But Ford isn’t particularly interested
in this character, nor in Linda Darnell’s Chihuahua. Each is merely
representational in our story; Downs’ polite young Miss virginal and
forthright, destined to become spinsterish and harsh after Wyatt’s departure;
Darnell’s unapologetic viper already gone through her trial by fire, yet
seemingly ripened rather than robbed by its experience. Samuel G. Engel and Winston
Miller’s screenplay becomes a character study of the company of men, embodied
in the Clanton/Earp familial relationships – each void of a feminine influence.
Ford is
fascinated by these adult male figures, also intuitively compelled to
investigate their interactions with each other, placing them within his western
milieu like temperamental rams, itching to butt heads and mark their territory
with a distinct scent of their own masculinity and manhood. The fact neither the
Earps nor the Clantons succeeds in keeping what started out to be theirs for
the asking is, again, one of Ford’s unfailingly renewable themes, and not only
in his westerns. In this context, women have no decisive stake in the evolution
of the American west except to pick up the pieces of its fragmented past and
shattered present; their positions as wives, lovers or benevolent dowagers,
always remarkably present to pitch in while their menfolk are off taming the
land and each other.
Regardless of
what feminist film scholarship has often decried as Ford’s own male machismo
run amuck, My Darling Clementine
remains riveting entertainment; truly among that rarest upper echelon of movie
classics. Those seeking a tale of love or even romance should seek it elsewhere.
My Darling Clementine is the story
of a harsh and unrelenting life, briefly challenged, though never conquerable,
even by the fortitude of these stouthearted men. Ford makes a statement about
man’s futility to create a civilization. He gives us a life well-lived, rather
than one lived well; the penultimate farewell between Wyatt and Clementine,
speaking to America’s crossroads during WWII and the ambiguous nature of its
own solitary future as a burgeoning superpower.
In the era of
the studio system, even a director as emboldened by previous successes as John
Ford was not immune to the tinkering of a well-intentioned studio mogul. 2oth
Century-Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck was, of course, one of the most ambitious and
hands-on of his ilk; his previous tenure as a scriptwriter and producer at
Warner Bros. giving Zanuck not merely clout, but also considerable cache and
hindsight to know when a movie was in trouble. Upon screening Ford’s rough cut,
Zanuck felt the story lacked tempo in a few spots and, together with director
Lloyd Bacon, elected to shoot some new footage.
Some 30 minutes of Ford’s own footage wound up on the cutting room floor
before the public ever saw My Darling
Clementine at a sneak preview; the Ford version remaining unseen for
decades until it was rediscovered in 1982 and thereafter remastered at UCLA
under the supervision of film preservationist extraordinaire, Robert Gitt.
Nevertheless,
it is John Ford’s name above the title and ultimately, Ford’s vision that persists
throughout the picture. As Variety’s review of My Darling Clementine in 1946 attested, Ford’s brand of the
American west is “clearly stamped…with
shadowy lights, softly contrasted moods and measured pace…(and) a tendency
discernible towards stylization for the sake of stylization.” Arguably, no
other western is as praiseworthy in Ford’s cannon as My Darling Clementine. For it achieves a seamless reconstruction of
the truth – as truth – its ritualized
history for cinema art’s sake never degenerating into rank sentimentality or
the appearance of being anything less than engrossingly factual. We can believe
in Ford, Fonda, Mature and the rest of it because of Ford’s clever and
unapologetic manipulations; the perverse way he turns a blind eye to personal
history, giving us his own substitution instead. My Darling Clementine is therefore undeniably and genuinely a John
Ford classic.
In their infinite
wisdom, Fox Home Video has yet to make My
Darling Clementine available on Blu-ray in North America. Mercifully, their
German release is Region Free, meaning it can be played anywhere in the world.
Apart from the outer German packaging, the disc menus are in English.
Regrettably, unlike Fox’s defunct Studio Classics DVD release, this Blu-ray
only includes the theatrical cut of the movie. The DVD also contained Ford’s
pre-release edit. Not to worry, however.
Most film scholars agree the version included herein is the preferred one.
Better still, the remastering effort put forth on My Darling Clementine has yielded a rich and vibrant 1080p image,
with extraordinary clarity, superbly rendered contrast and an attractive amount
of film grain accurately reproduced. The image is decidedly darker than the
previously issued DVD. This is as it should be. Occasionally, we do get
thickness and a hint of softness too, but these brief inconsistencies are inherited
from the original surviving film elements and are NOT a flaw of this hi-def
transfer. Age-related artifacts have been eradicated. This is a very clean,
exceptionally film-like presentation and should surely please.
The DTS audio
is mono as original recorded. The DVD included a rechanneled faux stereo. The
Blu-ray retains the audio commentary from Wyatt Earp III, but ditches the
original behind-the-scenes featurette. We also get the original theatrical
trailer. The German disc of My Darling
Clementine can be imported via Amazon, which incorrectly has it listed as
Region B locked. Again, this disc is Region Free and clearly marked as such on
the back packaging of the actual disc. It will play ANYWHERE in the world.
So, wherever you are, buy with confidence and prepare to enjoy one of the truly
great masterpieces in cinema history, expertly preserved in hi-def. Bottom line:
very highly recommended.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS
1
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