Other Titles • My Darling Clementine • Faustrecht der Prärie (1949) • Mein Liebling Clementine (1949) • Tombstone (1949)
Synopses for My Darling Clementine (1946)
1.
The most famous and sublime treatment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is by any measure one of the most classically perfect Westerns ever made. Henry Fonda plays a hard, serious Wyatt Earp leading a cattle drive west with his brothers when a stopover in the wild town of Tombstone ends in the murder of his youngest brother. Wyatt takes up the badge he had turned down earlier and tames the wide-open town with his brothers (Ward Bond and Tim Holt), all the while waiting for the wild Clantons (led by Walter Brennan's ruthless Old Man Clanton) to make a mistake. Victor Mature delivers perhaps his finest performance as the tubercular gambler Doc Holliday, an alcoholic Eastern doctor escaping civilization in the Wild West. Ford takes great liberties with history, bending the story to fit his ideal of the West, a balance of social law and pioneer spirit. Though the film reaches its climax in the legendary gunfight between the Earps (with Doc Holliday) and the Clantons, the most powerful moment is the moving Sunday morning church social played out on the floor of the unfinished church. As Earp dances with Clementine (Cathy Downs)--Fonda's stiff, self-conscious movements showing a man unaccustomed to such social interaction--Ford's camera frames them against the open sky: the town and the wilderness merge into the new Eden of the West for a brief moment. --Sean Axmaker
(1 vote)
2.
In another of his classic Westerns, John Ford again reflects upon the advance of civilization on the receding frontier, recounting the events leading up to and including the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral. As they drive their cattle toward California, Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers, Morgan (Ward Bond), Virgil (Tim Holt), and young James (Don Garner), stop outside Tombstone, Arizona, where they refuse an offer for their stock made by Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan) and his son, Ike (Grant Withers). The three older brothers ride into town, and, after Wyatt subdues a drunk, return to the wagons to find James dead and their cattle stolen. With little doubt about who the perpetrators are, Wyatt decides to accept the offer to be marshal of Tombstone that he had just recently refused. Despite Wyatt's tense first encounter with melancholy gambler and gunslinger Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), a wary, tacit friendship grows between the two men, which is soon complicated by the arrival of Doc's former love, the demure Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs). Although ostensibly focused on the famed gunfight, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE's more concerned--like many of Ford's films--with the creation of a community, the rule of law, and the civilizing influence of women on the wild and woolly West. When the showdown finally comes, it's without blood lust, as the Earp brothers conduct themselves with the ritual solemnity of samurai warriors. Given Samuel Engel's terse, elliptical screenplay, Fonda gives a subtle, brilliantly understated performance in the lead role, establishing a naturalist motif that is picked up and furthered by Joseph MacDonald's magnificent, barely lit shots of Ford's beloved Monument Valley.
(1 vote)
3.
Wyatt Earp cleans up Tombstone and wipes out the Clanton gang at the OK Coral.
(1 vote)
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