My Darling Clementine [DVD] [1946]

Music Magpie delivering once again.

If you want to know the real story of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral do not rely on this film to give you the true facts. It is based on Stuart Lake's book which was notoriously inaccurate. For the real story read, 'Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend' by Casey Tefertiller - a superb account, or alternatively watch the later films, 'Tombstone' or 'Wyatt Earp'. The screen writers of this film even embellished Lake's account with some more fiction: who was Clementine Carter for a start? Where was 'Big Nosed' Kate, Doc's real girlfriend? Where was Josie Marcus - Wyatt's future wife, with whom he lived until they were both a ripe old age? Who were the guys who accompanied Wyatt, his brother and Doc Holliday? In reality it was Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp plus Doc Holliday who confronted the Clanton gang who were themselves also misrepresented in this film. Holliday survived the shootout and died many years later of his TB in Colorado. Oh, and Doc was not a doctor but a dentist, so what was he doing carrying out major surgery? Meanwhile, if you want an entertaining movie which is very loosely based on the actual facts then this could be the film for you. The black and white photography lends a very atmospheric and dramatic mood to the story. It is of course a John Ford film so is worth having in your collection on that account.

This review is for the ARROW BLU RAY. An excellent transfer,1.33:1 (narrow bars left and right), clear sound and perhaps less than excellent English subtitles (the white on lighter backgrounds doesn't show perfectly, but my HOH wife managed pretty well.). Plenty of extras including a fascinating little doc on Ford and Monument valley, The quality of which is not perfect except for the film clips, but it is very informative. I won't say much about the film. It really is a case of "Print the Legend", and Ford does it in one of his pictorially best films. The B/W photography is just superb. The use of music and folk songs again is perfect. The acting of Fonda (just so right as Earp), and Victor Mature, giving possibly one of his best performences, as Holliday is just spot on and Brennan shows us again what a menacing villain he can be. A great script and Ford's direction make this one of the great films, that just happens to be a Western, and a classic!

Despite the occasional racism, and the stock characters, this film is a masterpiece. Fonda is terrific as Earp, a man with a sense of decency and purpose who finds himself in a lawless town, and Victor Mature is almost as good as the haunted Doc Holliday. The scene where he helps a drunken actor to recite the To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy is surprisingly moving. Walter Brennan, as a villain for once, has never been better and the end is heartbreaking: there is such a powerful sense of loss, a sense that the world of the film is, as it says in the song 'lost and gone forever'. Like Ethan Edwards in 'The Searchers' you feel that the character will wander for ever between the winds.

Great on historicity if not exact history, but this is an atmospheric film and it conveys the Old West intelligently and with great artistry. John Ford is an eminent western director who can elevate the genre out of the B-movie status that such films generally have. This story has been told many times in film and books: all of the films use artistic license to a great extent, but this film uses it it to good effect also in the charcterisations of the semi-respectable bandits and the honest to goodness uprightness of gamblers and associates of loose women: the old west was not so high on moralising as what was good for business, which made bringing the Clantons to justice so difficult and makes Wyatt Earp something of an anti-hero. This film conveys these moral and leagal dillemas to good effect and entertains throughout. Well worth watching and owning.

Expected better from the star and the director

Not just a great Western,a great film period. John Ford's retelling of Wyatt Earp was factually incorrect but since when has Hollywood been concerned with Historical truth(Braveheart anyone?) ranks alongside 'The Searchers' as a tribute to a great film maker every camera shot and angle is so pitch perfect and the cast with the regular Ford players is faultless Henry Fonda and Victor Mature(never better) as stated the scene where Mature recites Shakespeare is genuine pathos. Every present day film maker,actor,scriptwriter etc should be made to watch this epic to see how a 'proper' film is made,i would put this above GATOKC even though Burt Lancaster is in the same calm heroic mode as Fonda

I never tire of watching this classic. The characters are so clearcut and one feels some empathy with all of them even the villains who are a product of a hard country and ignorance. The roughness and cruelty of the wild west is all there. Unusually even the romance angle, which usually ruins most westerns is treated in a simple, unsophisticated manner. The scene with Doc Holliday and the travelling actor leaves one terribly moved and as the story surges towards its inevitably tragic conclusion you know that no one is going to end up happy but this is the way it has to be. Ford never made a better western.

Cheap one

Englisch aufbessern

A recapitulation of Wyatt Earp story of Gun Fight at OK Carol. This movie was in black & white. However I prefer the Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas version which is in colour and action packed.

Un gran western, excelente en todo. Dirección, guión, fotografía en B/N muy buena, montaje y grandes interpretaciones, hasta Henry Fonda es creíble, sin llegar a "Las uvas de la ira".Mejor en V.O.

一人一人の、私生活での内情のドラマが、面白くてモノクロ版ですが、昔の西部劇の映画を、たまには視るのも、本当に爽やかだから、とても楽しめました。最後のワイアットは、例えはっきり言えなくても、自分の胸の内の気持ちを、失礼なくクレメンタインに示したので、きっと優しいクレメンタインには、伝わったでしょう。そう信じて、馬で去った、ワイアットだろうなと、私にはそう思います。