Movie of the Week: MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (John Ford, 1946)
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The older I get, the more Ford feels like Shakespeare. It can’t be a coincidence, then, that one of My Darling Clementine’s many great scenes shows the town thespian (Alan Mowbray) reciting Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” monologue to a saloon full of trigger-happy cowboys. The moment, apart from being staged and performed to perfection, serves as an elegant microcosm for the movie as a whole: the forces of civilization — embodied here by the erudite poetry of the Bard — attempting to tame the animalism of Tombstone, a lawless locality that represents not only the Old West but racist, violent America itself. Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda), the new marshal in town and another harbinger of civilization, watches the speech with reverence, as does his consumptive frenemy Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), an accomplished and educated man running from the life he was supposed to have. A few nameless Tombstoners, on the other hand, merely scoff in disappointment; for they, like most conscious beings on earth, are only seeking trivial satisfaction. And so Ford asks, rather provocatively: is civilization for everyone? Is civilization clearly defined as one thing, or does it carry different meanings in different places? Like the best art, My Darling Clementine provides no easy answers, because Ford understands the difference between moralizing (bad) and creating the circumstances that lead to moral clarity (awesome). Remind you of anyone? What truly makes My Darling Clementine sing, though, is its simplicity. Despite the revenge-driven plot and an almost comically brief re-enactment of O.K. Corral at the end, this 97-minute movie feels mostly like it’s lazing about in search of pictorial and gestural beauty. How many images are as iconic as Earp leaning back on that chair with his foot on the pillar? How many moments as sweet as Chihuahua (Linda Darnell) crooning to the emotionally inscrutable Doc? How many glances as romantic as those between Doc and Earp as they recognize something great in each other’s souls? Ford once said, after all, that the art of directing is capturing the eyes of your performers. Maybe it really is that simple. But then again, no one made movies like this then or since.
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