NFR Project: 'My Darling Clementine' (1946)

 

NFR Project: “My Darling Clementine”

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Samuel G. Engel, Winston Miller, Sam Hellman

Pho: Joseph MacDonald

Ed: Dorothy Spencer

Premiere: Dec. 3, 1946

97 min.

This ranks as one of director John Ford’s greatest Westerns, right up there with Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956).

It’s also his most beautiful movie, shot with loving tenderness by Joseph MacDonald. His cinematography conveys the immensity of the frontier sky, the beauty of Monument Valley, and travels into the smoky, dense atmosphere of barrooms and theaters. For a primer on how to turn simple “black and white” into a shimmering expanse of subtle silvers and grays, look no further.

Now, this is the story of the legendary 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but it does not reflect the facts of the incident. Instead, it weaves a mythical tale based on the highly edited and sanitized 1931 book by Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, which formed the basis for two previous film adaptations in 1934 and 1939. Though this iconic gunfight has been filmed many times, no one would get it down accurately until Tombstone (1993).

Here the action is set in 1882, a year after the actual event took place. Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers Morgan (Ward Bond), Virgil (Tim Holt), and James (Don Garner) are driving cattle to California across the desert of Arizona. Wyatt meets with the suspicious cattle rancher, Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan at his most intimidating) and one of his many sons. The Clantons offer to buy the cattle; Wyatt turns them down.

Three of the brothers go into Tombstone, leaving the youngest behind to watch the cattle. The three find out that the town is pretty much lawless. People are intimidated when they find out who Earp is; he carries a fearsome reputation as a lawman. However, Wyatt is not interested in staying and becoming marshal.

They return from their visit in a driving rainstorm to find their brother dead and the cattle gone. Wyatt takes the marshal job.

It is pretty obvious that the Clantons were responsible for James’ death, but nothing can be proved. Taciturn Wyatt soon brings law and order to the town. He meets Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), a former physician who runs the gambling in Tombstone. They settle into a tense truce. Doc is dying of tuberculosis; his drinking and angry rants are punctuated with bouts of coughing.

Then Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs), Doc’s former love from Boston, comes to town. She had been searching for Doc and wants him to come home with her. He refuses, feeling he is doomed. She refuses to leave town, so he does. Meanwhile, Wyatt finds that Doc’s mistress Chihuahua (Linda Darnell) has a silver cross belonging to James. Wyatt blames Doc for James’ murder, but finds out that he is wrong. Chihuahua confesses that Billy Clanton gave the cross to her, at which Clanton shoots her and escapes. Virgil trails him to the Clantons’ ranch, where he finds Billy dead. Old Man Clanton kills Virgil with a shotgun blast to the back. They dump his body in front of the marshal’s office and let the Earps know they are ready for a showdown.

Wyatt, Morgan, and Doc head to the O.K. Corral at sunrise. They meet the Clantons and destroy them, but not before Doc is killed, his position betrayed by a coughing fit. The surviving Earps move on; Clementine decides to stay and become the town’s schoolmarm.

Throughout, the Earps represent the forces of law and order. Tombstone is a “wide-open” town when they arrive; gambling and prostitution thrive there (Jane Darwell plays a pleasant madam). Every man wears a gun, save for Wyatt. As his influence on the town grows, we see the God-fearing members of the place founding a church. In an iconic scene, Wyatt and Clementine attend the dedication of the house of worship and dance in its uncompleted structure, a potent metaphor for the sense of community taking root in this lawless location.

Doc is a figure torn between his respectable past and his criminal present. This is Victor Mature’s greatest role, one he plays with a melancholy haughtiness. He knows his way of doing things can’t last with Earp around, but he persists – just as he persists in drinking heavily though it makes his illness worse. He is tragic.

The Clantons represent everything Wyatt stands against, contempt for the law and murderous competitiveness. They are monsters that must be destroyed for the sake of the community.

Every scene is lovingly crafted. Whether or not the script is based on fact, it feels real, so detailing and convincing is its production design. Little touches deepen the film. A wandering actor, played to perfection by Alan Mowbray, becomes the focus of another Earp-Clanton confrontation. At one point, Wyatt asks the dependable bartender Mac, “Were you ever in love?” “No,” Mac replies, “I’ve been a bartender all me life.”

The final showdown is filmed almost silently, with no music track, making the scene all the more fraught with tension. Only killing will resolve the conflict. Law and order sweeps away the bad guys, but it sweeps away romantic figures such as Doc as well. The wild West is fated to pass into history . . . and into legendary imaginings such as My Darling Clementine.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Notorious.

NFR Project: 'Let There Be Light' (1946)

 

NFR Project: “Let There Be Light”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: John Huston, Charles Kaufman

Pho: Stanley Cortez, John Doran, Lloyd Fromm, Joseph Jackman, George Smith

Ed: William H. Reynolds, Gene Fowler Jr.

Premiere: Jan. 16, 1981

58 min.

Here’s a film that was kept out of sight until 35 years after it was made.

Director John Huston volunteered for military duty in World War II and was assigned the making of documentaries. His first two, Report from the Aleutians and The Battle of San Pietro, were successful. This, his third effort, would run into snags.

The Army thought it would be a good idea to profile the treatment and recuperation of soldiers with mental wounds from battle. Although not physically hurt, these men suffered cognitive and emotional distress from exposure to combat. Approximately 20 percent of wartime casualties were estimated to be mental in nature. The Army wanted to show that, given therapy and treatment, these men could reintegrate into society successfully.

Huston and his crew went to the Edgewood State Hospital in Long Island and embedded themselves with an incoming group of patients. Setting up cameras, they followed these men through their course of treatment. They filmed approximately 70 hours of interaction between the patients and staff. From this immense amount of footage, they pared the documentary down to an hour’s length.

Whether termed shell shock, battle fatigue, or psychoneurosis, the trauma these men suffered was real and lasting. Men are shown coming in with stutters, lapses in attention, hysterical paralysis, overwhelming sorrow and anxiety. Using the drugs available at the time, counseling, and group therapy sessions, the viewer is shown the gradual transition of these men from hopeless to functional, and eventually to their release.

However . . . when the brass saw the movie, they walked out. It turns out that no one in command structure wanted to show soldiers as vulnerable and mentally ill – they wanted to pretend that everyone came home happy and healthy. The film was suppressed. In fact, the Army went even further – they created a fictionalized copy of Let There Be Light called Shades of Gray. This film used actors to play the patients, speaking dialogue transcribed from the original film. In addition, all the black soldiers in Let There Be Light were replaced by white actors, and all the mental problems encountered were attributed to the patients’ civilian lives, not the horrors of war.

Finally, in 1981 the film was released. This portrait of men in crisis is still powerful, all these decades later.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: My Darling Clementine.

NFR Project: 'The Killers' (1946)

 

NFR Project: “The Killers”

Dir: Robert Siodmak

Scr: Anthony Veiller

Pho: Woody Bredell

Ed: Arthur Hilton

Premiere: Aug. 30, 1946

103 min.

Who’s a better film noir director than Robert Siodmak (1900-1973) ? No one.

The premier practitioner of American noir was a German refugee. After film work in his native land, the Jewish Siodmak escaped first to Paris and then Hollywood. (His brother Curt invented the Wolf Man, and wrote Donovan’s Brain and I Walked With A Zombie.)

Siodmak was a jack of all trades, but beginning with Phantom Lady in 1944, he began to specialize in noirs, using deep shadows, harsh backlighting, and other effects in light of the German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s. This approach turned Siodmak’s landscapes into perilous and unsettling interiors and night shots, a twilight world in which morals are frayed at the edges. Siodmak directed at least nine noir films in his Hollywood days, setting standards for the genre.

The Killers is his masterpiece, sometimes and somewhat jokingly referred to as “the Citizen Kane of noir films,” in that it is primarily composed of flashbacks. It’s a free adaptation of a 1927 short story by Ernest Hemingway.  It’s the first film of a 33-year-old Burt Lancaster, and the first starring role for 24-year-old Ava Gardner.

Lancaster is the Swede, the mild-mannered garage mechanic who’s the victim when two killers (Charles McGraw and William Conrad, perfect) come to his small town to blow him away. “I did something wrong . . . once,” he says when his coworker Nick tries to warn him that the bad guys are coming. Swede does nothing. The men enter, fill him with lead, leave.

An insurance investigator, Riordan (Edmond O’Brien), is tasked with finding the beneficiary for Swede’s life insurance policy. Riordan finds that the Swede is really Ole Anderson, a former boxer turned petty crook. Working his way through the chain of witnesses, he reconstructs Swede’s downfall via flashback. It turns out that the Swede was part of a big payroll heist, $250,000 that he loses, snatches back, and loses again in short order.

Riordan rubs the criminal kingpin behind it all the wrong way, so he becomes a target for murder as well. The film is taut, fast-moving – Riordan races to solve the mystery before the dark forces overtake him.

Meanwhile, we get a look at the tragic Swede, played sensitively by Lancaster. He’s a big lummox, just the kind of guy to get in over his head due to a dame. Gardner plays a classic femme fatale, duplicitous yet smashingly beautiful. There are great supporting actors such as Jeff Corey as “Blinky” Franklin and Sam Levene as Lt. Lubinsky.

Justice is served, but Swede remains the classic noir protagonist – ill-fated, morally flawed, none too bright, easily swayed by a woman. It was a formula as close to classic tragedy as American film would get until the mythic Westerns of Anthony Mann (1950-1958).

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Let There Be Light.