My Darling Clementine

Dir: John Ford

1946

***

Regarded as one of the greatest westerns ever made, I struggle to see the big appeal but I do like it. Henry Fonda's portrayal of Wyatt Earp is great and there is nothing wrong with John Ford's visual direction. The film also has a few odd quirks about it that I really like and the reactions between characters feels extremely real for a 1940s film. The dialogue and the way it was delivered always felt very natural and almost unscripted, you were transported to the old west of the 1880s, you forgot you were watching a big studio movie. What I disliked about it was the factual details and the relationships. I didn't feel the bond between the Earp brothers, indeed Wyatt's siblings; Virgil, Morgan and James were background characters, when they really should have been at the forefront of the drama and the action. I'm a huge fan of Victor Mature and it pains me to say it but I didn't like his version of Dr. John Henry "Doc" Holliday. Controversial I know but it is nothing compared to Val Kilmer's (Tomestone 1993), Dennis Quaid's (Wyatt Earp 1994), Cesar Romero's (Frontier Marshal 1939), Kirk Douglas' (Gunfight at the O.K. Corral 1957), Arthur Kennedy's in John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964) or even Dennis Hopper's in Wild Times (1980). James Stewart was the producer’s first choice but he was overruled by Ford who said he wouldn't be able to do the character justice. His performance didn't match what is known about Holliday, his age wasn't quite right and there was too much artistic licence used. The same goes for the overall production. John Ford worked as a prop boy in the early days of silent pictures, Wyatt Earp would visit pals he knew from his Tombstone days on the sets. "I used to give him a chair and a cup of coffee, and he told me about the fight at the O.K. Corral." Ford was told by the man himself exactly what happened during the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, learning every detail, the who the what and the how of one of the old west's most infamous happenings and yet he changed it when he finally got a chance to bring it to the silver screen. Ford was asked by a film historian at the time why he changed the historical details of the famous gunfight if, as he claimed, the real Wyatt Earp had told him all about it on a movie set back in the 1920s. "Did you like the film?" Ford asked, to which the scholar replied it was one of his favourites. "Then what more do you want?" Ford snapped back. It clearly bugged him, so almost twenty years later in My Darling Clementine, he told the story exactly as it had been told to him and for what it is worth, I think it's a much finer film. I have issues with John Ford but I like that he and Walter Brennan didn't get along. Brennan is great on screen but he was a pretty hateful character in real life. The film really is all about Fonda's brilliant performance.