My Darling Clementine [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: John Ford John Ford

Overview

One of the greatest movie Westerns, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is hardly the most accurate film version of the Wyatt Earp legend, but it is still one of the most entertaining. Henry Fonda stars as former lawman Wyatt Earp, who, after cleaning up Dodge City, arrives in the outskirts of Tombstone with his brothers Morgan (Ward Bond), Virgil (Tim Holt), and James (Don Garner), planning to sell their cattle and settle down as gentlemen farmers. Yet Wyatt, disgusted by crime and cattle rustling, eventually agrees to take the marshalling job until he can gather enough evidence to bring to justice the scurrilous Clanton clan, headed by smooth-talking but shifty-eyed Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan). Almost immediately, Wyatt runs afoul of consumptive, self-hating gambling boss Doc Holliday (Victor Mature, in perhaps his best performance). When Doc's erstwhile sweetheart, Clementine (Cathy Downs) comes to town, Earp is immediately smitten. However, Doc himself is now involved with saloon gal Chihauhua (Linda Darnell). The tensions among Wyatt, Doc, Clementine, and Chihauhua wax and wane throughout most of the film, leading to the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral, with Wyatt and Doc fighting side-by-side against the despicable Clantons. Its powerful storyline and full-blooded characterizations aside, My Darling Clementine is most entertaining during those little "humanizing" moments common to Ford's films, notably Wyatt's impromptu "balancing act" while seated on the porch of the Tombstone hotel, and Wyatt's and Clementine's dance on the occasion of the town's church-raising. Based on Stuart N. Lake's novel Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshall (previously filmed twice by Fox), the screenplay is full of wonderful dialogue, the best of which is the brief, philosophical exchange about women between Earp and Mac the bartender (J. Farrell MacDonald). The movie also features crisp, evocative black-and-white photography by Joseph MacDonald. Producer (Daryl F. Zanuck) was displeased with Ford's original cut and the film went through several re-shoots and re-edits before its general release in November of 1946.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/05/2014
UPC:	0715515128513
Original Release:	1946
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:37:00
Sales rank:	310

Special Features

High-definition presentation of the 103-minute prerelease version of the film New audio commentary featuring John Ford biographer Joseph McBride New interview with western historian Andrew C. Isenberg about the real Wyatt Earp Comparison of the two versions by film preservationist Robert Gitt New video essay by Ford scholar Tag Gallagher Bandit's Wager, a 1916 silent western short costarring Ford and directed by his brother, Francis Ford, featuring new music composed and performed by Donald Sosin NBC television reports from 1963 and 1975 about the history of Tombstone and Momument Valley Lux Radio Theatre adaptation from 1947 starring Henry Fonda and Cathy Downs Trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Henry Fonda	Wyatt Earp
Victor Mature	Doc Holliday
Linda Darnell	Chihuahua
Walter Brennan	Le vieux Clanton
Tim Holt	Virgil Earp
Cathy Downs	Clementine Carter
Ward Bond	Morgan Earp
Alan Mowbray	Granville Thorndyke
John Ireland	Billy Clanton
Roy Roberts	Mayor
Jane Darwell	Kate
Grant Withers	Ike Clanton
J. Farrell MacDonald	Mac the Bartender
Russell Simpson	John Simpson,Sam Clanton
Don Garner	James Earp
Francis Ford	Town Drunk
Ben Hall	Barber
Arthur Walsh	Hotel Clerk
Louis Mercier	Francois
Fred Libby	Phin Clanton
William B. Davidson	Owner of Oriental Saloon
Earle Foxe	Gambler,Gambler
Aleth 'Speed' Hansen	Guitar Player/Townsman
Dan Borzage	Accordian Player/Townsman,Accordionist
Charles Anderson	Townsman
Duke Lee	Townsman
Don Barclay	Opera House Owner
Margaret Martin	Woman
Mae Marsh	Woman
Frances Rey	Woman
Robert Adler	Stagecoach Driver
Jack Pennick	Stagecoach Driver
Frank Conlan	Piano Player
Charles Stevens	Indian Charlie
Harry Woods	Marshal
Cyril J. Mockridge	Composer,Composer
David Buttolph	Composer

Technical Credits

Samuel G. Engel

Winston Miller

Sam Hellman

Stuart N. Lake

John Ford	Director
Samuel G. Engel	Screenwriter,Producer
Winston Miller	Screenwriter
Fred Sersen	Special Effects
Sam Hellman	Screenwriter
Stuart N. Lake	Screenwriter
Eugene Grossman	Sound Effects
Roger Heman	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Eugene Grossman	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

John Ford was to westerns what Alfred Hitchcock was to thrillers, and his matchless directorial ability has seldom been displayed more effectively (and less ostentatiously) than in My Darling Clementine, a highly fictionalized but dramatically satisfying re-creation of the Wild West’s most famous feud. Ford all but threw out the historical accounts in preparing his version of the notorious gunfight at Tombstone’s O.K. Corral, which pitted mild-mannered lawman Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and deadly gambler Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) against brutal rustlers led by shifty Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan) and his dull-witted son Ike (Grant Withers). In realizing his own vision of the places and events -- which included building a replica of Tombstone in the middle of his favorite location, Monument Valley -- Ford successfully conveyed a sense of authenticity that belied recorded facts and eyewitness recollections. Fonda’s Wyatt Earp is honest, taciturn, and diffident, unlike the morally ambiguous character his real-life counterpart apparently was; Mature’s Doc Holliday similarly romanticizes the drunken, murderous psychopath who eventually died of tuberculosis. But Ford’s liberties are easily forgiven in recognition of his peerless skill in dramatizing the arduous lives and violent deaths of the hardy pioneers who settled America’s southwestern deserts. Exquisite cinematography, faultless performances, and archetypal situations are woven together seamlessly to make Clementine a masterwork among movie westerns.

Barnes & Noble - Ed Hulse

Considered one of the greatest classical Westerns, John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) turns an idealized version of the Earp/Clanton shootout at the OK Corral into a story of how the West was won for the good of civilization. Shot on location in Monument Valley in crisp, deep-focus black-and-white, the film opens as Henry Fonda's upstanding yet slightly (and humorously) awkward Wyatt Earp arrives in Tombstone to settle a family score with the murderous Clantons, staying long enough to make the untamed town safe for the new church and schoolmarm-to-be Clementine and enable corrupt, tubercular Easterner Doc Holliday to find a bit of redemption. Yet even as Ford celebrates the possibilities of the new West, he also engages the post-war tendency for Westerns to examine their own myths: for instance, in the expressionistic photography and in Earp's contradictory place between civilization and the wilderness. He knows the way Tombstone ought to be, but he can't settle there himself; the final shootout begins as an orderly ritual but becomes a chaotic montage of death. The "director's cut" discovered in 1994 contains several minutes of excised footage; the ending was reportedly changed due to the reaction of a 1946 preview audience.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola