Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 21-March-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
My Darling Clementine (1946)
On a late-October day in 1881, a somewhat senseless and by no means uncommon act of violence took place in the town of Tombstone, Arizona, and almost immediately assumed the status of legend. The Gunfight at the OK Corral (which actually happened near, not at, the corral) has been a staple of western lore ever since, making New World titans out of principal players Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. But why? Why, at a time and place defined by the brute force of men, would the settling of old scores between a bunch of hard-livin', hard-drinkin', hard-gamblin' ruffians seem like a tale for the ages? I can't say for certain; maybe no one can anymore.
The great thing about legends, though, is that they can be reshaped and retold to reflect the values of any era and any storyteller, and lord knows Hollywood has taken a few cracks at the OK Corral. In "My Darling Clementine," director John Ford adds structure to the story to equate it with more traditional good-vs.-evil myths. This requires the alteration of a lot of facts, but the result is a solid and haunting western classic.
The movie begins with the arrival in Tombstone of Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his three brothers, Morgan, Virgil, and James. Originally just passing through, the elder Earps decide to stay and seek justice after rustlers steal their cattle and murder young James in the process. A smarmy local named Clanton (Walter Brennan) and his boys are high on the list of suspects, but Wyatt decides to bide his time and catch the criminals red-handed, especially after the town gives him a Marshal's badge. (In real life, Virgil was the Marshal.) During the next few weeks, Wyatt befriends the Big Man about town, Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), and becomes smitten with Holliday's old flame Clementine (Cathy Downs), who arrives from Boston hoping to win her man back. Of course, no western would be complete without a lovelorn harlot or two; in this case, the role is filled by Linda Darnell as the unfortunately monikered Chihuahua, Holliday's Mexican squeeze.
Like other movies on this subject, "My Darling Clementine" capitalizes on the presence of two distinct protagonists in the same camp, making one light and one dark in a delicately balanced meeting of minds. It goes without saying that Fonda breaths warmth and nobility into the character of Wyatt Earp, but it may bear telling that he is convincingly rough and steely as well. As his counterpart, Mature plays Doc Holliday as the quintessential tragic hero. Wracked by tuberculosis (true), he turns his back on a career as a surgeon (not exactly true; Holliday was a dentist) and the stability of the civilized East, becoming a hardened quick-draw artist with a death wish as big as the western sky. With his black-clad, soul-tortured swagger and pouting lips, it's no wonder that the ladies love him, and that the movie marches him toward a date with destiny on an epic scale.
But as good as Fonda, Mature, and the rest of the cast are (I'm particularly fond of Brennan as the crusty old bastard), the real star of the show doesn't appear on screen. John Ford had an uncanny talent for evoking the feeling of a place, as created by both the landscape and the people who inhabit it. Almost every frame of "My Darling Clementine" taps into the poetry, and maybe even truth, of the Old West, offering images ranging from the big (glorious clouds), to the small (a barber's chair), to the unexpected (a smattering of Shakespeare). You might recognize stock characters from other westerns or feel confident of the outcome of the finale, but you never get a sense of "been there, done that" with this film. Ford's vibrant depiction makes Tombstone an experience, not simply a backdrop.
As it really happened, Earp and Holliday were pals before they arrived in Tombstone, and they went their separate ways after the big fight to pursue new dreams in new saloons and gambling halls across the West. (The former died in 1929, the latter in 1887.) But they live on in numerous retellings of that fateful October day, and in "My Darling Clementine" endure as true heroes of a fabled American past.
Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
