Cimarron (1960)

Much Overrated Western

CIMARRON (1960) was MGM's big Cinemascope/colour remake of RKO's epic 1930
production of Edna Ferber's classic story of the same name. From a
screenplay by Arnold Schulman it was - I am loath to say - unevenly directed by Anthony Mann.

I am quite astonished - even aghast - that some reviewers on these pages
have given this film a five and even four star rating together with wholly exagerated claims that it is Mann's best and most underrated western. It is nowhere near his best western! Anthony Mann's best western is "Winchester 73" with "Naked Spur" running a close second! In fact "Cimarron" isn't even a good western! Not in the normal sense of what we regard as a good western such as "The Searchers", "Shane" or "Last Train from Gun Hill". Even Glenn Ford's "The Sheepman" is a far superior western to "Cimarron"! More light hearted sure but a good western just the same and much more fun to watch.

The first half of "Cimarron" isn't at all bad and contains the best staging of the 1889 Oklahoma land rush ever put on the screen and in widescreen too (though in 1992 Ron Howard made a good fist of it in "Far & Away"). But let's face it, the second half of the movie is relentlessly
boring and its 147 minutes just drags and drags. Firstly, Anne Baxter
who has third billing after the leading lady Maria Schell, is written out of the film which I suppose isn't very noticable since she didn't have
a very important role in the picture anyway. But then Glenn Ford -
the star of the movie - is also written out of the picture and only makes a brief and perfunctory reappearance just before the last reel and then he's gone again never to be seen in the rest of the picture. With its star gone from the movie the picture loses a lot of its balance and never regains the stature it had in the first half. Of course the story is that old chestnut of the mismatched couple who get hitched - she wants to play house and raise a family - while he wants to be charging up San Juan hill or somewhere winning battles where ever they are and never wants to return home to his lovely wife. Well, to my mind any man who could leave the stunningly beautiful Maria Schell - even for a long weekend - isn't playing with a full deck! Huh?

Nope, I'm sorry but I really don't think "Cimarron" is all that great a movie! There are some great things in it - besides the lovely Miss Schell there is the fine Cinemascope cinematography of Robert Surtees, the elaborate score by Franz Waxman (his anthem like choral Main Title and his recurring Main Theme plus his music for the land rush is outstanding) and the land rush itself is wonderfully exciting but there is nothing in the turgid second half of the picture that can persuade me to give this movie any more than a two star rating. Sad!! July 4, 2008

New DVD release planned for Summer 2008

Maybe I was spoiled by the 1931 version of this film. In particular the very hammy portrayal of Yancey by Richard Dix has come to grow on me just as Irene Dunne's wonderful portrayal of Sabra. That film won an unbelievable Best Picture Oscar and even a Best Actor nomination for Dix. This movie is far superior to the original, especially with Glenn Ford as Yancey playing it straight this time. It confronts head-on the social issues that the original just skirts around, yet in doing this it just seems to take on too much. The film is about an ill-matched couple that settles in Oklahoma during the land rush years and how things progress between the two of them as the years roll on. Yancey is a wanderer at heart, and can't help taking off every time a new frontier beckons. His wife, Sabra, wants Yancey to settle down and raise a family. As a result of Yancey's adventurous ways it is left to Sabra to bear the burden of taking care of the business and the children. You'll probably like this one more if you haven't seen the original.

This film is being released on DVD both individually and as part of Warner Home Video Western Classics Collection (Escape from Fort Bravo / Many Rivers to Cross / Cimarron 1960 / The Law and Jake Wade / Saddle the Wind / The Stalking Moon). If you like western classics, buying the boxed set might be a more economical way to go. There are no extra features in the boxed set or the individual movies except a theatrical trailer per film. May 26, 2008

Cimmaron

I don't remember when this movie reached the general public but I do remember that I was quite young at the time. I was in the Army and it was soon after I left high school(it only cost a quarter to see a movie then). I was impressed to see a story of a man who was so independent. He was so independentthat it worked against his family. However, the story depicted the the raw individualism of the typical westerner of our great country. Life and times were difficult in those days and westerners refected their moral beliefs in their daily lives. Yes, it did strain their family life but to this day it shows the strength of the western conservatism.

Things re changing but you can still see the ruggedness of the families who were born and raised here and are generations old.

I will get this movie and view it several more times before I die.

L. M. Dreyer August 21, 2007

Mann's Most Underrated Western!

Martin Scorcese has called Anthony Mann Hollywood's most underrated director. He's right of course. Mann is a God. It's a shame some of his Westerns have never been released on DVD or that some of his widescreen Westerns such as The Far Country and Bend in the River have only been relesed on pan and scan full frame vidoes and DVDs. At least Cimarron is avaliable on video in widescreen. Perhaps you need to have seen a number of Mann's films in order to appreciate Cimarron, Mann's last Western, and how moving it is at certain points. There's an amazing shot of Glenn Ford leaning against a post in his home as he waits for his wife to see that he has finally returned home after being gone for five years. Glenn Ford plays a typical Mannian hero who is on the side of the law but not a lawman hismelf and who is unable to settle down in a home with a family. The only other Western Mann made with a happy ending is The Tin Star. There Henry Fonda (the hero) rides off with his wife after putting on a sheriff star to help out the local sheriff. But even this happy ending falls short. Fonda takes no action, and the young lawman (Anthony Perkins) does the job just fine all by himself. Cimarron is kind of a sequel to The Tin Star. It begins with Ford playing a family man going out West with his new wife. But things quickly get rough. The Oklahoma stampede looks like the chariot race in Wiliam Wyler's Ben-Hur. Ford upholds morality and civil rights, but not as a lawman. After killing the bad guy, he becomes a crusading, liberal newspaper man. He's Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne in Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence rolled into one. But unlike Stewart, who goes on to be a politician, he turns down a job as governor. (Ford won't accept the reward money for killing outlaws either.) His long suffering wife finally leaves him, and he never reappears as a character in the film except in a voice-over. What is most haunting about the film is Ford's disappearance form it for long stretches. He basically abandons his family, fighting first as a rough rider in the Spanish-American War and then again in WWI. Mann goes into the melodramatic territory of Douglas Sirk, with Mann as a failed authority figure and patriarch. He fails to save the son of an old friend from becoming an outlaw. Ford loves his one child, a son, very deeply, but he nevertheless is not exactly an ideal father given his absences. Anthony Mann was an orphan who went to the school of hard knocks in New York. It's hard not to see Cimarron as his own love letter to the father who abandoned him as a child. In any case, Cimarron is a haunting film, well worth seeing, just like Mann's other films. July 28, 2007

A Classic Western

I am waiting for the DVD to come out. This is one of the best westerns that have been made. VHS tape does not do it justice. Come on MGM release this on DVD. February 12, 2007

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