My darling clementine3/20/2023 ![]() Holliday and Chihuahua’s would-be “sordid” romance becomes a richly emotional and mature study of two damaged souls achieving peace with the other’s flaws, while Earp and Clementine’s seemingly “respectable” courtship contains a roiling and poignant eroticism just beneath the surface. the outlaw-move within a complex web of sexual attraction, shared history, principled camaraderie, and pained resentment. This quartet of frontier archetypes-the “good” woman vs. The film sketches its mirrored couples in similar shades of gray. ![]() (Ford and cinematographer Joe MacDonald’s use of depth staging and chiaroscuro lighting here is a master class in how physical space can be transformed to evoke the psychological landscape of the characters inhabiting it.) ![]() ![]() Locations that seem to have a fixed meaning become more-amorphous sites of social and emotional negotiation-no more so than the town saloon’s late-film transformation into a makeshift operating room, with the physical well-being of one character and the spiritual fate of another hanging precariously in the balance. From a classically trained yet perennially soused tragedian breezing through town to the skeletal beginnings of a house of worship, signs of the “civilizing” East arrive in Tombstone containing both the glimmer of progress and the shadows of the past. These ever-shifting arrangements reflect My Darling Clementine’s broader understanding of how the frontier community itself rests in a state of flux. Their reunion is complicated by Holliday’s self-destructive rejection of his former life and his present romance with local saloon singer Chihuahua (Linda Darnell)-not to mention Earp’s tentative interest in Carter. This history catches up with Holliday soon enough in the form of Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs), a nurse and former lover who has scoured the frontier in search of him. Prone to heavy boozing and intimidation of local riffraff, Holliday also appreciates the finer things in life, like sipping champagne and reciting Shakespearean soliloquies from memory, signs of a more-cultured past back East that he mysteriously abandoned for the anonymity of the West. Revenge against the Clantons soon quickly takes a back seat, however, as newly minted town sheriff Earp soon finds himself embroiled in a ever-fluctuating friendship-cum-rivalry with Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), a black-clad local powerbroker. Earp and his two brothers indefinitely extend their stay in Tombstone after discovering their cattle stolen and other brother murdered, most likely by another all-male familial clan, the Clantons. The film subtly complicates viewer expectations early on, eschewing clear-cut character rivalries in favor of more complex emotional and social configurations. Rarely have these weighty queries been explored with such elegance, poignancy, and dexterous economy as in My Darling Clementine. ![]() How, in the Wild West of 1882, is a community to operate? What values, institutions, and individuals come out on top, and which are left to rot in the dustbin of history? These concerns can be felt throughout Ford’s filmography, which returns again and again to the potentials and pitfalls of group formation at a moment in American history-and within a genre of American cinema-defined by the collisions between people of varying classes, ethnicities, and visions of the nation’s future. Earp’s incredulousness is certainly warranted, as his shave at the local “tonsorial parlor” has just been interrupted by stray bullets coming in from the adjoining saloon, but it’s a question that hangs over the entirety of John Ford’s masterpiece. “What kind of a town is this?” shouts Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) shortly after entering Tombstone, the rough-and-tumble Arizona municipality at the heart of My Darling Clementine. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |