My Darling Clementine
Screening on Film
Directed by John Ford.
With Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Cathy Downs.
US, 1946, 35mm, black & white, 97 min.
With Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Cathy Downs.
US, 1946, 35mm, black & white, 97 min.
Among Ford’s most celebrated westerns is his rendition of the Wyatt Earp saga, how Wyatt (Fonda) and the Earp brothers, with the help of TB-impaired Doc Holliday (Mature), cleaned up Tombstone, climaxing in an immensely exciting battle against the Clantons at the OK Corral. Amazingly, Ford pumps life into the most archetypal Western story. There’s a clash between the starched educated woman (Downs) and the goodhearted whore (Darnell); and the good cowboy brings civilization to an uncivilized town, and then moves West. Thus, Ford’s Wyatt adheres to historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s theory of the democratization of the American frontier.
