Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

disinterested_spectator We expect the title character of a movie to be the protagonist, and to be played by a well-known actor. So it is a little strange that Clementine is just a big nothing played by an actress you have never heard of (Cathy Downs). She is not even the most interesting woman in the movie, for that is Chihuahua (Linda Darnell).Apparently the point is that Clementine represents the future, which is to say, civilization. And civilization is bland and boring, as opposed to the Wild West, where we have such figures as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clanton gang. So only after the excitement of the gunfight at the OK Corral, when just about everyone of interest is killed off except Wyatt Earp and his brother Morgan, who then ride out of town, can Clementine finally become important.I guess director John Ford did not want civilization to be associated with disease, so he has Holliday die during the gunfight, instead of dying years later, as was in fact the case. Or maybe we just like it better that way. Who wouldn't rather spit up blood from being shot in a gunfight than spit up blood in a tuberculosis hospital?

Scott44 ***User reviewer Lechuguilla ("Shakespeare In Tombstone", Lechuguilla from Dallas, Texas, 25 April 2006) provides nice description of the imagery. Righty-Sock ("An archetypal Western mood piece!", Righty-Sock from Mexico, 10 August 2001) has a nice summary and offers insight on the casting. Meanwhile, Whythorne ("Extremely overrated, silly and historically bogus melodrama", Whythorne from United States, 26 March 2010); gkbazalo ("Good Henry Fonda Western but misses the facts by a mile", gkbazalo from Scottsdale, AZ, 3 June 2004); Romanus Nies ("Ignorant or artistic?", Romanus Nies from Germany, 20 April 2008); bkoganbing ("When You Pull A Gun, Kill A Man", bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York, 3 October 2006) and tieman64 ("Scented Desert Flowers", tieman64 from United Kingdom, 23 September 2013) all take issue with the historical deviations from fact, making many interesting points along the way.***"My Darling Clementine" (1946) is widely regarded as John Ford's best film and should be regarded as one of the greatest Westerns ever. Although John Ford personally knew Wyatt Earp (when Ford was a prop boy and the elderly Earp would visit Hollywood sets), this film is not a history lesson. There are probably an uncountable number of liberties taken from the famous 1881 gunfight (which lasted about 30 seconds). Instead, it is a romanticized and stylized tale with many points of interest.The central conflict between the Earps and the Clantons (note: there are no McLaurys here) is very clearly a good family unit removing a bad family unit. (Or as we say now, "taking out the trash.") However, the greatness in "Clementine" stems from character additions to the historical event. One is the mixed-race (i.e., at least half Native American), singing saloon girl Chihuahua (Linda Darnell) who is Doc Holliday's most recent love interest. In addition, a drunken, swindling, English thespian and fop (Alan Mowbray) arrives to Tombstone to entertain the rowdy cowboys by reciting Shakespeare. The thespian is very unique in the John Ford catalogue, as Ford usually completes his cast with very rugged men and very family-oriented women. The thespian's appearance leads to an important early scene between the vile Clantons and the film's obvious hero Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda). Perhaps the only historical detail that this film faithfully renders is the depiction of a Wyatt Earp who fears no other man. (All historical accounts say this about Wyatt.) Henry Fonda is a convincing badass and western lawman.The most fascinating addition to the history is the perpetually inconsistent Doc Holliday. The tubucular, misanthropic physician is quite ornery when he is guzzling whiskey, which is always. (Holliday also finds each whiskey glass he employs so disappointing that he usually throws it. One wonders how much he costs the drinking establishment to resupply all of the glasses he destroys.) The washed-up former gunslinger has a chip on his shoulder and continues to threaten Wyatt until their eventual duel. As such, Holliday alternates between being a substitute antagonist to being a friend of Wyatt. With such a complicated role, Victor Mature's performance is bound to be polarizing. I love Mature's work here; he speaks almost all his lines as if he's suffered unendurable pain during his life. It surprises me that so many people prefer more recent depictions of Doc Holliday. By the way, Holliday's back-and-forth character might explain the opening credits, as the camera very mechanically repeats a move down, to the left and to the right revealing title cards. Holliday is loved by two beautiful women (Chihuahua and Cathy Downs as Clementine Carter) but rejects them both. In contrast, man-of-action Wyatt is painfully shy with Clementine. Ford has an interesting visual pattern with the scenes between Clementine and Wyatt. Wyatt is often framed by whatever verticals are handy (e.g., doorways and building pillars) when Clementine is also on the screen. The last shot reverses this trend. Ford appears to be emphasizing separation within the Wyatt-Clementine relationship as part of his storytelling repertoire.The production qualities are excellent. Ford serves up many gorgeous Black and White images; sometimes it seems as if the clouds are knowingly participating. Ford pushes the edge by having several night scenes with more darkness than we normally see in a western. The voices are always interesting to listen to, particularly when the inimitable Walter Brennan's Old Man Clanton is speaking. (Surprising fact: this is the only film where Brennan and Ford worked together. The Golden Era King of Westerns and one of the greatest Western character actors didn't get along.)Every Ford Western introduces two qualities which I don't admire: Racism and animal cruelty. "Clementine" is no exception. When civilian Wyatt emerges from a paralyzed crowd to disarm a drunken Indian (a story based on the real Wyatt's life), the Indian is dragged to the street, kicked and humiliated. When Wyatt intones that it is wrong to offer liquor to Indians it is a very hateful moment. Also, horses are violently forced to the ground several times.Despite the negatives, "My Darling Clementine" is a very satisfying Western which looks great and where all of the characters are interesting. Cinephiles need to saddle up and (gently) ride their best mare over to the revival theater that is showing it.

utgard14 John Ford's version of the Wyatt Earp/O.K. Corral story may be more fiction than fact, but it's also a classic piece of filmmaking. An evocative western with beautiful cinematography and terrific acting. Henry Fonda is excellent, as you might expect. Great performance by Victor Mature as Doc Holliday. Perhaps his best. Also some wonderful work by Walter Brennan and Linda Darnell. The only reason I don't give it a perfect score is that I felt the plot wandered some instead of having a clear focus on building up to the climactic shootout. Not that I was ever bored or uninterested in what was on screen because that couldn't be further from the truth. Ford was a master of his craft and every scene is enjoyable. Definitely a must-see for everybody, not just western fans.

tieman64 Regarded as one of director John Ford's finest westerns, "My Darling Clementine" stars Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp, the legendary lawman who becomes sheriff of Tombstone, a small town in Arizona. Wyatt appoints several family members as his deputies, befriends the sickly Doc Holiday and shoots dead the Clanton family, a bunch of mean guys responsible for cattle thievery.You'd think a director who'd won three directorial Oscars in the space of six years would be free from studio interference, but no, producer Darryl F. Zanuck loved sinking his meddling claws into Ford's flicks. Zanuck's alterations to "Clementine" include the adding of unnecessary kisses, emphatic musical cues, the shortening of several wordless scenes and the removal of several natural/ambient sounds. In each case, Zanuck attempted to "make things more obvious", a contrast to Ford, who was attempting to craft a muted, restrained western.Still, Zanuck's meddling doesn't distract too much from "Clementine's" better qualities. Ford focuses on mood, ambiance, on creating a sense of place, and his film is purposefully diffuse, his characters seemingly drifting through life without rhyme or plan. Elsewhere Ford gives us a number of communal scenes, like those in which towns gather at theatres, saloons or for dances amidst skeletal churches. Other iconic scenes watch as Wyatt positions a chair at the head of his town and sits himself down like a lazy landlord, gazing as townsfolk walk wordlessly by. Ford's interested in Tombstone's flow of life, and the leisurely, unhurried tempo of the Old West."Clementine" was shot by cinematographer Joseph MacDonald, who paints a number of wonderful scenes. The reveal of Tombstone, in which the distant town flickers in the night, is particularly excellent (George Lucas' Mos Eisley would be based on Ford's Tombstone). When he's not serving up low-key sequences, Ford takes us to the town's more festive areas, which are filled with tobacco smoke, dim lanterns, hootin', hollerin' and convey well the hustle and bustle of the frontier.Most Westerns are elegiac, the genre overly preoccupied with mourning the passage of the Old West. These are nostalgic pictures which pine for something that never quite existed, glorifying frontier justice, outlaw values and a violent masculinity which "regretfully" fades come the arrival of trains, power lines, steam engines, machine guns, pickup trucks and modernity in general. "Clementine's" melancholia, however, is rooted in something more specific. Ford's characters mourn lost lovers, family members, and everyone's weighed by both loss and life's frailty. Epitomizing this is Tombstone's comical barber, whose faulty "modern" chair perpetually threatens to slit his customers' throats. Later he slaps cologne on our heroes, Ford's men on the verge of passing into civilisation, domestication and even comical dandyism.As history, "My Darling Clementine" is nonsense. Wyatt wasn't the marshal of Tombstone (his brother was), Holiday and Old Man Clanton weren't killed at the infamous OK Corral, and Wyatt wasn't praised as a hero but put on trial after killing the Clantons. The Earps were themselves a group of violent drunks, law breakers, woman-beaters, murderers and brothel owners. Ford, of course, portrays them not as multiple felons (the real Earps eventually became corrupt lawmen who worked for bankers), but as something else: genteel custodians of civilisation who turn to violence only when necessary and always reluctantly. The Western genre has itself always salivated over sheriffs and deputies, foot-soldiers of a Law which has, historically, never been the public's bedfellow. Originating in slave patrols, beholden to the economic interests of land owners, and designed to maintain class stratification, the business of policing has always been policing for business."My Darling Clementine" stars Victor Mature as Doc Holiday. It's a hard role to play, and Mature isn't up to the task (perhaps modern audiences have been spoilt by Val Kilmer's electric Holiday in "Tombstone"). Fonda is better as Wyatt, playing his character as a mild-mannered, righteous romantic. The film co-stars Linda Darnell as Chihuahua, a voluptuous prostitute with a fondness for low-cut blouses."Clementine" would prove a huge influence on subsequent Westerns. The Sergio Leone rule-book was practically born here, Ford's film filled with drawn out sequences, sexy wistfulness, tactical uses of silence, portentous one-liners, strong silent-types and an aesthetic which alternates between serenity and sudden flashes of violence. This being John Ford, the film is also preoccupied with bogus notions relating to "what it means to be American". In this regard, Ford's Tombstone is steeped in barbarity until our heroes kick an Indian out (played by Charlie Stevens, grandson of Geronimo), visit an erected Church and bring co-operation, family and law to Tombstone's god-fearing townsfolk. For Ford, the Earps (and a woman named Clementine) occupy the film's moral high ground, a dominant white, religious culture which discards or reforms all outsiders. And so a Mexican prostitute, ostracised for her racial origin, dies, the disreputable Clanton family is murdered and the morally moribund Doc Holliday finds himself grave-bound. With the film's climax – a type of regenerative violence typical of Westerns – a great purge has been exacted in the name of "decent" values.8.5/10 – See Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "Wagon Masters". Worth two viewings.