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| So wild that we accidentally got a Korean version... |
Plot Intro
The film begins in Oklahoma, 1889, during the Land Rush, in which vast numbers of Americans raced to own millions of acres of unclaimed land. Amidst the melee is Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) who brings his beloved wife, Sabra (Irene Dunne), and son, Cimarron, to lawless Oklahoma to make his fortune as a newspaper editor. As the decades flow by, Oklahoma grows in commerce, and Yancey and Sabra come up against miscreant cowboys, racial tensions, downtrodden prostitutes and their own domestic and personal struggles.
My initial thoughts about Cimarron were, “Urgh, a Western. One of my least favourite genres.” I generally find them too drenched in machismo and artificial fight scenes. Thankfully, Cimarron goes beyond the conventions of Westerns by covering a vast time period and dealing with race relations and moral values in more detail, rather than goodies and baddies just shooting each other.
The film, in summary, is much like the Ancient Epics of Homer and Virgil. We have a hero who may be flawed in his childish desire for adventure rather than stability, but is admirable in his noble nature, fighting for what is right even in the face of death. We have a wife who is often left to fend for herself (Sabra is, at one point, compared to Homer’s Penelope in The Odyssey) but is stalwart and courageous in her own way. We have an episodic structure designed to display the hero’s supremacy in various ways, and teach the viewers how best to live one’s life. We have the hero’s and heroine’s children carrying on their legacy. And we have a story centred around the establishment of a new society in a previously uninhabited land. Cimarron is essentially Virgil’s Aeneid for 20th-century American audiences who wanted to celebrate the founding and development of their nation.
Is it effective? In some instances, yes. There’s a tremendous opening scene displaying the beginning of the Land Rush, in which hundreds of horses and carriages charge across empty fields to win the best piece of land they can find. The film also displays the passing of time skilfully by beginning each “episode” with a view of the same Oklahoma street. This shows its gradual transformation from cowboy-ridden shanty town to a metropolis of skyscrapers and motor cars. The characters also age believably. In fact, the side characters get most of the best lines and moments- particularly Sabra’s closest female friend, a prototype for Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.
On the flip side, Richard Dix’s overacting is so abominable that his inspirational speeches came across as trite to me, and I felt nothing during moments when we should have been cheering him on. There’s a disgracefully racist depiction of a black servant boy (there’s lots of, “Oh please sir, do take-m me to Oklahomey!”). The jumps in time are sometimes awkward and will suddenly explain a great deal of plot through cue cards. Finally, Sabra gets so much character development in the final half hour that I found that I wanted the film to be about her, not her husband.
Cimarron probably won the Oscar because it’s very, very American, in the same way that The Aeneid is very, very Roman. But you get a good sense of scope and magnitude from it, even if it’s not the most emotionally involving piece.
Highlight
The opening 5 mins- a masterclass in big-scale filming.
Lowlight
Richard Dix’s acting. There’s only so many big gestures one can take.
Mark
6/10
One of the things that’s really becoming clear as we launch into our fourth (fourth!? already??) Best Picture winner is that film-making in general has changed. Where now audiences are lightning-quick to pick up on references, objects and plot points, the 1930s audience seemingly was not. The editing of this film is not unlike its Oscar-winning predecessors, with long camera shots pointing out the obvious (an example is when Yancey Cravat the protagonist is eating a sandwich and we are treated to a 20-second-long shot of the sandwich on a plate). So I’m having to try and shelve my annoyance at being spoon-fed these things, and focus mainly on the plot.
And there are some good things here. By covering a period from the late 1800s right through to 1930, we are shown the gradual - and startling - development of Oklahoma. At the beginning chancers trying their luck are able to grab a piece of shrubland of their own, and we get to see these bits of rough land develop and transform at first into tented ‘offices’, then into basic wooden buildings, and by the end huge 1930s towerblocks, immediately recognisable to modern audiences. A street name is roughly scrawled on a piece of cardboard in the beginning, and by the end, we see the same name now on ‘modern’ signposts. It is a great insight into the quick and busy establishment of an American city.
Another good element (although sadly underused) is Sabra, played by Irene Dunne. As wife of the (frankly bloody irritating) Yancey, she begins a small-minded wife and transforms into a congresswoman, who is accepting of her own child’s marriage to a Native American, and fights for equality. It’s a shame that the film chooses to focus on Yancey up till the last half hour, because it’s in this last half hour that the focus switches to Sabra and the film gets more interesting.
Yancey as a protagonist is a bore. He vaguely gestures at some elements of ‘greatness’ - standing up for equal rights etc, but then wanders off and leaves his wife waiting for him for years at a time. While Paul has pointed out the Epic similarities, for me it doesn’t translate well to a modern story. Yancey just comes off as arrogant and annoying - and certainly no hero. The film itself tends towards unfortunate bouts of racism, along with unexplained plot points, reinforced by a lead actor who can’t really deliver his ‘stirring speeches’ with more than a damp fizzle of energy.
Westerns have never been something I itch to watch, and while this didn’t feel too Western-y (the section of the film about outlaws etc doesn’t last that long overall), this didn’t make me want to immediately seek out the nearest Clint Eastwood flick. Overwritten, overacted and overlong, it’s not particularly deserving of the Best Picture Oscar - but then it’s nowhere near as dreadful as Broadway Melody was. So all in all, it’s not terrible.
Highlight
The comic side-character - a posh woman who reminded me of Eileen Atkins at her best, barging into scenes and stealing all the attention.
Low light
The odd lack of connection between scenes - events would happen and then not really ever be referred to again. The whole thing lacked cohesion.
Mark
5/10
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