Customer Reviews

Cimarron

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ford is perfect in this role. The cinematography, including the wagons racing to claim their land, was outstanding. Anne Baxter gives a great performance as the woman Ford leaves for another woman. Great suspense and drama, bold sweeping action, and a wonderful plot perfectly cast and filmed. An essential part of any western collection. I haven't seen the original Cimarron yet, but I cannot imagine telling the story any better. The ending is great too, powerful and patriotic. This is a timeless classic of epic proportions and beautiful storytelling.

Clancy (Glenn Ford) portrays the atypical hero of an era gone but not forgotten. His penchant for fun adventure and excitement, always accompanied by goodness and virtue, soon find him at odds with his beautiful new wife. Even though their newspaper business flourishes with potential and periodic problems Clancy's internal restlessness drives him on to War and remote engagements while his dutiful wife attends to the newly founded entity set in the heart of Oklahoma immediately after land rush. Nostalgic movie goers who rarely see the raw character of courage so eloquently presented in films today will relish this return to the adventure of a "humble and reluctant hero." Prepare to shed a tear or two and enjoy a hearty laugh. But Cimmaron will not quickly retire from your memory once you've watched it.

The last and least of Anthony Mann's Westerns, 1960's Cimarron was originally intended by MGM as a Rock Hudson vehicle after the success of Giant. It's at once a lavish film and an undernourished one, not least because of the production problems that saw Mann's run of bad luck with epics repeat itself: after being fired from Spartacus at the start of shooting by Stanley Kubrick, on Cimarron he was replaced towards the end of shooting by an uncredited Charles Walters. It's all to easy to spot the join, with the many early exterior scenes that are very obviously and artificially shot on interior sets at the studio sticking out like a sore thumb with Mann's signature location filming.

Though remembered today, if at all, as doorstop soap operas, in their day Edna Ferner's novels were hugely controversial, and Cimarron was no exception, dealing along the way with racism, anti-Semitism and Indian land rights, though these are treated rather less boldly here than in the 1930 version (especially in the general release and European versions that trimmed a subplot with the leads' son marrying a Native American girl, though these scenes are in the Region 1 DVD). What's left is an ambitious saga, charting the changing face of the wilderness from the Oklahoma Land Rush to the 'civilisation' that comes with the discovery of oil and the big money to be made by a few, taking in the winners and losers strewn along the path of progress along the way, all nominally held together by the restless figure of Yancey Cravat (Glenn Ford). A man who tries everything but can never stay the course before chasing the next dream, he's held as the pioneer ideal, but it's clear that his long-suffering wife (Maria Schell) is the saga's real hero, setting roots and building a future. Structurally it's one of those books better suited to a mini-series than a film, while the rootless nature of its hero - who vanishes from the last third of the film almost entirely - leaves it feeling very unsatisfying. It doesn't help that the film's most spectacular scene, the truly epic land rush sequence, happens so early in the film that everything that follows seems an anticlimax.

Unfortunately the casting doesn't help. While Ford isn't as insufferably hammy as Richard Dix in the original, he never lives up to the great claims made for his character, and he's not helped by a bad haircut that makes him look like Oliver Hardy after a diet (it's no surprise that this film and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse pretty much ended his career as a top box-office attraction). And for all her efforts, Schell isn't able to exert the kind of charisma or star power that the problematic last third desperately needs. The supporting performances are highly variable too. David Opatashu, Arthur O'Connell, and Charles McGraw offer dependable turns but Russ Tamblyn is shockingly bad.

But ultimately the problem is that the film never seems to quite decide what it wants to be or what parts of the story it wants to tell. It just sprawls out in all directions, never building up much sense of drive or purpose, and even Mann's visual imagination deserts him for much of the film. Instead it's a film with a handful of memorable moments - the land rush sequence, played more for chaos and carnage than exhilaration, one terrific shooting after a lynching and an excellent scene with Aline MacMahon at a makeshift grave - stranded in a rather forgettable film.

Boasting a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer, the only extra on the Region 1 disc is the original theatrical trailer.

Ford is perfect for this role, and the story is told very well. Fantastic cinematography, including wagons and horses racing to claim land and Ford's strong moral stand at a party with big-time politicians trying to change his views. Timeless and powerful. I loved the ending and Anne Baxter's performance. A great plot with suspense and unpredictable consequences. Very handsome movie, with strong cast.

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.

This is an epic western. That makes it a little long, but it is worth watching. You might think that this movie will just bore you because it is so long. The main character is involved in many stories and trips which you get to see, but at some point they seem to run together with little point. However, it will all make sense at the end. In the meantime, Glenn Ford is at his best as a cowboy. The action is all very good and the language is as well. What you also learn from this one is that some men are just made to wander regardless of what is in their lives. All in all, in spite of the length, it is a great movie.

This is one of my favorite Glen Ford classic western films!!!
It was very difficult for me to find anywhere.
But....I found it on Amazon, Now I know where to find all
of my favorite movies, old classics to the new releases.

Back in May of this year I recieved an email from Amazon asking me to take part in a poll they were running for I think it was Warner Bros. Video who were considering a number of films to be released on DVD.I do not remember the films to choose from but I do know that Cimmeron was one of the selection and of course I voted for it. I have no idea what the out come of the poll was. I can only hope that the powers that be will give this great film the DVD restoration and presentation it should have.
I remember seeing this movie it at a first run theater on a giant screen with great sound. I remember that the Land Rush sceen was heart stopping. Some hate this film for its chopped up story line while others see it as a great Hollywood Western.
Lets cross our fingers and hope that a restored DVD will be out soon.

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

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.