Product Details

• Actors: Glenn Ford, Maria Schell, Anne Baxter, Arthur O'Connell, Russ Tamblyn
• Directors: Anthony Mann, Charles Walters
• Writers: Arnold Schulman, Edna Ferber
• Producers: Edmund Grainger
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: September 15, 1998
• Run Time: 147 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0792839196
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #380,221 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The 1960 remake of Cimarron manages a slight improvement on the worst Best Picture (1931) in Academy Award history. Not that Edna Ferber's novel of pioneer Oklahoma was ever a movie natural. There's a plethora of themes--several species of prejudice, capitalism vs. charity, sons unhappily following in fathers' footsteps, and the irreconcilable tensions between a stability-craving wife and her footloose hero-husband--but the action is front-loaded and the husband (Glenn Ford) is offscreen for years at a time. Anthony Mann gets solo directorial credit, yet the movie seems more typical of his replacement, Charles Walters, a maker of pastel musicals. Most of the large cast comes and goes without establishing identities; Maria Schell's Sabra Cravat is tiresome as both ditz and pill. Photographed in CinemaScope and Metrocolor by Robert L. Surtees, the Oklahoma land rush is properly spectacular--though less impressive than John Ford's in Three Bad Men. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent film, one of the best westerns, very artistic, March 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Cimarron (Widescreen Edition) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

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.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Character of Courage, January 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cimarron [VHS] (VHS Tape)

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.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The last and least of Mann's Westerns, May 7, 2009

By 

Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Cimarron (DVD)

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.