MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946)
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Randwick Ritz, Sydney:
12:45 PM
Friday May 02
10:30 AM
Saturday May 03*
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
10:30 AM
Saturday May 10*
11:00 AM
Monday May 12
*denotes session will include an introduction
Rating: PG
Duration: 98 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Cast:: Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Cathy Downs
Director: John Ford
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
12:45 PM
Friday May 02
10:30 AM
Saturday May 03*
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
10:30 AM
Saturday May 10*
11:00 AM
Monday May 12
*denotes session will include an introduction
Rating: PG
Duration: 98 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Cast:: Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Cathy Downs
Director: John Ford
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
4K RESTORATION – AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
“Possibly the finest drama in the western genre …it achieves near-perfection in its cinematography and editing” – Michael Mann
Henry Fonda stars as Wyatt Earp in a unique, loosely adapted, biographical Western that foregrounds the tender side of those embroiled in a revenge plot that takes backstage until the film’s final moments. My Darling Clementine follows Wyatt who is led astray from his trip across the country with his brothers after one of them is killed and their cattle are stolen. Quickly taking up the role of Marshall in the lawless town of Tombstone to avenge his brother, he encounters unlikely comrades, enemies, romance, and develops an affinity for the town in flux. Despite being labelled an ‘anti-western’ by some, it still tells a mythical tale of conflicted virtues. Framed in black and white cinematography that reveals both the atmosphere's harsh reality and a sensitive romantic naivety, the film emerges from the most moving of quotidian moments.
Introduced by Ivan Cerecina at Ritz Cinemas and Zac Tomé at Lido Cinemas.
“A poetic movie about good and evil that rings true to the myths and aspirations of the west that the genre symbolised, celebrated and came to criticise.” - Philip French
“Ford’s work attains a harmony rare in American studio filmmaking, its topical and cinematic breadth at once intimately sketched and historically attuned to the passage of time and its accumulated gravitas.” - Jordan Cronk
“Possibly the finest drama in the western genre …it achieves near-perfection in its cinematography and editing” – Michael Mann
Henry Fonda stars as Wyatt Earp in a unique, loosely adapted, biographical Western that foregrounds the tender side of those embroiled in a revenge plot that takes backstage until the film’s final moments. My Darling Clementine follows Wyatt who is led astray from his trip across the country with his brothers after one of them is killed and their cattle are stolen. Quickly taking up the role of Marshall in the lawless town of Tombstone to avenge his brother, he encounters unlikely comrades, enemies, romance, and develops an affinity for the town in flux. Despite being labelled an ‘anti-western’ by some, it still tells a mythical tale of conflicted virtues. Framed in black and white cinematography that reveals both the atmosphere's harsh reality and a sensitive romantic naivety, the film emerges from the most moving of quotidian moments.
Introduced by Ivan Cerecina at Ritz Cinemas and Zac Tomé at Lido Cinemas.
“A poetic movie about good and evil that rings true to the myths and aspirations of the west that the genre symbolised, celebrated and came to criticise.” - Philip French
“Ford’s work attains a harmony rare in American studio filmmaking, its topical and cinematic breadth at once intimately sketched and historically attuned to the passage of time and its accumulated gravitas.” - Jordan Cronk
FILM NOTES
By Grace Boschetti
By Grace Boschetti
Grace Boschetti is a screen critic from Naarm/Melbourne.
John Ford
Born John Feeney, the tenth child of Irish immigrant parents living in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, John Ford (1894-1973) is a rather inscrutable figure with famously confounding politics, and arguably the greatest American filmmaker to have ever lived. In his immense seven decade spanning career, beginning in the 1910s and concluding with the completion of his final documentary in 1970, Ford directed over 140 films. A master of multiple genres, he is undoubtably best known for his Westerns. ‘My name’s John Ford. I make Westerns’, is the most frequently repeated quote attributed to the director. This modest statement preceded his defence of Joseph L. Mankiewicz against the reactionary Cecil B. DeMille during a 1950 Screen Directors Guild meeting, an incident pivotal to Ford’s legacy as a man with integrity, despite his ideological contradictions. (1)
In the first decade of his career, Ford was a prolific director of silent films. Unfortunately, relatively few are extant. Though presumed lost, The Tornado (1917), the short film generally cited as Ford’s directorial debut, was a Western, as was his surviving first feature, Straight Shooting (1917). Ford achieved major success with The Iron Horse (1924), and in 1939 directed his first sound Western, the genre-defining masterpiece, Stagecoach. Critic and theorist André Bazin described it as ‘the ideal example of the maturity of a style brought to classic perfection’. (2) Highly respected and recognised early on, Ford won the Academy Award for Best Director a record four times, notably all for films outside of the Western genre: the tragic crime thriller, The Informer (1935), the revered John Steinbeck adaptation, The Grapes of Wrath (1940), the family melodrama, How Green Was My Valley (1941) and the Ireland-set romance, The Quiet Man (1952).
Gaylyn Studlar and Matthew Bernstein write, in their survey of the director, that Ford ‘was a pioneer master of cinematic storytelling who had one foot in nineteenth-century American thought and feeling and the other in the twentieth’, but as he aged his films ‘became increasingly self-conscious in their vision of an American past, representing it not as a pure celebration of myth, but exploring it as a constructed discourse’. (3) This self-consciousness is palpable in some of Ford’s greatest works: in the final composition of The Searchers (1956), which expressively frames the destructive Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) in a doorway that he will no longer walk through; and in the memorable line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): ‘This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’
In the first decade of his career, Ford was a prolific director of silent films. Unfortunately, relatively few are extant. Though presumed lost, The Tornado (1917), the short film generally cited as Ford’s directorial debut, was a Western, as was his surviving first feature, Straight Shooting (1917). Ford achieved major success with The Iron Horse (1924), and in 1939 directed his first sound Western, the genre-defining masterpiece, Stagecoach. Critic and theorist André Bazin described it as ‘the ideal example of the maturity of a style brought to classic perfection’. (2) Highly respected and recognised early on, Ford won the Academy Award for Best Director a record four times, notably all for films outside of the Western genre: the tragic crime thriller, The Informer (1935), the revered John Steinbeck adaptation, The Grapes of Wrath (1940), the family melodrama, How Green Was My Valley (1941) and the Ireland-set romance, The Quiet Man (1952).
Gaylyn Studlar and Matthew Bernstein write, in their survey of the director, that Ford ‘was a pioneer master of cinematic storytelling who had one foot in nineteenth-century American thought and feeling and the other in the twentieth’, but as he aged his films ‘became increasingly self-conscious in their vision of an American past, representing it not as a pure celebration of myth, but exploring it as a constructed discourse’. (3) This self-consciousness is palpable in some of Ford’s greatest works: in the final composition of The Searchers (1956), which expressively frames the destructive Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) in a doorway that he will no longer walk through; and in the memorable line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): ‘This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’
THE FILM
Since the great David Lynch’s passing, I’ve been thinking about his final on-screen role in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (2022). Portraying John Ford, in a recreation of a real meeting that took place between the legendary director and a then teenage Spielberg, Lynch delivers a terse lesson on framing –‘now remember this: when the horizon’s at the bottom, it’s interesting. When the horizon’s at the top, it’s interesting. When the horizon’s in the middle, it’s boring as shit.’ In the film’s final scene, as Spielberg’s young stand-in is leaving Ford’s office in an elated daze, the shot is reframed to be in keeping with this advice. It’s a beautiful tribute to Ford – his unrivalled genius and profound influence on countless filmmakers – made all the more touching for being channelled through Lynch.
Because I’ve been reflecting on these two directors, I’ve also been thinking about ‘the possibility that love is not enough’ – a fear expressed by Twin Peaks’ (David Lynch, 1990) Major Garland Briggs (Don S. Davis), which perhaps proves true for both Henry Fonda’s Wyatt Earp and Victor Mature’s John ‘Doc’ Holliday in Ford’s masterful, tragic Western romance, My Darling Clementine (1946).
It has often been noted that Ford reportedly met Earp as a young man. Peter Bogdanovich’s book on the director quotes Ford’s explanation of how, in the early days of Hollywood, the former lawman used to regale him with his account of the O.K. Corral gunfight while visiting film sets. (4) Ford’s claim that his film is an accurate retelling of events, however, is rather dubious. Earp has often been employed as an instrument of American myth making. His reputation was essentially constructed posthumously by the immensely popular book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (Stuart N. Lake, 1931). This largely fictitious biography was first adapted to screen as the pre-code Frontier Marshal (Lewis Seiler, 1934) and then again under the same title by Allan Dwan in 1939. Ford’s version, a remake of Dwan’s well-constructed film, features many of the same story beats, but its resonance is incomparable.
My Darling Clementine begins with an ill-fated encounter between sinister cattleman, Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan), and the laconic, moralistic Wyatt (Henry Fonda), leading the latter to take on the position of marshal of lawless boomtown, Tombstone. There, he meets the moody, tortured Doc (Victor Mature) and Doc’s sometime lover, saloon singer Chihuahua (Linda Darnell). While Ford intimates a vision of a better life – Shakespeare, community, comfort, the kinship of men, the love of a woman – Tombstone remains under a constant shadow of violence, allowing nothing good to flourish. Thus, when the lovely Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs), a living embodiment of the life Doc has tried desperately to outrun, reaches him after a long search, he tells her that the man she once loved ‘is already dead’ and that ‘everything was buried with him, his dreams, his ambitions, even his love’ for her. However, Clementine’s arrival spells change, not only for Doc and the jealous Chihuahua, but also for Wyatt.
There are, in numerous Ford films, magnificent images which communicate wordless yearning: Angharad’s (Maureen O’Hara) wedding veil floating in the wind in How Green Was My Valley (1941); her true love watching from a distance as a carriage pulls her away; the violent, passionate first kiss in The Quiet Man (1952); the later, tender embrace as the lovers (John Wayne and O’Hara again) find shelter from a storm. In My Darling Clementine, there’s Wyatt and Clementine walking arm-in-arm to the newly dedicated church site. Experiencing deep feelings for what is likely the first time, Wyatt is endearingly ungainly. He has transformed himself for her – the man who only days ago refused to bathe now smells of ‘desert flowers’, we are told.
In comparison to the well-respected Clementine, Chihuahua is cruelly treated and othered – insulted, ignored and, most indecently, dunked in a horse trough – especially by Wyatt, whose racism is neither endorsed nor challenged by the film. However, her devotion is no less sincere or less touching than Clementine’s or Wyatt’s. Perhaps the film’s greatest sorrow comes from Doc’s taking her for granted until it is too late.
A post-war Western, My Darling Clementine has a brutal edge that first becomes apparent with Ford’s inclusion of the ambush and murder of Wyatt’s youngest brother, James (Don Garner). In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, Wyatt sits beside James’ makeshift grave. He reads the birth and death years aloud. ‘Eighteen years,’ he says. ‘Didn’t get much of a chance did you James.’ Ford does not linger in moments of violence; in fact on several occasions in the film he cuts away just when the action is getting started, but he does sit with the aftermath: young people lost while their elders live to suffer the shame of that profound waste.
Towards the end of the film, there’s a wonderful exchange between the infatuated Wyatt and the barkeep of Tombstone. ‘Mac, you ever been in love?’, Wyatt asks. ‘No, I’ve been a bartender all me life’, Mac responds. Wyatt finishes his drink, unaware of the terrible thing that awaits him just outside the bar – a tragedy which will lead him to the most famous shootout in history and away from Clementine.
The question remains: in such a world, can love be enough? The final encounter between Wyatt and Clementine is sweetly hopeful, but there is doubt as to whether they will meet again. The film’s repeated theme (‘you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine’) seems to suggest the window of opportunity may have closed forever.
Notes
Because I’ve been reflecting on these two directors, I’ve also been thinking about ‘the possibility that love is not enough’ – a fear expressed by Twin Peaks’ (David Lynch, 1990) Major Garland Briggs (Don S. Davis), which perhaps proves true for both Henry Fonda’s Wyatt Earp and Victor Mature’s John ‘Doc’ Holliday in Ford’s masterful, tragic Western romance, My Darling Clementine (1946).
It has often been noted that Ford reportedly met Earp as a young man. Peter Bogdanovich’s book on the director quotes Ford’s explanation of how, in the early days of Hollywood, the former lawman used to regale him with his account of the O.K. Corral gunfight while visiting film sets. (4) Ford’s claim that his film is an accurate retelling of events, however, is rather dubious. Earp has often been employed as an instrument of American myth making. His reputation was essentially constructed posthumously by the immensely popular book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (Stuart N. Lake, 1931). This largely fictitious biography was first adapted to screen as the pre-code Frontier Marshal (Lewis Seiler, 1934) and then again under the same title by Allan Dwan in 1939. Ford’s version, a remake of Dwan’s well-constructed film, features many of the same story beats, but its resonance is incomparable.
My Darling Clementine begins with an ill-fated encounter between sinister cattleman, Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan), and the laconic, moralistic Wyatt (Henry Fonda), leading the latter to take on the position of marshal of lawless boomtown, Tombstone. There, he meets the moody, tortured Doc (Victor Mature) and Doc’s sometime lover, saloon singer Chihuahua (Linda Darnell). While Ford intimates a vision of a better life – Shakespeare, community, comfort, the kinship of men, the love of a woman – Tombstone remains under a constant shadow of violence, allowing nothing good to flourish. Thus, when the lovely Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs), a living embodiment of the life Doc has tried desperately to outrun, reaches him after a long search, he tells her that the man she once loved ‘is already dead’ and that ‘everything was buried with him, his dreams, his ambitions, even his love’ for her. However, Clementine’s arrival spells change, not only for Doc and the jealous Chihuahua, but also for Wyatt.
There are, in numerous Ford films, magnificent images which communicate wordless yearning: Angharad’s (Maureen O’Hara) wedding veil floating in the wind in How Green Was My Valley (1941); her true love watching from a distance as a carriage pulls her away; the violent, passionate first kiss in The Quiet Man (1952); the later, tender embrace as the lovers (John Wayne and O’Hara again) find shelter from a storm. In My Darling Clementine, there’s Wyatt and Clementine walking arm-in-arm to the newly dedicated church site. Experiencing deep feelings for what is likely the first time, Wyatt is endearingly ungainly. He has transformed himself for her – the man who only days ago refused to bathe now smells of ‘desert flowers’, we are told.
In comparison to the well-respected Clementine, Chihuahua is cruelly treated and othered – insulted, ignored and, most indecently, dunked in a horse trough – especially by Wyatt, whose racism is neither endorsed nor challenged by the film. However, her devotion is no less sincere or less touching than Clementine’s or Wyatt’s. Perhaps the film’s greatest sorrow comes from Doc’s taking her for granted until it is too late.
A post-war Western, My Darling Clementine has a brutal edge that first becomes apparent with Ford’s inclusion of the ambush and murder of Wyatt’s youngest brother, James (Don Garner). In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, Wyatt sits beside James’ makeshift grave. He reads the birth and death years aloud. ‘Eighteen years,’ he says. ‘Didn’t get much of a chance did you James.’ Ford does not linger in moments of violence; in fact on several occasions in the film he cuts away just when the action is getting started, but he does sit with the aftermath: young people lost while their elders live to suffer the shame of that profound waste.
Towards the end of the film, there’s a wonderful exchange between the infatuated Wyatt and the barkeep of Tombstone. ‘Mac, you ever been in love?’, Wyatt asks. ‘No, I’ve been a bartender all me life’, Mac responds. Wyatt finishes his drink, unaware of the terrible thing that awaits him just outside the bar – a tragedy which will lead him to the most famous shootout in history and away from Clementine.
The question remains: in such a world, can love be enough? The final encounter between Wyatt and Clementine is sweetly hopeful, but there is doubt as to whether they will meet again. The film’s repeated theme (‘you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine’) seems to suggest the window of opportunity may have closed forever.
Notes
- Gaylyn Studlar & M. Bernstein, ‘Introduction’, in Studlar. & Bernstein (ed.), John Ford Made Westerns: Filming the Legend in the Sound Era. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2001, pp. 1-2.
- André Bazin ‘The Evolution of the Western’, in What Is Cinema?: Vol. II. Trans. by H. Gray, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1971, p. 149.
- Studlar & Bernstein, p. 4.
- Peter Bogdanovich, John Ford, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967, p. 85.
THE RESTORATION
Source: DCP Disney, Australia
4K digital restoration of the theatrical release version of the film, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Director: John Ford; Production Company: Twentieth Century Fox; Producer: Samuel G Engel; Script: Samuel G Engel, Winston Miller, Sam Hellman based on Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931) by Stuart N Lake; Photography: Joseph MacDonald; Editor: Dorothy Spencer; Art Direction: James Basevi, Lyle Wheeler; Set Decoration: Thomas Little; Costume Design: René Hubert; Music: Cyril Mockridge
Cast: Henry Fonda (Wyatt Earp), Linda Darnell (Chihuahua), Victor Mature (Doc Holliday), Cathy Downs (Clementine Carter), Walter Brennan (Old Man Clanton), Tim Holt (Virgil Earp), Ward Bond (Morgan Earp), Alan Mowbray (Granville Thorndyke), John Ireland (Billy Clanton)
USA | 1946 | 98 Mins | 4K DCP | B&W| English | PG
4K digital restoration of the theatrical release version of the film, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Director: John Ford; Production Company: Twentieth Century Fox; Producer: Samuel G Engel; Script: Samuel G Engel, Winston Miller, Sam Hellman based on Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931) by Stuart N Lake; Photography: Joseph MacDonald; Editor: Dorothy Spencer; Art Direction: James Basevi, Lyle Wheeler; Set Decoration: Thomas Little; Costume Design: René Hubert; Music: Cyril Mockridge
Cast: Henry Fonda (Wyatt Earp), Linda Darnell (Chihuahua), Victor Mature (Doc Holliday), Cathy Downs (Clementine Carter), Walter Brennan (Old Man Clanton), Tim Holt (Virgil Earp), Ward Bond (Morgan Earp), Alan Mowbray (Granville Thorndyke), John Ireland (Billy Clanton)
USA | 1946 | 98 Mins | 4K DCP | B&W| English | PG