Blog Archives
Criterion: My Darling Clementine
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, JOHN FORD, 1946
The best genre films are those that touch on deeper themes, and John Ford was an expert at using the Western as a way of examining his present. My Darling Clementine is considered by many to be among the best of his films, and I’ve seen it mentioned as best of the genre. While it maintains many of the genre conventions that are found in his and other films, it is as much a statement about the horrific war that had just completed and Ford had seen, and the relieving peace and prosperity with his return.
Walter Brennan’s Clanton gang begins the film by welcoming Wyatt Earp and pointing him towards Tombstone, which we discover soon enough is just a ruse for them to rustle his cattle and kill one of his brothers in the process. Despite their benevolent first appearance, they are the embodiment of evil and completely merciless. In a later scene, Pa Clanton is unhappy with his sons when they create a ruckus in a saloon. At first we think he is angry because of their behavior, when in reality it is for pulling out their gun and not killing their opponent. This is the nature of the enemy, pure evil, and there is not a redeemable quality within them. This portrayal is not dissimilar to Nazi Germany, and that is probably no coincidence. Ford had seen the evils of total war firsthand.
Ford makes good use of darkness versus light in order to isolate his themes. Most of the beginning takes place at night, and Ford uses light and shadows to frame his shots, similarly to how he did with Gregg Toland on The Grapes of Wrath. When he discovers the misdeeds of his enemy, night is not only dark, but a torrential rain falls. Many of the confrontional scenes take place at night and oftentimes the characters are obscured by shadows and speak openly of death, especially Doc Holliday who is obsessed with the subject and his own mortality. This could again be yet another statement about the horrors of war.
However, the battle between the Clantons is not the only storyline in the film. After establishing Earp’s motivation of revenge and getting him situated as the town Marshall, the title character of Clementine appears on the screen. She is a former paramour of Holliday’s when he was a different person from a different world. She is grace incarnate, and she is out of place in the tumultuous town of Tombstone. With her comes peace and progress. Not long after her arrival, the foundation of a church is laid and later a school will be coming. She is not coincidentally filmed almost exclusively during the daytime, which is lit so brightly that it is the antithesis to the scenes that square off the the Earps versus the Clantons. On top of this, aside from her role as a nurse towards the end of the film, her storyline and the battle with the Clantons does not intersect. When she interacts with Earp, there is almost no sense that anything amiss is happening.
When Clementine is present, things are calm, peaceful. One of my favorite scenes is when Earp spots her getting out of the coach. He is calm yet is obviously stricken by her. Aside from the ending, the daylight scenes are total peace. Earp seems unaffected during these scenes by his feud with the Clantons. In another terrific scene, he does a little balancing trick with a support beam while leaning his chair back, seemingly without a care in the world. In the daytime, Tombstone is a nice, relaxing place to be.
The presence of Clementine is somewhat perplexing, and we cannot really tell what Ford intended. This disc includes two versions, the one cut by Zanuck and the rough cut put together by Ford. The latter is not a director’s cut by any stretch, but it gives a better idea of how this relationship was supposed to play out. The changes that Zanuck made were sometimes slight, like using the score more forcefully in Earp and Clementine scenes. There were other, bolder changes, like the ending that required a re-shoot to give the relationship a more romantic touch. In Ford’s version, the relationship between Clementine and Earp is of mutual, platonic interest, with an ambiguous hint of a possible romance. Earp is reticent to show pursuit because of his friendship with Holliday, and it is almost out of character for a man with his set of values to be so forward in the final scene. The platonic relationship, on the other hand, keeps him from committing between war and peace. He is playing both sides.
The final battle at the OK Corral is a thing of beauty. It is John Ford doing action at his best. He builds to it with the Earp party slowly and deviously approaching, using decoys through the center of town, photographed in gorgeous long shots that show the monolithic structures of Monument Valley in the background. The shoot out is quicker yet more satisfying because of the pacing to get to it, and the dust storm that he uses is another move of cinematic, action genius.
Film Rating: 8/10
Supplements:
Comparison of versions: This was terrific. This is one of the movies, like with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, where the consensus is that the shorter version is the better version. This lengthy comparison shows many of the key differences between the two, so you really don’t have to watch the longer version to understand it (although I probably will someday). As I noted above, a lot of the changes had to do with the Clementine scenes, and Zanuck also cut some of the light comedy. There were some cuts that I agreed with, and most likely Ford did too, and some I didn’t like as much, like the ending.
Video Essay: Often these are my favorite supplements on a Criterion disc, and this was good, but it was a little short. That said, Tag Gallagher is an often cited, leading western genre scholar, and he shows a lot of things that I might have missed. He touches on the war motif, although I took it a little further in my reading of the film.
Bandit’s Wager: This was a mediocre 1916 short directed by John’s brother Francis that stars Francis in the lead and John in the supporting role. While the film is nothing to write home about, it does give a glimpse of what western elements John would use in his later films.
1963 news report about Tombstone and 1975 report on Monument Valley : I found that I appreciated the historical featurettes the most of supplements. They are short and sweet. They show that Ford’s version of the Earp legend was mostly fiction and not shot anywhere near the real location.. Tombstone has fascinated people because of the legend and has been portrayed in many films before and since Clementine. Monument Valley, on the other hand, was a favorite of Ford’s because it provided the aesthetical beauty of the outdoor shots. Whether it was realistic or not, the location and the legend added to the film.
Audio Commentary: I’ve heard better and I’ve heard worse. Joseph McBride is a John Ford biographer and has worked in the industry. He discusses many of the things that are touched on in the other supplements, such as the historical accuracy, the differences in versions, and the war motif. He also talks about Ford’s methods, how he worked with actors, and how he got along with Zanuck. There were numerous interesting anecdotes even if the commentary wasn’t the most compelling.
Criterion Rating: 9/10
Criterion: La Promesse
LA PROMESSE, LUC DARDENNE AND JEAN-PIERRE DARDENNE, 1996
A friend once told me that once you’ve seen a Dardennes film, you’ve seen them all. He didn’t mean this in a flattering sense, but as an argument against their stature as modern auteurs. I’ve seen enough of their work to see what he means. They clearly have found a comfortable formula, a distinctive style, and a certain amount of predictability. For instance, I correctly predicted what would happen in the final scene about midway through the movie. Just like with the Classical Hollywood theory of “regulated differences,” it is the texture, nuances, and execution that makes their work stand apart.
La Promesse is the first significant example of what would become their filmmaking and thematic style. It is filmed in documentary style, with hand-held cameras, no musical score, and in unflattering, dirty locations. They are more existential filmmakers, highlighting how people live in squalor and by what means they go about trying to survive.
It is set in the industrial Belgian town of Serainge. The lead characters are working class, trying to scrape together a living by exploiting the illegal immigrants into the country. The father, Roger, is the most crooked. He is a terrible father and borderline evil, although even he has enough nuance to keep him from being a completely flat character.
The lead character is his son Igor. He is introduced as a thief and a liar, just like his father, as he blatantly steals an elderly lady’s purse with her pension money, and then tries to help her retrace her steps to find it. He then lies to his boss about going to the restroom, takes the money, and hides the pocketbook by burying it in the backyard. This would foreshadow another illicit burial that would take place later in the film.
The child is the moral center, and for much of the film has few redeeming qualities. His father is responsible for many of his faults, as he is trying to mentor his son to become street smart, savvy, and unscrupulous – basically to become another version of himself. His father is overbearing, sometimes commanding and violent, and Igor rebels by going behind his father’s back and breaking his wishes. He is still not an upstanding citizen, but is a saint compared to his father.
Even though the father is dominant and Igor is subordinate to his whims, he often tries to act as if they are peers. They sing songs together. There is one scene where Roger tries to playfully tickle his son. In his own warped way, he loves his son and is trying to ensure that, like him, his son will be able to play the system to his advantage. He even gives him tattoos and talks to him about sex. Their relationship is not like the traditional father and son. Roger wants them to be more like working peers, yet he still maintains absolute control in the relationship.
The child’s lack of morality is challenged by a dying man’s last words, and his own guilt for doing something that cannot be rationalized as being right, regardless of what his dad says. He feels a kinship with the widow, who is also subordinate and being kept in the dark from the real world. He does not act ethically towards the widow. The opposite is mostly true as he continually lies to keep her from threatening his and his father’s situation, but he gradually takes an interest in their well being which is absolutely wrong according to the values of his father. His father considers immigrants as subhuman.
However predictable, I will not reveal the ending, but I will say that I think they pulled it off perfectly. This is a penetrating character study and I understand why it launched the careers of arguably the top European filmmakers today.
Film Rating: 8/10
Supplements:
Dardenes interview: For Criterion interviews, this was quite well done. A lot of the credit goes to Scott Foundas, who asks terrific questions. The Dardennes prove to be excellent interview subjects as they talk openly about their craft. They value their independence and vision in production above all else, and they say that everything revolves around what they want. This is a type of freedom that is seldom enjoyed by any producer/writer/director team, but it absolutely works.
There are numerous interesting tidbits from the interview, a couple of which I found notable. One is that they said they tend to do about 7-8 takes because the actors grow tired and more spontaneous, and their best work is often the later takes. Bresson felt the same way, although he would do even more takes and would completely break down his actors. The Dardennes stop short of using them as models, but they get the most out of their performance. The fact that they keep a solid stable of actors, unlike Bresson, shows that the actors respond well to their methods. Another interesting thing is that they reject a lot of actor ideas about their character. One in particular is that they don’t allow actors to choose their costumes because that puts them in a comfort zone.
Interviews with Actors: La Promesse was basically the major film debut for both Jérémie Renier and Olivier Gourmet. They describe the process. The audition was more like a job interview, which they clearly passed. They became good friends on the set and Gourmet mentored Renier, which also came out in the Dardennes interview. This helped create the father and son bond as it was portrayed on the screen. They elaborated more on the process, that one scene was short per day and that they shoot chronologically, so that they are able to stick with the character. That makes the performance easier in a sense, but it can also make it evolve differently. It gives them some freedom, which they seem to appreciate.
Criterion Rating: 8.5
Criterion Close-Up 