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| The Oklahoma Land Rush - stunningly recreated with an army of extras. |
Release Date: Jan. 26, 1931. Running Time: 124 minutes. Screenplay: Howard Estabrook, Louis Sarecky. Based on the novel by: Edna Ferber. Producer: William LeBaron, Louis Sarecky. Director: Wesley Ruggles.
THE PLOT:
Though he fails to stake a claim during the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, newspaperman Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) still insists on moving his wife, Sabra (Irene Dunne), and infant son, Cim - short for "Cimarron" - out to the boomtown of Osage. He establishes a newspaper, The Oklahoma Wigwam, declaring that he will print "all the news all the time - knowing no law except the law of God and the government of the United States!"
Over the years that follow, the Cravat family will face many challenges, from the physical threats posed by ruffians and outlaws to the subtler yet more insidious ones of societal pressure and corruption. But the greatest challenge proves to be Yancey's own wanderlust, as he proves unable to resist the urge to be present at new frontiers - even if it means leaving his family to struggle on without him...
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| Yancey Cravat basks smugly in his own righteousness. |
THE PROBLEM OF YANCEY CRAVAT:
Most of this film's failings fall squarely on the shoulders of its ludicrously-named lead character and performance. Star Richard Dix appears to believe he is performing in a stage play. In an auditorium with particularly poor acoustics, thus requiring him to boom every one of his lines in a horrible, fake "deep voice." At one point, when acting as an attorney to defend prostitute Dixie Lee (Estelle Taylor), Yancey berates the prosecutor for being so over-the-top that he is "able to strut sitting down." The prosecutor is genuinely hammy... but Yancey proceeds to outdo him with a display of unbridled prized boar that would make William Shatner turn green with envy!
The character is even harder to take than the actor. Yancey is a man who demonstrates his moral fortitude through declaratives. Around the film's midpoint, he guns down an outlaw. When informed that the banks have a tremendous bounty on the man's head, he (loudly) insists on refusing all reward. Never mind that his wife has enumerated ways that money can help their family. Even if he doesn't want to directly benefit, he could put that money into the improvement of the town, or into some sort of legal fund for the Native Americans he (loudly) presents himself as championing. Instead, his magnanimous gesture... ensures the money stays with the banks, meaning that nothing good at all will result.
"What a man!" the film wants us to cry. I'm left rolling my eyes at the spectacle of a braggart who is more concerned with being seen to do good than with actually doing it. If the film had the presence of mind to intentionally portray him as such, then something interesting may have resulted. But the movie celebrates Yancey at every turn, including all but literally canonizing him in its final shot.
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| Yancey's wife (Irene Dunne) is left to deal with societal pressures. |
THE (OFFSCREEN) TRANSFORMATION OF SABRA CRAVAT:
Irene Dunne's Sabra Cravat ends up feeling more like the film's real lead. As opposed to the unchanging rock that is Yancey, Sabra actually has an arc. A product of an overprotective aristocratic family, when she first arrives in Osage she is appalled at the rough and primitive town. We see her gradually settle into the community, helping to form the first women's club. Later, when Yancey heroically pops off for several years, she takes over the running of his newspaper, expanding its success by transforming it into a daily.
Throughout the film, Sabra displays bigoted attitudes against Native Americans. By the end, she has changed her views (offscreen, during a convenient ten-year narrative gap), and has also achieved success as a political figure. One character even whispers in her ear how impressive it is that she has accomplished all this "entirely alone," brushing aside the cover that Yancey is simply "out of town."
The entire film would be more effective if told from Sabra's viewpoint, following her struggles to keep the family life and family business going and actually portraying her transformation. But at least by showing her as a flawed human being who overcomes her failings, she elicits more empathy than the sainted Yancey does. It helps that Irene Dunne gives a genuinely good, largely understated performance.
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| Notorious outlaw "The Kid" (William Collier Jr.), just one of many challenges the Cravats face. |
THOUGHTS:
1931 was a terrific year at the movies. This was the year in which: Bela Lugosi provoked equal parts lust and terror in Dracula; James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson made their names as great movie gangsters in The Public Enemy and Little Caesar; and Charles Chaplin delivered, in my opinion, his crowning cinematic achievement with City Lights.
Setting a longstanding precedent, the Academy failed to so much as nominate any of these all-time classics, instead awarding its most prestigious Oscar to Cimarron... a well-made but largely only workmanlike film that's remembered for two things: Its still-breathtaking Oklahoma Land Rush opening, and its inclusion of embarrassing racial stereotypes.
THE GOOD:
There's no denying that the movie opens well. The Oklahoma Land Rush sequence is a great piece of cinema, with its army of extras on horses, wagons, and even bicycles racing to claim patches of land. Apparently, every shot was meticulously planned, and the result remains spectacular. Nor does the scene overstay its welcome. Today, such a set piece would run twenty minutes, minimum; in this film, it lasts less than ten minutes - long enough to grab the viewer with the excitement, not so long that the spectacle becomes numbing in its own right.
Nothing else lives up to that opening, but there are still some fine moments. The film does well in showing the passage of time through establishing shots of Osage. When Yancey first brings his family to the newborn community, it looks more like an extended camp than a town. As we fade in on new time periods, tents turn into buildings, horses are replaced by wagons, wagons are replaced by cars, and finally buildings are replaced by skyscrapers. If one were to put the establishing shots for 1890 side-by-side with the final such shot, in 1929, you would be hard-pressed to believe these represented the same location.
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| Yancey engaged in his favorite activity: showing off to a crowd. |
THE BAD:
Cimarron doesn't have a story so much as a series of episodes, to the point where this could just about be repackaged as a television series. There's the Land Rush episode; the episode where Yancey investigates a murder, ending in a shootout; the episode with the outlaws, ending in another shootout but this time with a casualty; the courtroom drama (Yancey acts as defense attorney, naturally); the political episode (Yancey writes an editorial defending Native American rights); and the finale.
Some of these episodes do manage to entertain, both in spite of and because of Richard Dix's hammy performance. But one thing never leads into the next, so no real momentum ever builds. This doesn't need to be a bad thing; creating a full portrait of a setting and characters through a series of vignettes is a legitimate storytelling approach. But we never see the characters change. When they change, it always happens in the gaps, between episodes, leaving it all feeling annoyingly disconnected.
The problem with Cimarron isn't most represented by attitudes or acting styles that have aged poorly. I've looked past as bad, if not worse, to find merit in other old movies. The problem with Cimarron is that, once you look past products of a different time and mindset, you're left with... some generic incidents that are intermittently entertaining (and I will say that I mostly wasn't bored), but that ultimately don't add up to much of anything at all.
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| Um... I know it was 1931, but still... |
THE UGLY:
It is virtually impossible to discuss Cimarron today without touching on the treatment of minority characters. In a story that superficially argues against bigotry, every minority is represented in a way that is either condescending (as with the Native American characters) or outright uncomfortable.
The worst example is Isaiah (Eugene Jackson), a young black servant in Sabra's family home. He is literally introduced hanging on the chandelier during the family's dinnertime, fanning them while gaping at the conversation below. He "comically" loses his grip and collapses onto the food, then gets on his knees and begs Yancey to let him come to Osage. When he stows away, neither Yancey nor Sabra consider taking him back to his family, even though he's a child. Yancey just grins that Isaiah shows "loyalty money can't buy." Amazingly, this represents an improvement over the book, which takes pains to describe Isaiah as having "simian" features.
Native Americans escape with slightly more dignity, but one suspects only because they are talked about more than seen. There's a gathering of extras in the church scene, and Yancey denounces the way white men have stolen land and property from them. But the only actual Native American character is Ruby (Gloria Vonic/Dolores Brown), who across two actresses gets about that many lines of dialogue, making her a prop to characterize the central family more than a character with actual agency.
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| Yancey and Sabra, at the start of their adventure. |
OVERALL:
Cimarron is often considered one of the worst Best Picture winners. I'd rate it above The Broadway Melody. It's well-made on a technical level, with a particularly stunning opening sequence. But its episodic narrative, while intermittently entertaining, doesn't add up to much; its portrayal of minorities is problematic in the way that stepping on a land mine would be; and its insistence on celebrating a central character who varies between being insufferable and incoherent seems all but calculated to prevent audience engagement.
It was popular in its day. However, Land Rush sequence aside, the only reason I can fathom to watch this now is curiosity.
Overall Rating: 4/10.
Outstanding Production: 1929/1930 - All Quiet on the Western Front
Outstanding Production: 1931/1932 - Grand Hotel
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