Last week a commenter asked me to compare this 1947 classic with William Wyler's The Westerner (1940), primarily because both films feature Walter Brennan, who I eviscerated in Wyler's film, but for whom I have nothing but praise in this John Ford masterpiece.
I promised that commenter I'd rewatch MDC, but little did I know that I'd do so today, the 145th anniversary of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. MDC has very little to do with the actual events of the gunfight and is a very a-historical film, just like The Westerner is nominally about Judge Roy Bean but has very little to do with the Judge's actual life or character. History is a mere launching point for both movies and neither should be judged on how closely or loosely they stick to the facts. We should judge them as stories that engage, or, dare I say it, as works of art.
My Darling Clementine is, in fact, a work of art. Nearly every frame is a black and white painting, a work of composition so precise that they could all hang in galleries. Upon this rewatch, I was most struck by how beautiful a film this is. The Searchers has color and Vistavision, two unfair handicaps that MDC lacks, but this may be the better shot film. Close-ups, twofers, wide-pans... this is a gorgeous, stunningly photographed movie.
And it's very much a modern Western. Gritty, realistic, naturalistic... terse, moody. It seemed to me to be proto-Leone as much as anything. And this is where it differs so much from the pre-modern The Westerner. MDC knows what evil is, The Westerner does not. That's because in between the two films, WWII has happened and it is Walter Brennan's two characters that embodies that difference more than anything else.
In The Westerner, he plays Judge Roy Bean, a daffy, avaricious bully who kills people, yes, but is not above being a skylarking side-kick to his scampish buddy Gary Cooper. Everything's all in good fun, he's not really bad even when he's bad, and isn't everyone enjoying the romp? He's a mere caricature of villain in a 1930's oater in The Westerner, not a real person.
But seven years later, it's a different world when MDC was made. On screen, the Civil War has happened, Wyatt Earp has already been a marshal in Dodge City, he's been to Deadwood, he knows evil when he sees it and he knows when you encounter it, you don't mess around it. Just like in real life, WW2 had happened, Ford and Fonda had been to war, the world knew Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini. Brennan's Pa Clanton is direct, venal, brutal in this movie... a snake not to be trifled with. It's a much smaller role than that of his Oscar winning Roy Bean, and a superior performance. Brennan is superb here, and nauseating in his typical "Stumpy" mugging in the earlier film.
My Darling Clementine works today, just as well as it worked in 1947. It still brought tears to my eyes and because it tells its own story of love and loss and simple things so well, I did not fault it for straying from history one bit. I'm tempted to re-elevate it back into my personal top ten Westerns of all time if only I can find another one to toss out.