EveryBestPicture.com revisits this Oscar Best Picture winner
The story of Cimarron follows all-round awesome guy -lawyer, gent, sure shot who everyone looks up to in his journey west (“I know my bible cover to cover”). He brings along his initially reluctant wife (Sabra), adorable 5 year old son and stowaway home help, Isaiah. They help establish the town of Osage, seeing off Bandits and lowlifes as they go. This is a generous synopsis. The purpose of this blog is to assess films on the basis that a viewer, in our current age, may want to see it. What will they make of the very best that Hollywood had to offer in 1932? This, a western made in living memory of the time it was set (1889) dealt with “white settlement” of “Indian Oklahoma”. The introduction immediately had my back up. Some other historical films have been successful in lulling me into looking past political incorrectness, but just 2 minutes and 40 seconds in I am already resenting the use of naïve, lazy stereotypes to tell this story. It just took grinning shoeshine boy Isaiah (yes, he is black) and the telling of the happy opening up of a “new empire” at the expense of the ‘Indians’. This kind of film harks back to the origins of cinema: the fairground, where some would get a glimpse of the 'exotic'. And that is where it belongs, among the sawdust and elephant dung.
On seeing watermelons: "Yes Sir, I sure glad I came ta OaklyHomey"
Twenty minutes in and Isaiah is admiring watermelons, 30 minutes in and the ‘civilised’ hero, Yancey Cravat, is mocking a gentle, hard working man with a speech impediment for laughs with a little help from his wife, who later scolds her son for talking to “those dirty, filthy Indians”. As much as these may well have been attitudes shared by many white colonists, it does not make it any easier to stomach. The distinct lack of quality in production does it no favours and you end up with no reason to forgive it anything. Even if you wanted to. Which I don’t. Bafflingly, the man who himself tried to stake a claim on acres of Indian land in the opening scenes announces the Cherokee are “too smart to put anything in the contribution box of a race that has robbed him of his birth right”. Which land are you staking a claim to, Yancey? It can’t possibly be the moral high ground, can it? If so, you missed by a mile. But then, this is a man who shoots a mans dead while giving the towns first sermon from the pulpit and considered a hero for doing so.
Yancey later declares how deeply unfair the government have been in buying up more land from the Cherokee at a paltry $1.40 an acre and in the same breath declaring he wants to head off and stake his own claim on this new handout of Indian Land to white folk. Make up your minds, film folk, is this land grab good or bad? And so, our hero departs. He leaves Sabra, son and daughter and won't be seen for another 5 years: they are left to fend for themselves. His wife pines for him and converses with Levy the Jewish tailor (is that racial stereotype bingo yet?) who declares Yancey to be one of the men whose shoulders America is built upon. She does not disagree and continues to long for his return. Some hero this Yancey is turning out to be. Cimarron declares to know right from wrong, but just can’t resist appealing to the base instincts of cinema goers and assuming their ignorance. The makers can’t seem to decide which side of the fence they are on (or perhaps just don’t care, or understand) and so take up positions on both. As well as on it. All this added to slapdash storytelling leads to another movie-going experience much like The Broadway Melody: full of spectacle and very little substance. Having seen all of these tropes before, we, the modern viewers, are bored. I cannot believe that this could have been considered on a par with All Quiet on the Western Front which won the same award just one year earlier. The film tails off summing up the next 20 glorious years. Yancey follows his wanderlust and goes walkies again, the cast age, their town becomes a city and Sabra runs for governor. Will he return? Do I care? Everyone seems to be getting on just fine without him, if not better. Finally, his last appearance sees him commit one last act of bravery, saving hundreds of lives in a sacrificial act at an oil field. Despite a last bid by the film to use blunt force exposition to explain what a hero he was, the idea that a man who shirked responsibility so consistently throughout his life be someone to emulate and worship falls flat. Much like the film. |
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AuthorPablo Griffiths is a man with a passion for many things. He has recently taken an interest in writing about film, and himself in the third person. |