Movie Notes: Cimarron

Cimarron (1931)
Director: Wesley Ruggles

At some point in the distant past, I put most of the best picture winning movies from the past onto our Netflix queue.  Some were, of course, not available, but Cimarron was one of the earliest available that we hadn't seen.

It hasn't aged well.  It's incredibly overwrought for a talkie.  Richard Dix acts as if it was theater or a silent film, and simply annoys.  Also, he's a jerk.  Irene Dunne is OK, except that she hasn't much personality.  Plus, her husband leaves her without a word of explanation for years a couple of times in order to have adventures, and she accepts him back willingly and without so much as a discussion of his obvious deeply held problems.

It's racist in the normal old Hollywood way, with a badly stereotyped black boy, but we have to balance that against the fact that it was far ahead of its time in its dealing with Native American troubles.

We really didn't enjoy it.

Movie Notes: Stagecoach

Stagecoach (1939)
Director: John Ford

My four-star first impression of Stagecoach upon my first viewing was that it was a very fun western.  I now think it's something more than that.

Stagecoach is a film, like Casablanca, that exploits stereotypes as archetypes to address real issues at a fundamental moral level as popular entertainment.  This is about as good as Hollywood ever got during its Golden Age to making art -- which is to say Hollywood could do quite well!  It's broad-stroke art, with little enough nuance, but a great deal of depth communicated via short-hand.  Ford communicates so much with a camera that, as a crash course in the art of film in preparing to make Citizen Kane, Orson Welles is said to have watched Stagecoach over forty times.

It's so beautiful.  Monument Valley crowned with majestic clouds.  Horses, riders, and stagecoaches rolling along at break-neck speeds.  Dallas exiting the low adobe house through a long hallway, the encroaching feeling of civilization that communicates.  This is film as film!

The stereotypes, and perhaps more interesting, their relationships, are compelling.  The City, the Desert, and Man; Civilization, the Savage, and the Outcast.  Inside the stagecoach, the characters get to know each other, confront their own selves, and make difficult choices.  Most of them will have a chance at redemption, but only two will truly escape themselves and the "blessings of civilization."