by Chris Marshall:
Wow, where to start with this one? Most likely, modern
viewers will be too preoccupied with the casual and gratuitous racism pervading
the film to see anything else. That was certainly my first reaction. I stopped
watching at the halfway point[1]
the first night I turned it on, and I told my roommate the next day that I
still needed to finish my “racist Western.”
To be fair, I’m not sure if the film itself was racist or
just the characters within it. It’s an important difference, of course, and
there was evidence of at least some
progressive views on race. But it’s hard to take the hero’s pro-Indian rights
stance seriously when he makes “black people sure do like watermelon” jokes to
his young black servant, or when his wife tells their son to stay away from the
“dirty, filthy savages” (aka Osage Indians).
But still, Yancey Cravat, owner and editor of the Oklahoma
Wigwam, a fledgling newspaper in pre-statehood Oklahoma, makes a passionate
case for Native American citizenship and voting rights, and this is a key plot
point in the film. His wife, Sabra, protests, fearing he will become a social
pariah, but he insists, arguing that she will look back at the article with
pride. Fast forward 27 years, and Sabra is at her desk, looking back at the article
with pride. In the meantime, their son Cimarron, the film’s namesake, had
married the Osage chief’s daughter.
 |
| So, so racist. |
I really am curious about the director’s intentions. Despite
his embarrassingly stereotypical portrayal, Isaiah, the black servant, dies a hero’s
death protecting Cimarron during a gunfight. But after being shot, his cries
for help are completely ignored while he lies in the street. Similarly, nobody
(except Yancey) lifts a finger when bandits begin harassing Sol Levy, the
town’s only Jewish resident. But the implicit meaning is unclear; it’s
impossible to tell if this is a criticism toward those who do nothing or a way
to build up Yancey’s heroism.
I’ve spent the first few paragraphs only discussing the
racial angle because sadly, it’s pretty much the only interesting element of
the film. Otherwise, we just spent two hours with some extremely unlikeable
main characters. Yancey, the supposed hero of the West, is a former outlaw
who’s killed at least eight men, based on the notches on his gun, and he’s
willing to abandon his family at the drop of a hat. By my count, his
whereabouts are unknown for 34 of the 40 years covered in the movie. The first
time he left, he didn’t come back for five years, but everybody just kind of
welcomed him back with open arms. He also bought his son a pony, which always
helps the mending process.
The women of the family are portrayed as petty and shrewish,
though at least Sabra grows to become a wise and distinguished state senator.
Virtually every one of the daughter’s lines have something to do with how poor
the family is or how ugly her clothes are. The son was not shown to have any
crippling moral development problems, but his screen time was devoted
exclusively to being in danger/marrying Indian girls against his mother’s and
sister’s wishes.
 |
| Irene Dunne and Richard Dix |
Cimarron,
according to most accounts I’ve read, is one of the weaker Best Picture winners,
so it should come as no surprise that it’s not of a higher caliber. Its large
budget allowed for impressive technical feats and an unusually broad span of
years to cover (from 1889 to 1929). This would be the last Western to win Best
Picture until 1990, and it’s more than a little disappointing that that
distinction would belong to one of the lesser examples of the genre.
[1]
Because I had somewhere to be, not because I was disgusted with the movie.
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