***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** There's not much that can be said about this early-talkie era flick. (I'm hesitant to call "Cimarron" a "film", because I feel that the word is too esoteric.) But what can be said about it...mainly speaks against it.

Take, for example, the overuse of portraying Indians as bad folk. In one scene, the little boy of the flick's lead character--an overbearing and over-ambitious family man who wants to set up a newspaper business-- is playing just outside of his father's office. An Indian kneels down in front of the child. "Hello," the boy says to the Indian, in a very polite manner. The Indian gives him a feather, stands up and walks off.

Yancy Cravat, Jr. excitedly runs inside the office. "Mommy! Mommy!" he shouts, holding up the Indian's gift. "Look what an Indian gave me!"

"How many times do I have to tell you!" she snaps at the boy. "You aren't ever to talk to those filthy Indians!"

Yancy Yates, Sr. (Richard Dix) comes across as a man who speaks with a forked tongue. At the start of the story, he seems to have a definite plan for giving his family a better life. But, we soon enough discover, he's no great over achiever--much less a totally good-moral minded man. His slave child, Isaiah (Eugene Jackson) is one tell-tale sign of this.

Upon his family's first trek to a Sunday morning church service--one

at which, curiously enough, Cravat is to give the sermon--Isaiah tries to come along, dressed up like Cravat, long-tail suit, holster, gun and all. Cravat tells him to go home. "Ya' all doesn't want me to come with ya' ta church?" Isaiah says with a pout.

"No!" Cravat corrects him, patting him on the shoulder. "You don't understand! I want you to stay and guard the house. And if anyone at all comes along... you shoot him dead!"

The characters--not to mention the actors--in "Cimarron" couldn't

act their way out of burlap sacks, despite their obvious efforts. And nothing in the script was any too commendable, either. (Granted: the incomparable Edna May Oliver--notorious for playing the Red Queen in Alice In Wonderland, also released in 1931--actually manages to look good, pulling off her portrayal of a pompous old woman, which is what she's also been best-known for.) But, aside from that, well...

Yancy Yates isn't popular in town from the first week he arrives,

and one of the outlaws decides to shoot Cravat's white hat off as he and his wife (Irene Dunne) are casually walking by. Despite her anger with the man who fired the bullet, Cravat just takes it completely in stride.

Not only was this story not "shooting for realism", but it was very

lacking in several key areas: e.g., Cravat's newspaper isn't ever really seen. (Bulletins and posters, yes--but not any newspaper.)

Perhaps strangest of all, though: this is set in a small town in

Kansas. Yet, for some reason or other, Yancy Cravat is dead-set on

calling his paper "The Oklahoma Wig-Wam."

Really good westerns have always been very few and far between--the only exceptions being Clint Eastwood's so-called "spaghetti westerns" of the late '60s to early '70s. Cliche westerns, on the other hand, are a dime-a-dozen.

If you like cliche westerns, "Cimarron" will do you proud--but, as for me... it did me embarrassment.



Sentiment: negative