Fantastic!

Best movie ever!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Blistering performances.

I have to say that this Academy Award Best Picture winner dates badly, especially the acting. I know that The Front Page (1931) was also nominated for Best Picture that year, a film I thought was far superior to this one. It is, however, clearly better than another of the nominees I've seen - Trader Horn (1931), although that one did provide quite an educational adventure (into Africa), for the time.This film has several old stereotypes (racial, and others) in it, which is understandable for the time it was filmed. But, other than that, it feels very long and, in the end, unfulfilling. It is a Western which focuses on the settling of Oklahoma through statehood. There are several contrived scenes which cheapen what I think could have been a better film. There were perhaps two scenes worth seeing: the land rush (which has since been done better, even in the 30's e.g. The Oklahoma Kid (1939)) and a church revival held in the largest building in town (the gambling house!).Initially, I thought to myself "well, it was made in 1931, what did you expect?". And then I remembered several other well made horror and gangster films from that same year. So, who knows? Perhaps I just don't have a good feel for the pulse of America in 1931. It's clear to me that it's one of the most disappointing of the Best Picture Oscar winners (and that's saying a lot).It does, however, have Edna May Oliver (always a plus). The film also won for Art Direction and Writing. Its director (Wesley Ruggles) and two leads, Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, were also nominated as was the Cinematography. For Dunne, it would be the first of her five (unrewarded) Best Actress nominations (a crime that she never received one!); for Dix, it would be his only Academy recognition. Based on the Edna Ferber novel, and remade in Technicolor as Cimarron (1960) with Glenn Ford (among others).

This movie is easily the worst Best Picture Oscar winner. It won in 1931, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it was a talkie, and talking pictures were still fairly novel. Maybe because of how epic its historic time scale is. Maybe because it tells a story of the exploration and settlement of America that sparked something in 1930s audiences.Who knows. All I can say is that by modern standards it is incredibly bad.This is not because of the cinematic technology or anything like that. It has a dull story with hammy acting. Worst of all, it is blatantly racist. The black kid is merely there as a figure of fun, something to be made mocked and made fun of. Interesting that while large parts of the movie are very politically correct in the treatment and rights of native Americans, they undo all this good by portraying African-Americans so badly.I had already watched the 1960 remake before watching this, and that wasn't that great either. It retained the dull plot and hammy acting, but at least reduced the bigotry. I didn't realise the original could be that much worse, but it is...

The historical but fictional film, based on the book by Edna Ferber, presents us with a clash of cultures and attitudes. Yancey is a restless jack-of-all-trades: the new town's newspaper editor, a lawyer, fast-shooting law enforcer and even a preacher. Wanderlust gets the better of him, leaving his wife Sabra (Irene Dunn) to raise the family and run the newspaper.Mostly set in the fictional 'Boom Town' of Osage, not to be confused with today's Osage in Oklahoma which is tiny, we see the townsfolk making do with what they have. Yancey is mainly the Editor of The Oklahoma Wigwam but at the same time he gets to use his shooting skills, act as a lawyer, and run the first church service.The issue I had with Cimarron was that the storyline was disjointed and lost focus at times. Overall it was about the birth of a new state, though it went in different directions at different times and many sub-plots were never fully-explained. Sabra's character grew into a wise and admirable older woman, however we missed out on seeing her character actually develop. A woman in a more modern film would not have shown so much loyalty to her husband...her loyalty is to be admired even if her husband needs a clip round the ears!On a technical note, the characters didn't always age in sync with one another. By the end of the film Sabra has aged (at least in the hair department), but not nearly as much as Yancey. Her complexion remained unrealistically youthful for a woman over 60, though her vocals were always spot-on to whichever age she was playing which is no mean feat for an actor.The acting overall was convincing, special mention to Estelle Taylor as town prostitute Dixie Lee for her moving life story showing there is more than meets the eye when it comes to judging someone, though the town gossip Mrs Tracy Wyatt was a bit over-played by Edna May Oliver. Tracey's mannerisms and loud outfits give the impression of a cross-breed of Hyacinth Bucket and Madame Thenardier. Some minor story lines could have been cut to speed things up where it was needed, but overall Cimarron is a great example of 1930s film, and gives a good grasp of the lives of pioneers in the late 19th Century.

In a year that saw the release of "City Lights," "Little Caesar," and "The Blue Angel," "Cimarron" was surely the oddest choice to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, but win it did, although the award failed to translate into big bucks at the box office. At over two hours, the movie is both long (for its era) and strangely sluggish given its action-packed western setting. Adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber, "Cimarron" is interesting primarily for the celluloid collision of two schools of cinematic acting. The first, exemplified by Richard Dix playing two-fisted, editor-pioneer Yancey Cravat, is the school of silent-film histrionics; the second, is the more naturalistic school of screen acting which found in Irene Dunne (playing Dix's loyal wife, Sabra) one of its more sensitive and enduring interpreters. The two styles don't mix well. Dix is all ham and bluster; shaking his fists, gesturing like a road-company actor playing Julius Caesar, casting his eyes up to heaven and ringing the bells loudly on every emotional change his character undergoes. Dunne, by contrast, engages in a quieter duet with the camera; one that allows her character to develop slowly over the course of the movie. The disparity between the two styles is unsettling; the viewer is left with the impression of having seen the same movie through two different sets of lenses. The fact that "Cimarron" is both incredibly dated and blatantly racist doesn't help much, either.All that said, however, the movie's still worth watching, if only as an example of an early Hollywood blockbuster epic. The opening "land rush" sequence (with a cast of thousands) is compelling and cinematically sophisticated, even by today's standards. And there are several worthwhile cameo turns including one by Edna May Oliver, who manages to steal every scene she's in.