Patchy Oscar-winning western hasn’t stood the test of time.
The Production: 3/5
Writer Edna Ferber isn’t one whose works are much in demand today, but in the previous century, her stories, novels, and plays were highly regarded and often mounted for stage and screen. She was the author behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (filmed three times), Show Boat (filmed three times), Dinner at Eight, Stage Door, Ice Palace, Giant, and, filmed twice, Cimarron. The 1931 version of Cimarron held the distinction as the first (and for a long time, only) western to win the Best Picture Oscar. Its win isn’t highly regarded now; its narrative is sprawling and sporadic and its acting runs the gamut from laudable to ludicrous, but the film is worth seeing once to get the gist of what themes run throughout most of Miss Ferber’s narrative thrusts: multi-generational sagas of people trying their best to overcome enormous odds in their search for happiness and contentment.
Attorney, newspaperman, and adventurer Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) moves his wife Sabra (Irene Dunne) and young son Cimarron (Douglas Scott) to Osage in the newly opened Oklahoma territory after he fails to claim the land parcel he had wanted in the famous 1889 land rush. Establishing his legal practice and weekly newspaper, Yancey is also often called upon to serve as a lawman or a preacher when the need arises gradually becoming the town’s most recognizable citizen. But Yancey’s wanderlust takes hold after four years, and he heads out to newly opened land farther west leaving Sabra to bring up the children (in the years since she’s also had daughter Donna (Helen Parrish)) and run the newspaper with the help of typesetter Jess Rickey (Roscoe Ates). As the years pass, Yancey makes periodic appearances in Osage while Sabra’s reputation rises heartily in the new state, enough to earn her a congressional seat by 1929.
Howard Estabrook’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Edna Ferber’s novel understandably hits only the high points in the rambling forty-year saga with stops along the way from 1889, 1898, 1907, and 1929. In those narrative way stations, we have such action spectacles as a bank robbery led by Yancey’s old trail pal The Kid (William Coller, Jr.), Yancey leading a worship service and dueling with the town bully (Stanley Fields), and Yancey serving as defense attorney when town harlot Dixie Lee (Estelle Taylor) is on trial for her wantonness. We witness the changes in the territory as affluence wafts over the area with the discovery of oil, and we see the newspaper growing from a weekly to a daily with the expansion of the offices from a single room to a multi-room business. Most importantly, though, is the character of Sabra. From her timidity and small mindedness at the start maturing into a forthright speaker and more progressive-thinking woman of repute, the film’s 124-minute running time offers as much her story as Yancey’s though he’s undoubtedly the more bombastic and colorful character. Director Wesley Ruggles pretty much shoots his wad in the film’s most legendary sequence: the Great Land Rush of 1889. Filmed with thousands of extras and twelve cameras, it is indeed a spectacle and gives the film an epic feel at the beginning though the focus definitely narrows as the movie begins to tell its tale. The large gaps of time between segments in the film’s second hour give it a more irregular and unsatisfying flow lessening the impact of its final revelation.
Richard Dix’s overly enunciated acting style as Yancey takes some getting used to in the early going, and the line readings sometimes have a studied and unconvincing patina to them though his physical stature and bearing certainly aid in keeping the focus on him whenever he’s in the frame. His open-mindedness and forward-thinking persona are wonderfully modern for the era offering his more conservative wife a living example of a good Samaritan. Irene Dunne’s work is much subtler and, in the end, more effective though with this being only her second film, her inexperience before the camera is sometimes telling. Roscoe Ates as newspaper typesetter Jess Rickey affects a pronounced stutter here once again used for comic effect as films of the era often did. Less grandiloquent but more affecting is George E. Stone’s Sol Levy, the town mercantile shop owner who’s often the target of bullies and one whose reverence for Yancey is eternal once he’s befriended by him. Estelle Taylor has a couple of effective scenes as loose lady Dixie Lee, and, as usual, Edna Mae Oliver as the town’s society snob steals the scenes entirely whenever she appears. Stanley Fields and William Coller, Jr. make able rivals for Yancey’s dominance.
Video: 4/5
3D Rating: NA
The film has been framed at 1.20:1 and is offered in 1080p resolution using the AVC codec. While much of the film looks wonderfully sharp, there are individual scenes that appear to have come from several generations removed from the original camera negative and are softer and less distinct. At its finest, the grayscale is wonderfully rich and offers crisp whites and more than decent black levels. The movie has been divided into 30 chapters.
Audio: 3.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono sound mix is a product of some ancient sound stems, and while the engineers have done the best they can with them, dialogue sometimes sounds tinny and indistinct, even muffled. There is an occasional thumping on the track, and the underwhelming soundtrack occasionally betrays the film’s age rather badly. Hiss has been minimized, however, and the audio is likely the best we’re ever going to get with this title.
Special Features: 2/5
Lady, Play Your Mandolin (7:14, HD): 1931 Merrie Melodies animated short.
Red-Headed Baby (6:40, HD): 1931 Merrie Melodies animated short.
The Devil’s Cabaret (16:24, HD): 1930 MGM Colortone Novelty short featuring Eddie Buzzell in a musical revue set in Hades.
Overall: 3/5
At a cost of $1.5 million and released during the depths of the Great Depression, Wesley Ruggles’ Cimarron was not able to make back its enormous cost even with its three Oscars in tow. The film isn’t highly regarded today with its unsteady mix of acting styles and its patchy narrative, but the Warner Archive Blu-ray release presents the Best Picture winner of 1931 in its best-ever condition.
Cimarron (1931) [Blu-Ray]
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Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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