January 29th 2014. Pick of the Day.

For those of you Cinegeeks who thought yesterday's slate of three-count-'em-three classic film screenings was simply too much of a conundrum, a cinematic Sophie's Choice with no satisfactory solution, I give you today's simpler challenge, and the lone continuing series; MoMA's Auteurist History of Film. The quagmire as follows;

Film Forum

MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946) Dir; John Ford

MoMA

THE BIRDS (1963) Dir; Alfred Hitchcock

Today's Pick? One of the greatest westerns to come out of the Studio Era. Wyatt Earp's tale had been comitted to film before, either blatantly or thinly veiled. Indeed he'd partially made a living toward the end of his days as consultant on several Hollywood shoot-'em-ups. Fox's Darryl Zanuck had overseeen Alan Dwan's 1939 iteration of the legendary lawman's duel at the O. K. Corral, titled FRONTIER MARSHAL, with iconic horse opera leading man Randolph Scott portraying Earp. Later, as the war drew to a close and John Ford readied to return from some insane active duty heroics of his own, Zanuck was determined to finish out the director's contract as soon as possible, as Ford's plans for his own independent production company were by no means whispered. Re-watching the Dwan film one night it occured to the studio cheif that while it was a pleasant enough effort there lay some crucial screen poetry to be mined that Dwan had perhaps missed, poetry that the cinema's greatest poet might draw forth. Which was fine by Ford, who, while one of the medium's greatest box-office champs, was financially drained as a result of his being away from the director's chair while filming a little something called the Battle of Midway. The director had an affinity for saying "my name is John Ford, and I make westerns" by way of false humility when introducing himself. A western, he deemed, was the perfect postwar vehicle to restore his name as moneymaker par exellence, and snag a hunk of those box office reciepts for himself in the process.

Zanuck was by this point smart enough to know he couldn't micro-manage Ford the way he did every other employee at 20th. By the same token Ford, who'd given many an executive ulcers over his stubborness on set, had by this point come to appreciate Zanuck's ability to enhance what was best in a good film, making it a great one, while shedding those elements that weighed it. The two fell back into their uneasy alliance in the wake of World War 2 tamed by each other's gifts and tempers, and a masterpiece was underway. Ford used to brag that he'd actually known the real-life Earp, from the filmmaker's early days as assistant everything on film sets to his prominenece in the 20's, when Earp was a semi-regiular dinner guest, and promised his film would accurately depict the historical events regarding Earp, "Doc" Holliday, and of that infamous gunfight with the Clantons.

Which was of course hogwash. Ford's greatest gifts as storyteller were deepely rooted in his Irishness, and all the blarney that accompanied it. Holliday was a dentist, not a surgeon. Old Man Clanton was likely long dead before the family feud ensued in proper. Clementine Carter, the unattainable ideal of the title, simply didn't exist at all, at least not according to any surviving documents from that time and place. No, John Ford, over the course of his career, had perhaps the most famous artistic tussle with the facts and their superior embellishments of any of the master filmakers in the meduim's history. It's indeed true that in FORT APACHE and LIBERTY VALANCE, the characters suffer the guilt of their lies for the betterment of civilization, and the latter boasts perhaps the most famous line of Ford's CV ("When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."), but those films are about demythification, detailing how fact becomes "neccessary" fiction. CLEMENTINE does no such thing; it is an ode to an American West that never existed, a grace that conquered brutality that most likely never was. But within its transplanted, transparent blarney lay the very poetry Zanuck sought. The connective tissue between Ford's best westerns, his rewriting of the settling of his American home, experienced as bravery, chivalry, camaraderie, and in the image of the traditional nuclear family home, can be summed up I think in one word; grace. And I'll be damned if I can think of a more graceful western from the era of their ubiquity than today's Pick.

John Ford's MY DARLING CLEMENTINE screens today at the Film Forum in a new DCP restoration. Clementine. I sure do like that name.

For more info on these and all NYC's remaining classic film screenings in January '14 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. And be sure to follow me on both Facebook, where I provide further info and esoterica on the rep film circuit and star birthdays, and Twitter, where I provide a daily feed for the day's screenings and other blathery. Back with a brand new Pick tomorrow, til then walk slowly across the snow drifts and advise the other kids do likewise. And LAYERS, knuckleheads, LAYERS!

-Joe Walsh

joew@nitratestock.net

P. S. Should you be feeling charitable during this harsh weather period please remember to check in with the good folks over at Occupy Sandy. Some of our NY neighbors are still feeling the effects of last year's hurricane. Be a mensch.