Victor Mature – Movie Musings

Henry Fonda is here to enforce justice in My Darling Clementine

Director: John Ford

Cast: Henry Fonda (Wyatt Earp), Linda Darnell (Chihuahua), Victor Mature (“Doc” Holliday), Cathy Downs (Clementine Carter), Walter Brennan (Newman Haynes Clanton), Tim Holt (Virgil Earp), Ward Bond (Morgan Earp), Don Garner (James Earp), Grant Withers (Ike Claton), John Ireland (Billy Clanton), Alan Mowbray (Granville Thorndyke), Roy Roberts (Mayor), Jane Darwell (Kate Nelson)

In John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a journalist says “When legend becomes fact, print the legend”. It could almost be a commentary on My Darling Clementine, a lusciously romantic retelling of the story of Wyatt Earp and his Gunfight at the OK Corrall between the Earps and local cowboy gang the Clantons. John Ford’s film is a perfect slice of Americana, in which the West is seen at its glorious best, and almost no fact in it is true.

In 1882 retired Marshal turned ranger Wyatt Earp’s (Henry Fonda) brother James is killed outside the town of Tombstone, shortly after Earp had turned down an offer to buy his cattle from Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan), the family patriarch. Earp suspects foul play, but decides to stay in Tombstone as its new Marshal, with his brothers Virgil (Tim Holt) and Morgan (Ward Bond) as his deputies to reinforce the law. In town he meets local gambling man “Doc” Holliday (Victor Mature) and falls for Holliday’s former girlfriend Clementine (Cathy Downs), in town searching for Doc. Will Wyatt find out who killed his brother and find contentment?

My Darling Clementine is almost entirely invented. Virtually nothing in it is true, from the year it’s set (the actual gunfight happened in 1881) to what happens in the actual gun battle. The fates of nearly all the characters have been changed (James, whose death kicks the film off, actually died in 1926) and a host of characters have been invented, not least Clementine herself. The action has been moved to Monument valley from Arizona. Its comprehensive myth-making on screen, with Earp himself changed from an unhappily married man probably “carrying on” with an Irish actress into the pillar of moral decency that is Henry Fonda.

But does it really matter? Not really. If you run with the film has being part of Ford’s tradition of reworking the past of America into a grand origins myth for the United States, the film works perfectly. It’s directed with great visual skill by John Ford, who creates some luscious shots of Monument valley and some glorious skylines that dwarf the actors into the machinery of myth. His visual storytelling is perfect at communicating character, from the boyish leaning back on his chair from the boy scoutish Earp to carefully building the tentative, ]barrier filled relationship between Earp and Clementine.

My Darling Clementine features a romance plot line, but it’s played in parallel with a story of feuding that leaves large numbers of the cast dead. Aside from Earp and Holliday there is virtually no overlap between the romance plot and the events leading to the gunfire. Clementine never refers to it, and you can almost imagine this as two films skilfully and gracefully cut together. Perhaps this is Ford’s intent: this is a film about community in the West, about the building and creation of a town and the shaping of relationships and friendships around it – that just happens to have as well a gang of murderers that Fonda needs to take down.

Tombstone is emerging from the Wild West – at a key moment half way through the film, Earp and Clementine dance (Earp with a surprising grace) at an outside ball to celebrate the opening of a church. It’s just one sign of civilisation arriving in the town, with theatre on the way and even Holliday’s gambling den slowly becoming something a little bit less violent. Earp himself is a reluctant but honest lawman, repeatedly asking at the start “what kind of town is this?” and seemingly deciding to stay to sort the place out as well as find out who killed his brother.

It’s telling in any case that Earp’s reaction to his brother being killed is to pick up a badge not a gun, but then you would expect nothing less from Henry Fonda. Fonda is at his most decent, and bashful, his most just and moral, the embodiment of law and justice. Fonda pitches the performance perfectly, a shy man who knows what’s right, but has the guts to go the extra mile to get it. Fonda also gets some wonderful chemistry from his interactions with Cathy Downs’ Clementine, each scene between them dripping with longing but a sad knowledge that nothing can come of it.

There are a whole host of reasons for that, not least her past relationship with Doc. If there is a second heart to the film, it’s the uneasy semi-friendship that grows between Holliday and Earp. It’s a beautifully judged, wordlessly expressed mixture of regard, respect and suspicion, of two men who have taken very different paths in life but recognise in each other a common world view, a yearning for peace and poetry under the guns. Holliday – dying although you wouldn’t think it considering the hale and hearty look of Victor Mature – is a dangerous man but a fair one, not like the arrogant destructiveness of the Clantons. He’s even able to juggle respectful relations, not least with Linda Darnell’s showgirl. Mature gives a decent performance, hampered by his essential earnest woodenness from really exploring the depths of a TB suffering physician turned gunslinger, but able to express a basic decency and touch of poetry.

It’s a film about small moments between these characters that culminates in parallel with a gun fight that burns out of the clash between the Earps and Clantons. The Earps are of course all thoroughly decent, upright sorts while the Clantons are unclean, unshaven (first thing Wyatt does in the film is get shaved!) types, led by a bullying Walter Brennan. The gunfight is spectacular, but it’s part of one of two films, followed as it is with Earp’s sad departure from the town and the culmination of the unspoken love between him and Clementine. But isn’t that part of the myth? And with its romance, its heroic stand against injustice and its epic sweep and brilliance, My Darling Clementine is a celebration of the myth and power of the West.

Richard Burton puts on his best “worried with a hint of madness” face as he explains Christianity to Jean Simmons and the viewers.

Director: Henry Koster

Cast: Richard Burton (Marcellus Gallio), Jean Simmons (Diana), Victor Mature (Demetrius), Michael Rennie (Peter), Jay Robinson (Caligula), Dean Jagger (Justus), Torin Thatcher (Senator Gallio), Richard Boone (Pontius Pilate), Betta St John (Miriam), Jeff Morrow (Paulus), Ernest Thesiger (Tiberius)

In 1953, Hollywood was running so scared of TV they needed a magic cocktail to win viewers back to the big screen. They settled on their main advantages over TV – a very big screen, colour and a lot of money. Sweeping epics were born – but in order to get as many people in as possible, gotta make sure it’s an important piece of filmmaking as well. What’s more important than religion?

Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton) is a carefree playboy Tribune, interested only in splashing his cash on bets and slaves. After betting against heir-to-the-throne Caligula (Jay Robinson) for rebellious slave Demetrius (Victor Mature) – plus charming away Caligula’s betrothed Diana (Jean Simmons), also Marcellus’ childhood sweetheart – he is banished to Palestine. Marcellus is soon ordered to crucify a humble carpenter from Nazareth, leader of a new religion that Demetrius swiftly converts to. After being confronted by his former slave atop Calvary, Marcellus finds himself wracked with guilt about his actions – and on a journey towards conversion and martyrdom. The Robe of the title is the Turin shroud, here a red rag macguffin passed from pillar to post.

By any objective standards, The Robe is a pretty terrible film. It’s long, self-important, slow, talky, episodic, poorly-structured and, above all, boring. Despite its length, nothing much really happens. Marcellus is a waster, he crucifies Christ, he feels guilty, he goes a bit barmy, he converts, he dies. That’s kind of it. When important moments happen, they flash past so quickly you start to think you missed something – I rewound Marcellus’ crucial conversation with St Peter where he finally converts as I assumed I’d missed something he changes his mind so quickly. I hadn’t.

The whole film is full of sudden, juddering changes like this. Marcellus and Diana are estranged for years – next thing we know they are in each other’s arms. Demetrius is a convert after one glance. Within seconds of screentime, Marcellus goes from unconcerned to wracked with guilt over Christ’s death. The whole first scene sets up Caligula as an antagonist only to have him disappear for almost an hour. Demetrius is suddenly being racked in a dungeon in Rome. The film keeps slowing down for lots of Christian reflection on the righteousness of the holy message.

Oh blimey, the Christian message of the film is not subtle. The film drips with sanctimony and wearying self-importance, with no trick missed. Angelic voices, light from the sky, actors staring upwards with awe, impossibly sweet youths frolicking with joy, wise old buffers droning on: it’s all here, every single note you would expect of the classic Hollywood “Swords, sex, sandals and sanctimony” epics. It’s all ridiculously on the nose, with Burton reduced to having to carry the entire weight of Christianity seemingly on his shoulders, with only the most bland and forgettable of lines to support him. Nothing eases up right into the final moments, when Marcellus and Diana walk towards the camera as the background fades away to be replaced by clouds. Yeah we get it: they are off to heaven. The big thing the film struggles to get across in all this is why the Christian message had such appeal to Marcellus and others, or why these people might have put so much at risk for it, but this sort of thing is beneath the film’s clumsy interest, as if any actual analysis would be sinful.

Burton, bless him, struggles through the role with the slightly disconnected air of a man who thinks the entire film is beneath him (he famously called the role “prissy”). He must have been stunned to get an Oscar nomination. But to be fair it’s a really tough part, with Marcellus required to go from a sort of relaxed dissoluteness, via disconnected pride, to a sort of catatonic series of fits before back to serene peace. Saying that, Burton’s fits over the robe itself aren’t going to win any awards for subtlety, done with a wild eyed hamminess that looks impossibly old fashioned today. But it’s all comparable – next to Robert Taylor in Quo Vadis, Burton feels like the height of emotional realism. It’s not helped that he’s paired a lot of the time with Victor Mature, who acts throughout with a sort of balsawood earnestness that requires a great deal of middle distance staring in awe. The video below gives a good idea of both performances. Watch how wildly varied the writing is of Burton’s part and feel a little bit sorry for him.

Very few of the other performances make positive impressions. Jean Simmons as Diana is such a bland, forgettable character that her conversion only really makes sense because we have learnt so little about her over the course of the movie. Jay Robinson goes for overblown as Caligula but instead sounds like a shrieking child in a pretty woeful performance.

These two failed performances add to the film’s problems. Caligula is such a non-presence for most in the film that, as the nominal antagonist, his lack of impact makes the film shapeless, lacking any “villain” we can hate or provide any sort of obstacle for Marcellus to struggle against. Similarly Diana is so bland and anonymous a personality, that we neither root for their relationship, nor experience any concern for its outcome.

The film is directed and framed in an equally dull way. Its only claim to fame today is its status as the first film to be released in Cinemascope. This ultra-wide screen was intended to be another rival to TV – never mind the little box, look at the mighty vistas! But the importance of widescreen hangs over every creative decision of the film. Nearly every shot in Koster’s turgid direction is either middle or long, with the camera held static, focused on getting as much of the background in as possible, the actors often reduced to focus or foreground interest around the scale. It’s no wonder few performances break through this overbearing backdrop.

Every so often you get moments where you think the film is going to burst in life. They’re rare but they are there. There is a great scene between Demetrius and a man revealed (eventually, but it’s pretty obvious from the start) to be Judas Iscariot fresh form Gethsemane (Michael Ansara as Judas might, in two minutes of screentime, give the best performance in the film). Marcellus has a pretty good (if inexplicable) sword fight with a former rival. A mission is launched to rescue Demetrius. But every time something happens like that, the film immediately doubles back into heavy-handed symbolism and dull, unrevealing chat, all of which is focused on hammering home the message.

The Robe is an impossibly dated religious epic, worthy, dull and lacking any real interest or reason to watch it. Its star seems a little embarrassed to be there. No-one else makes any impact. It’s directed with a flatness that turns it into a series of lifeless paintings. Its story turns a major moment of history into a boring, inconsequential series of events. It lacks even the campness that many epics of this genre carry that make it a good tongue-in-cheek watch. It’s just a yawnathon from start to finish, a crushingly tedious saga that has all the subtlety of being hit across the face by a prayer book for over two hours.