my darling clementine

While one might think that professional film critics (of which there are but a handful remaining who earn a full-time paycheck) take an unofficial oath to be impartial, objective observers of the cinematic arts, nothing could be further from the truth. The late Roger Ebert, arguably the most transparent and relatable critic of his time, fawned over some of the most frowned upon genre fare out there…and even wrote some pop trash of his own (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls). People who watch movies for a living sometimes fall in love with them just like you do…and often have an equally hard time justifying why.

With a film like My Darling Clementine (1946), justifying one’s admiration is easy. Not a decade has gone by that John Ford’s sentimental retelling of the gunfight at the OK Corral hasn’t landed in the top five Westerns of all time…usually fighting for space with the director’s other masterpiece, The Searchers. And while Clementine saddles up same western clichés, it does so in a soft-spoken, unassuming way; reflecting Henry Fonda performance as the legendary Wyatt Earp, who takes the job as Marshall in the rough-and-tumble, yet ambitiously American town of Tombstone to hunt down his brother’s killer.

Collaborating with Fonda for the third time, the actor always seemed to bring out the humanist in Ford. Playing fast and loose with history (despite Ford’s claim to have gotten the true facts from Earp himself), Clementine re-stages the famous shootout as little more than an footnote to the everyday challenges of life on the frontier and the constant struggle between savagery and civilization.

More softhearted than Ford’s work with John Wayne, the film is an optimistic ode to the Old West that revels in the ties that bind a community together. Much like the feel-good nostalgia of Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, cheerfully distinct characters with good hearts and high aspirations populate the town of Tombstone. Bad seeds like the Clantons – and even men of means like the Earps – find themselves ill suited for the new-look frontier where churches and barbershops are popping up in place of whorehouses and saloons.

There’s a simplistic poetry here that Ford never replicated – it’s in the long shadows, low-brimmed hats, and smoky barroom backdrops. And most importantly, in the cold eyes and stoic stance of Fonda whose stiff disposition and folksy humor were never put to better use. It’s a film you can fall in love with on first sight.

And Criterion gives you even more to love with a spotless 4K hi-def transfer that sets a new standard for catalog films on blu-ray. Both the theatrical and longer pre-release version are included, with a spot-on 45-minute special feature that compares all the changes producer Darryl F. Zanuck requested (and got). A new audio commentary is provided by John Ford biographer Joseph McBride, plus info about the real Wyatt Earp, TV reports about the history of Tombstone, a LUX Radio Theatre adaptation, trailer and complete 1916 silent western short, Bandit’s Wager, co-starring Ford and directed by his brother, Francis Ford.