Cimarron (1931)

Directed by Wesley Ruggles. Starring Richard Dix, Irene Dunne, Nance O’Neil, Estelle Taylor, Stanley Fields, Roscoe Ates, Edna May Oliver, William Collier Jr., George E. Stone, Judith Barrett, Eugene Jackson, Robert McWade.

A recreation of the Oklahoma land rush and some surprisingly good (for its era) aging makeup are about all there is to recommend in this sudsy Western that spans forty years, not a single one of them interesting. Self-possessed Yancey Cravat (Dix), a proud liberal struck by bouts of wanderlust, becomes the newspaper editor of the small town of Osage, which grows to a thriving metropolis in his absence as much as his presence. It’s a shame, then, that so many of his progressive viewpoints failed to translate to the supremely dated script, which features racist caricatures aplenty, starting with Jackson’s eager-but-simple-minded black servant child, and extending to American Indians and Jews as well. But even when applying a softened “different time in history perspective,” there’s no excusing the poorly-paced episodes of melodrama, desultory character invention, erratic storytelling that lurches across the years, and a handful of embarrassingly outmoded performances, starting with the overripe, clenched-jawed ham portrayal from Dix. RKO Pictures’ most expensive production at the time, and its splashy spectacle and epic “sweep” translated well for Academy voters who gave it Oscar nominations in every category it was eligible for, netting wins for Outstanding Production (Best Picture), Adapted Screenplay (Howard Estabrook, working off of Edna Farber’s novel), and Art Direction.

30/100