My Darling Clementine (1946)

Directed by John Ford. Starring Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Cathy Downs, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Alan Mowbray, Ward Bond, Tim Holt, John Ireland, Grant Withers, Roy Roberts, Jane Darwell.

Ford’s peerless retelling of the now oft-told story of Wyatt Earp’s (Fonda) arrival in Tombstone, AZ; his relationship with notorious gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday (Mature); and his bloody feud with the criminal Clantons, led by Brennan’s despicable patriarch. Less concerned with mythopoetics than romantic ideals, and it plays fast and loose with the truth (even by “print the legend” standards), but it’s engrossing almost every step of way. Filmed on location in Monument Valley, with open skies and deep shadows still breathtaking in their naturally-lit glory. The first meeting between Earp and Holliday is as tense as the climactic showdown at the O.K. Corrall (and since no one is afraid of flubbing facts with this production, the outcome from both scenes is far from certain). Only significant shortcoming: Mature, whose Holliday can’t compare to later, more iconoclastic interpretations from the likes of Val Kilmer and Dennis Quaid. Based on Stuart N. Lake’s fictitious biography, “Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal,” which had previously been filmed twice as Frontier Marshal in the 1934 and 1939.

86/100