My Darling Clementine (1946)
I never fully connected with this classic Ford western, but there were certainly many good parts making it worth watching.
It starts well with Wyatt Earp just trying to get a shave, but is forced to deal with a shooting drunk. He becomes the town marshal and then the movie lost me a bit with things getting more or less normal town business. Seemed like everyone forgot Earps youngest brother was just killed as well. Then the four way drama with Earp, Doc Holiday, Clementine and Chihuahua gets interesting, and we get back to catching the gang that killed the young Earp.
Ford is doing interesting things here cinematography wise, by really taking advantage of shadows in the black and white picture. Victor Mature is great as Doc Holiday and Linda Darnell is equally amazing as Chihuahua. Henry Fonda is doing okay, but given that the movie has her name in the title, I found Clementine played by Cathy Downs to be the most uninteresting character of them all. And that detached me some from the whole movie, because I couldn’t see any interesting chemistry between Clementine with either Earp or Holiday. The rest of the story was good though with some well shot shootouts.
Overall I liked the movie, but it is not going on any sort of all time classic list for me.
Rating: 3.5