John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946)

John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) includes historical characters and historical events, while Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952) is more a generic Western with an interesting slant on the history of the time in which the film was made. At heart, both films are about a clash between good and evil that ends with a gunfight in the street, with the forces of law against the representatives of disorder. While this may be a timeless battle repeated endlessly in films--not only Westerns, but certainly in the Western genre time and time again--how this battle is treated in the two films shows a very different view of the social order, of the role of the hero, and of the meaning of the battle itself. Ford takes a much more traditional view of his hero, Wyatt Earp, and he treats that character in the heroic mold even though the historical character and his brothers were not as admirable as the film makes them out to be. Zinnemann treats his hero as a working stiff with a strong sense of honor, and it is society as a whole that is depicted in a very different manner. All the elements of filmmaking are brought to bear by each filmmaker in creating a particular vision of the West and of the society depicted.

Ford treats the town in the film as a marvelous creation of human beings who are carving themselves a place on the frontier. This is a traditionalist view of the Western, with settlers braving the elements and fighting for a better life. They are often thwarted by money

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s reassuring in spite of the tensions in that world, the dangers at every turn, and the outlaws seeking to take what other people have built. Ford has a soft spot for those who built America and finds them in places like Tombstone in the late nineteenth century. He uses their music, their dance, their speech patterns, and the tools of their trade to recreate their life on a screen. In the end, his film is an affirmation of that life, an affirmation made possible, as noted, by the death of someone much of this town would cast out if it had the chance. Ford may see the importance of this community, but he does not see it without understanding the irony involved. Zinnemann treats the world of the town quite differently, and he creates tension through editing rather than structuring his film in a series of broader scenes. From the first, tension is created by the juxtaposition of dynamic shots as the outlaws wait for the train to arrive. This creates a motif that will serve throughout the film, for waiting is precisely what the action of this film entails. From the beginning, we are waiting for the train to arrive one more time and to bring the leader of the outlaws to town. We are waiting for the gunfight that will then ensu

Category: Film - J