THE DILEMMA OF WYATT EARP
In any list of essential westerns there has to be a Wyatt Earp movie - problem is which one? Do you go for the most historically accurate? Or do you go for the most suspenseful, the one with the best gunfight? And what happens when more than one of the films are essential?
My Darling Clementine (1946) would be a good choice. It's an excellent movie and Fonda makes for a great Earp. But then the historical facts are completely ignored and instead Ford concentrates on creating a superbly entertaining melodramas. Walter Brennan gives a great turn as Old Man Clanton who in truth was killed before the famous gunfight.
Then maybe Tombstone (1993) which is superb on historical detail and was actually filmed where the real events took place. It also has Val Kilmer as a brilliant scene stealing Doc Holliday and Kurt Russel as a brilliantly hard Earp. The gunfight, which in fact only lasted thirty seconds, is very well done.
Then again Wyatt Earp (1994) is a sprawling flawed masterpiece from Kevin Costner. The actor also makes a great Earp and Dennis Quaid's Holliday is strikingly real. This film also concentrates on far more than the events leading up to the famous gunfight.
Then again James Garner was a brilliant Earp in 1967's Hour of the Gun. This movie concentrates largely on the vendetta following the gunfight and was a sequel to John Sturges's Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) which is a very famous version with two great stars but is rather turgid and of course completely inaccurate. Lancaster makes a great Earp, though.
So which one to go with?
Ahh... choices
13 comments:
Tombstone for me. :-)
Jo
I'm your huckleberry.
clementine is wonderful
Ford claimed that he got the real skinny on the OK Corral from the elderly Wyatt himself. I don't know who embroidered the historical facts, Wyatt in telling Ford the story, or Ford and his scripters in their dramatization. I'm also fond of GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL, old-time polished Hollywood moviemaking at its finest. Personal taste, I would tend to apply the term "turgid" to the Costner movie rather than GUNFIGHT. Movie trivia: James Garner played Earp twice (SUNSET being the second time), and so did Fonda, if you consider that WARLOCK was a fictionalization of the Tombstone story (maybe more apparent in the novel than the movie). John Ireland was Billy Clanton in CLEMENTINE and Johnny Ringo in GUNFIGHT.
Fred - Now I love the COSTNER movie. Maybe because it tells more of the Earp story than any of the others. I think it had the bad luck of going against Tombstone which is superior as an action movie. But I still feel it's a masterpiece.
Fred - Earp's wife Josephine was very controlling of her husband's legend and would have encouraged Earp to embellish the facts he told to Ford. In fact after EARP'S death she plagued his biographer to use her version of events.
I liked Tombstone a lot.
Charles - Tombstone is definately a classic
Tombstone it is...
I don't think that any of the are the 'one'. Each movie is individual - and believe they stand well on their own.
I suppose it comes down to what the individual wants from a movie.
One day someone will take all the best bits from each movie and concoct a new version of the myth of Wyatt Earp.
Hour of the Gun for sure! Fantastic movie, and amazing performance by Garner
Oh, Hour of The Gun for sure. I saw this film when it was first released and many times since.
Garner is incredible.
Hour of the Gun with James Garner. A plus western for me.
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