IMDb reviews From IMDb
★ 1 / 10
This movie was a wonder of it's time
Nervaaz
This movie was a wonder of it's time ... for sets, for realism and for a great supporting cast. The problem with the film is the main character, who turns out…
This movie was a wonder of it's time ... for sets, for realism and for a great supporting cast. The problem with the film is the main character, who turns out to be the worst, most self-centered egotist ever captured on screen. And we are supposed to idolize him. He betrayed everything that the Code of the West stood for , but as i want to avoid spoilers, you'll just have to believe me on that. But we are supposed to applaud him. I felt sorry for Irene Dunne, made to play this jerk's wife. Later in her life Dunne openly admitted she **could not stand Yancey's behavior**. She noted that in real life, no woman would—or should—tolerantly wait around for a man who vanishes for years at a time without a word just to chase adventure. Dunne grew frustrated with how **submissive and long-suffering** Sabra was required to be. Dunne felt the movie forced her into a dated archetype of the **"stoic pioneer wife"** who exists merely to suffer beautifully while the husband gets all the glory, glory that she felt Yancey never actually earned as a family man. So this is a movie that glorifies a self-serving, incredibly greedy (for personal glory) and incredibly irresponsible character played in a grand-standing, almost operatic style by Richard Dix, who never felt real for even a split second on screen.
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★ 7 / 10
I know this gets VERY maligned these days
talisencrw
I know this gets VERY maligned these days as one of the very worst winners ever of the Best Picture Oscar, especially considering 'The Front Page' was the…
I know this gets VERY maligned these days as one of the very worst winners ever of the Best Picture Oscar, especially considering 'The Front Page' was the definitive best of those nominated that year, at the 4th Academy Awards ceremony (and that great films such as 'City Lights', 'Morocco' and 'Frankenstein' didn't even get nominated), but if you can take away Richard Dix's horrible overacting (I can't believe he was even nominated for Best Actor that year!) and uneven, sometimes lethargic or indifferent pacing and direction, certain scenes really pack a wallop, I'm glad that I watched it, and it's certainly not the worst Best Picture Oscar-winner I have seen thus far (that would probably be 'Shakespeare in Love', if I recall correctly, but I would love to watch all of them, just to be sure), and in some ways, I even tend to prefer it to the 1960 remake by Anthony Mann, even though I adore films I have seen that he's directed (although I'm not the biggest Glenn Ford fan in the world, so that probably evens things out). Irene Dunne is a delight, as always.
Though it certainly could have used a better editor (a good 30-40 minutes could have been sliced off, and no one would be the wiser), it certainly deserves at least one watch, especially if you're a history buff and want to see a decent depiction of how the Midwest was won.
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★ 7 / 10
45 reviews have come before mine and I will try to write new stuff and not bore you with repeating what others have said.
mauricebarringer
In fairness to Richard Dix's overacting, Charles Bickford, one of the great character actors ever, also overacted atrociously in "Anna Christie," which was…
In fairness to Richard Dix's overacting, Charles Bickford, one of the great character actors ever, also overacted atrociously in "Anna Christie," which was made exactly one year earlier than "Cimarron." The majority of movies didn't go from being silent to talking until 1929 and "Cimarron" was filmed in 1930, so both these films were real early talking films and the performers had not learned to down scale their performances.The editing and cinematography were outstanding, even revolutionary for that era. The film needs to be viewed in a historic context and not compared to current films. I do agree that "Cimarron" does not hold up as well during the march of time from 1930 to 2008 as does "Public Enemy," "Little Caesar," "Scarface" but it was a complex and ambitious film adaptation of a novel by an outstanding writer, Edna Ferber. Richard Dix's character does stand up for and vehemently support fairness to Indians and prostitutes, which was a revolutionary idea for a movie made in 1930.I did notice that Eugene Jackson, the young black teenager, worked for 60 years in the film business, including a recurring role in "Stanford and Son," and in "Julia." Richard Dix, a major star in silent films starting in the early 1920s, peaked around the time of "Cimarron" and by the second half of the 1930s was stuck in B films but did continue his career and stared in films until his retirement in 1947.Irene Dunne went on to super stardom for the next 20 years and made quite a few classics (check out her film list in her biography.) It is amazing!I want to compliment the other writers who are classic film lovers but do want to state that too many readers check the not helpful box instead of the helpful box when evaluating the reviews of others. I feel that they are being too picky. After all, we are a select group of people who appreciate old films and should have support each other more as a group, unless the review is vindictive or totally uninformed.
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