My Darling Clementine @ BACINEMA

John Ford’s 1946 cinematic telling of a vital piece of American folklore-the Wyatt Earp story–was given a moody, melancholic treatment that elevated it out of the realm of patriotic folklore and into the realm of movie poetry. Henry Fonda gives perhaps the finest performance of his long career in the role of Wyatt Earp, a cattle herder who arrives in the troubled town of Tombstone for one night as a nobody. He ends up staying much longer than one night and becomes quite the somebody in town; the respected town marshall whose only adversary, Doc Holliday, may be more of a mirror image of himself than he first thinks and whose love interest, Clementine (Cathy Downs), may be the one thing that drives him out of town. My Darling Clementine is more than a historical artifact of Old Hollywood. It is a study of toxic male isolation and how loneliness is often the driving force of the American character.