SimonJack This 1931 movie of the epic 1929 Edna Ferber novel is itself an epic. "Cimarron" shows the historic Oklahoma Land Rush and ensuring settlement right up to the time that the audience then lived. The amassing of so many wagons, carts and types of old conveyances is historical in itself. And the portrayal of the boomtown rising out of the Western prairie is so close to the time that it's an authentic picture of the real life of the time and place.Indeed, this RKO film captured three Academy Awards Oscars, with four more nominations. It was the Best Picture of 1931. Richard Dix and Irene Dunne were nominated for best actor and actress, and gave superb performances. Some modern viewers may see Dix's flamboyance as over-acting. He did carry a little of his silent film mannerisms into his early sound films. But his Yancey Cravat is spot on the character that Edna Ferber created. And, Dunne's portrayal was superb as her character matured over the years. The 1960 production of "Cimarron" by MGM had a fine cast and did a good portrayal of the period. But the rise of the towns from the prairie seemed to miss the touch of authenticity that this film has. And, while all of the cast of the later film were fine, they didn't provide the edge that Dix and Dunne and company give in this original "Cimarron."Dix also starred in another movie around the land rush, "Cherokee Strip", in 1940. And Dix and Dunne starred together in another film. "Stingaree" is a 1934 RKO drama and comedy romance.Here are some favorite lines from the film. For more dialog, see the Quotes section under this IMDb Web page of the movie. Yancy Cravat, "Why, we've had enough of this Wichita. We're going' out to a brand new two-fisted, rip snortin' country full of Indians, rattlesnakes, gun toters and desperados. Whoopee!"Yancy Cravat, "There's loyalty, Sabra, that money can't buy."Yancy Cravat, "The second button on his coat is about the spot of his wishbone. Maybe a couple inches higher." Sol Levy, "Oh, they will always talk about Yancy. He's gonna be part of the history of the great Southwest. It's men like him that build the world. The rest of them, like me... well, we just come along and live in it."Yancy Cravat, "Dixie Lees have been stoned in the market place for 2,000 years. You've got to drive the devil out first."Mrs. Tracy Wyatt, "Sorry, Mr. Levy about you not being on the committee. But you see, we invited representatives of our principal families. One of my ancestors was a signer of the Declaration of Independence." Sol Levy, "Mmm hmmm. That's all right. A relative of mine, a fellow named Moses, wrote the Ten Commandments."

grantss This movie is easily the worst Best Picture Oscar winner. It won in 1931, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it was a talkie, and talking pictures were still fairly novel. Maybe because of how epic its historic time scale is. Maybe because it tells a story of the exploration and settlement of America that sparked something in 1930s audiences.Who knows. All I can say is that by modern standards it is incredibly bad.This is not because of the cinematic technology or anything like that. It has a dull story with hammy acting. Worst of all, it is blatantly racist. The black kid is merely there as a figure of fun, something to be made mocked and made fun of. Interesting that while large parts of the movie are very politically correct in the treatment and rights of native Americans, they undo all this good by portraying African-Americans so badly.I had already watched the 1960 remake before watching this, and that wasn't that great either. It retained the dull plot and hammy acting, but at least reduced the bigotry. I didn't realise the original could be that much worse, but it is...

Steffi_P It's sometimes been claimed that there were no Westerns in the early sound era. This is of course nonsense, as anyone who has seen The Big Trail with John Wayne or The Virginian with Gary Cooper will know. It's been said, that with the technology in its infancy, the location shooting necessary for Westerns became impossible. In fact, it was the depression and the resulting lack of funds that really put the kibosh on the genre for most of the 1930s. But in 1931 the worst of the poverty hadn't quite set in yet, and RKO studios were just about foolhardy enough, to pour everything into one last big outdoor picture: Cimarron.Adapted from an Edna Ferber novel, Cimarron can only really be called a Western on technical grounds of its setting. In truth, with its sprawling time frame and its focus on the exploits of a pioneer family, it is more in the line of a dramatic saga that merely happens to take place in the Old West. Like most of Ferber's work it presents the American South as a strange, almost foreign land, although the movie fails to get across that sense of otherness as well as the 1956 motion picture of Ferber's Giant. It's a fair adaptation though, presenting some good individual scenes, although structurally it has some weaknesses, with the final half-hour seeming especially rushed and haphazard. Yancey Cravat's decision to take off wandering again is explained with a cold couple of lines on a title card, when actually showing it happen would have meant so much more.Director Wesley Ruggles mostly worked in the comedy genre, but he proves himself capable at handling an epic, it seems taking his cues from the unquestionable master of the big picture Cecil B. DeMille. Like DeMille he humanizes the crowds by picking out individuals, allowing them their two seconds before the camera, and no doubt directing them on a personal level too. Sometimes however he allows all the background business to take over, with the continual bustle of extras – which could be easily hidden with a careful angle change – often creating a distraction from the dramatic moments. Perhaps Ruggles's greatest asset here, again something very reminiscent of DeMille, is his iconic, almost theatrical staging of key moments, particularly a handful of drawn-out death moments. They are unrealistic, for sure, but they are grand and memorable, having a similar impact to the slow-motion falls in Sam Peckinpah's movies four decades later.This was a transitional time for screen acting as performers from both the theatre and the silents were trying to adapt to sound cinema. Richard Dix has a voice the size of an oil drum with a physique to match, and the magnitude of his performance is both its chief appeal and its undoing. He is perfect when he's showing Yancey Cravat to be a great orator, but the trouble is in a scene where he's talking tenderly to his family, he still sounds like he's making a speech. Irene Dunne on the other hand is a real treat for this era, a model of realist restraint and emotional truth, although sadly her performance tends to get dwarfed next to Dix. There are a handful of neat supporting players. Estelle Taylor is another low-key, naturalistic actress. Edna May Oliver gives a nuanced comical turn which is great fun to watch. George E. Stone is very good too - watch his nervous stroking of his mule's muzzle as the town hoodlums taunt him. The only really annoying performance is that of Roscoe Ates, whose stutter simply isn't funny.Cimarron is best remembered now as an early Best Picture Academy Award winner. "Big" pictures have always proved disproportionately likely to win the award, and this is one of many such movies to be later written off as overrated and poorly-aged. There's no denying Cimarron's a product of its time*, but it is by no means a bad movie. Hollywood at the dawn of the talkies had a very unique style, certainly flawed but also full of charm, character and a determination to make movies in spite of technical limitations. From an era dominated by musical comedies and stagy dramas, Cimarron if nothing else gives us a glimpse of how the talkies could do epics.*Although in some ways it is a little ahead of its time. Most discourse on "pre-code" movies focuses on sex and nudity, but Cimarron features a few more subtle transgressions. When Dix shoots William Collier, we see both the gun being fired and the man being hit in the same shot. While the Production Code didn't expressly forbid this type of set-up, it was generally considered too graphic according to the section on violence, and in movies right up until the late 1960s you will see a cut between shots of shooters and shootees.

earlytalkie This film is a landmark of the early talkie cinema. A real epic based on Edna Ferber's dynamite novel, this film still looks modern today. Forget what you thought about static camera work and studio-bound sets. "Cimarron" starts out with it's famous Oklahoma land rush scene which, given the constraints of a narrow screen, black and white production is breathtaking and sprawling to see. Likewise, the shots depicting the growth of a frontier town has all the genuine look of the real thing. The acting of Richard Dix, as Yancy Cravat has been criticized by some as "melodramatic" and "overripe", but he was playing a larger than life character as being such, and he comes across well. Irene Dunne, who made her dramatic debut as Sabra Cravat, is convincing and sympathetic. One of the things I like about this movie is that the characters are neither all-good nor all-evil. There are human flaws in all of them which make them, well, more human. This in itself was a novelty in 1931, when talking pictures were themselves still a novelty. It would be easy to dismiss the character of Isaiah as a typical stereotyped black character, but although he supplys "comedy relief" early in the film, his action later on gives his portrayal a profound depth never seen in these old films. Likewise, the portrayal of the American Indian is given a dignity throughout the production. This is, technically, a Western, and yet it is truly so much more.