Cimarron 1930/1

The Film:

A poster that screams Epic!!!

The only reason I even know that this film exists is because it won Best Picture. It's not one people really talk about anymore - and the only DVD copy we could find was released in South Korea.

It was the first Western to win the award (and there wasn't another one after it for decades) and was the first film to be nominated in seven different categories in one year.

It also currently has the joint-lowest IMDB rating of any Oscar Winner with a 6.0 (along with Cavalcade, which is coming up soon). I don't know how far this is because people don't see it very often any more, or that the print available is a bit dodgy. But it's more likely to do with the film just generally becoming dated.

Some reviews I've read say that the racial stereotyping in the film is very of its time and a bit inappropriate for modern audiences - see what I think of that idea below!


The Ceremony:

The 4th Academy Awards were held on 10th November 1931 at The Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

That, and this photo, is all I've got for you this time!


Other Notable Winners That Night:

Cimarron won three of the seven awards it was nominated for, but none of the other big awards on the night. Norman Taurog won Best Director for Skippy (and remained the youngest ever director to win until Damian Chazelle beat him in 2017). Best Actor was Lionel Barrymore for A Free Soul (although he only had a supporting role - a category that hadn't been introduced yet) and Marie Dressler for Min and Bill.

Although not a winner, nine year old Jackie Cooper deserves a mention for being the youngest nominee ever. He remains the youngest Best Actor nominee, although eight year old Justin Henry was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Kramer vs Kramer in 1979. The two remain the only acting nominees under the age of 10 (the honorary juveniles don't count!)

Ok, Oscar geekery over....

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

The other nominees were - East Lynne, The Front Page, Skippy and Trader Horn. A couple of dramas and a couple of comedies. The comedies are probably best remembered - Skippy is the film for which Jackie Cooper got his nomination, and The Front Page was remade several times (I've seen a couple of remakes - including His Girl Friday, which is great!)

The epic scale of this film means it deserves its award - the land rush sequence at the beginning must have looked really impressive to audiences in 1931. And, as we're going to discover as we continue watching, the Academy loves great big sweeping epics with casts of thousands!


Our Verdict:

Sabra and Yancey Cravat - they don't name em like they used to!

We really weren't expecting much from this film. Just looking at all the posters and write ups proclaiming it to be a "sprawling epic" of "frontier spirit" and all that sort of thing really put me off.

Proof that Richard Dix never quite moved on from the Silent Era!

However, there was one thing on the posters that I didn't make a connection with - it is based on a novel by Edna Ferber, who also wrote the source material for Giant (which I love and which is high up on my list of films which were robbed at the Oscars!). It's got a similar basic structure to Giant - following a family and a town/ranch developing through the years. And its got similar main characters - including a strong female lead to match the man of the house! And its not a Western in the conventional sense. There are a couple of (relatively short) shoot outs and an epic land rush at the beginning of the film with hundreds of horses and wagons all over the place. But, other than that, it's a family saga - following the relationship between Sabra and Yancey through several decades and the usual ups and downs.

Ecumenism in a saloon bar (with added shoot out!)

And it's actually really rather good. I liked both the leads. Irene Dunne was great as the mother who is trying to keep her family together while her husband keeps wandering off to get more land. She is the more conservative, the more suspicious, but she is the one who ends up running the family business and getting elected to Congress. And Richard Dix is wonderfully OTT as Yancey, who is a great character. He is idealistic and adventurous and he doesn't appear to have any social hang ups or prejudices. Although some critics talk about the racial stereotyping in the film, we saw it as being quite liberal and forward-thinking for its time. Yancey has nothing but respect for the Native Americans and fights for their rights as citizens of the new state of Oklahoma (I know, there's more to it all than that - but this is a 1932 film commentating on the 1890s. I thought it was impressively liberal). When he calls a church meeting (in the local saloon) he makes it incredibly inclusive - as well as the Native Americans, he notes that a Jewish townsman is also welcome.

Isaiah - tragic hero or merely a racial stereotype?

And then there's Isaiah. He's first seen hanging from the ceiling fanning Sabra's parents as they eat their meal. But he begs Sabra and Yancey to take him with them, and their treatment of him (he's pretty much just a friend to their son and a help around the house) contrasts with that of the family that Sabra leaves behind. Isaiah's tragic demise shows how disposable his race were to people in those times - but the response of his "family" gives him some dignity. So I disagree with the critics here - this was a far more measured portrayal of the times than a lot of later Westerns would show. There were no flags flying at any point in the film (except possibly in the opening scenes) and no glorification of violence or expectation that we would cheer the heroes and boo the baddies. It's just people getting on with things and trying to make the most of what they've got.

All in all, we were both surprised by how much we enjoyed this one. Something I would never have watched without this challenge, but I'm very glad I did!