Cimarron is a western that starts out with a bunch of stampeding hooligans and ends in the 1930's. It is a warped little western that captured Oscar's top prize at a time when the Academy didn't stop to think about who they were handing out statues to.
IF you were to say that Cimarron was the worst Best Picture of them all, I would tend to agree with you. Cimarron is an incredibly racist piece of clap-trap, laughable and a mediocre film at best.
The film starts out with a bang, showcasing the famous (infamous?) Oklahoma land rush of 1889, with chuck wagons blazing and horses flying.
But as we get into the picture, the focus come off of our hero Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix), the founder of Osage, Oklahoma, and is placed onto his wife, Sabra Cravat (Irene Dunne). Whereas Dix steals each scene with his comic relief, Dunne makes the scenes he is not in a yawn fest. The movie basically tells the story of Sabra and how she ran a newspaper, became a congresswoman and went from Prairie Housewife to stalwart iron-woman.
Neither Dix nor Dunne deserved their nominations; the supporting characters are terrible, the visual effects are laughable and the score is hardly memorable at all. The cinematography and the opening land rush scene are probably what won this picture the Oscar, and I wouldn't blame you if you stopped the film after the land grab and popped in something better.
Movies it was nominated with for Best Picture:
East Lynne, The Front Page, Skippy, Trader Horn
Is the movie worth your time to watch?
4/10 11-01-07
