My Darling Clementine

The most remarkable thing about My Darling Clementine is how unremarkable a film it is, especially considering its stellar reputation. It's little more than a simple genre flick, a western with all the usual ingredients (though a bit low on action and tilting more to the drama side) that simply goes through the motions.

I'm not a fan of westerns, so I didn't get much out of it, not in the least because Ford takes it very slow and spends oodles of time on uninteresting characters and a tepid plot. That did give me some more time to look for other elements that might've set this one apart from its peers, but I found nothing.

Performances are pretty over-the-top, the cinematography is drab (the framing in particular felt very cramped) and the music sounded horrible. At the very end we get a shoot-out, but even that felt basic. I'm sure it's a solid film for fans of the genre, but apart from the US' cultural dominance over the film business I can see no reason why people make such a big deal of this film.