Cimarron, it's Latin for really long, melodramatic and overacted

7/31/13, Cimarron, Outstanding Production, Best Writing - Adaptation, Best Art Direction, 1931

This entry could have been titled 'Cimarron the movie that derailed my NetFlix queue'. You would hope that a movie that sits on your television for over a month would be outstanding and that you would be smacking your head wondering what the hell took you so long.....Well, I also hope the Browns win the Super Bowl before I die....I live in hope, and it was not fulfilled by this movie. It was not horrible, I mean, I have watched horrible movies, but it did not quite energize me or excite me.

Cimarron starts with the Oklahoma land rush in 1889 and Yancy Cravat (St. Paul, MN native Richard Dix) trying to stake a claim. Yancy is quite the Renaissance man - a lawyer, a journalist, an adventurer, and full of wanderlust. The movie covers forty years of life in Osage, Oklahoma, with Yancy, his wife, Sabra (Irene Dunne), their children and the growth of a pioneer town into a bustling metropolis. Yancy kind of comes and goes as the spirit moves him, while Sabra keeps the home fires burning and their paper running. The movie won for Best Production (now called Best Picture) and I just don't know about that, it may have been because the scope was so sprawling and all-encompassing, or the other films weren't quite up to the same level, but perhaps they should have skipped it this year.

So, for all the snarkiness above, the movie was interesting to me in a few different ways. I think the period they were trying to cover was very interesting, and I don't think quite covered this way in other movies (the mini-series Centennial from the late 1970s/early 1980s covers a two hundred year period in Colorado's history and it's one of my favorites). Some of the portrayals verge on mocking stereotypes, particularly the black 'servant' (I use quotes because slavery was abolished, but he seemed to act like one), Isaiah which was actually kind of hard and embarrassing to watch. I'm not asking for political correctness from a movie made in 1931 covering a time period 50 years earlier, but it was just uncomfortable. The concept of such a strong (albeit sometimes disagreeable) woman, in Sabra Cravat was very interesting. The movie sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly deals with the conflict that the settlers had with the Indians, not so much with fighting, but with the racism and treatment of them; in fact Sabra has a few incredible rants against them. Yancy, when he is around, probably is the ideal of the Progressive Party from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and is frequently quoting from the Bible, especially when dealing with racism and defending those weaker than himself. I have to say, if my significant other came and went the way Yancy did, that door would not be open to him again (at one time he left for 5 years to go fight in the Spanish-American War). The movie was based on the book by Edna Ferber. I don't plan on reading that, but if you do, please let me know how it goes for you.