I love this movie so much

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Just perfect...

Blistering performances.

The logistics of "Cimarron" are exciting enough. At the time, it ranked second only to "Ben Hur" for the highest number of speaking roles, 368, in M-G-M's history. Its locations in south-eastern Arizona also involved the largest movement of M-G-M equipment and personnel ever undertaken in the United States.Unfortunately, impressive statistics do not in themselves a gripping picture make. This film certainly scores in production values, but falls down badly in entertainment.True, the action scenes are bravely and handsomely staged. But the film is not content merely to reproduce and perhaps go one better than the similar showdowns in the original "Cimarron:. It has attempted to refurbish the basic story in overblown detail. But the story itself was slight to begin with. And, let's face it, its two main characters are not all that colorful. Both Yancey and Sabra are little more than stereotypes. Despite his best efforts, Mr. Ford's charm wears pretty thin over 2¼ hours. As for Miss Schell, she is a long-suffering bore. Surprisingly, the original itself ran 131 minutes. But pacy playing and vigorous direction made short work of it all. In this remake on the other hand, thanks to overwritten dialogue, over-emotive acting from Miss Schell and lethargic direction in its domestic scenes, 136 minutes becomes very tedious sledding indeed.

Cimarron is mostly directed by Anthony Mann and written by Arnold Schulman. It's based on the Edna Ferber novel of the same name and was previously made into a film in 1931. It stars Glenn Ford, Maria Schell, Anne Baxter, Harry Morgan, Russ Tamblyn, Mercedes McCambridge and Lili Darvas. Franz Waxman scores the music and Robert Surtees is the cinematographer. It's a CinemaScope production, filmed in Metrocolor and exterior locations were shot in Arizona.--At high noon April 22, 1889, a section of the last unsettled territories in America was to be given free to the first people who claimed it. They came from the North, they came from the South and they came from across the sea. In just one day an entire territory would be settled. A new state would be born.They called it Oklahoma--With changes from both the novel and the 1931 film, Cimarron 1960 was a big budgeted production. With a huge cast and a running time to match, it was expected to be an epic winner for MGM. It wasn't. For although it has undoubted qualities to please the keen Western fan, it has just too much flab on its belly to let it run free. On the plus side is Surtess location photography and Anthony Mann's ability to stir the blood by way of his action know how. The highlight of the film, and certainly a Western fan's must see sequence, is that of the actual "land-rush" that forms the narrative starting point of the film. A stunning collection of crashes, bangs, death and heartbreak are put together by Mann and the heroes that form the stunt team. Sadly the bar is raised so high so early in the film, it's all down hill from there for expectation and actuality. With the last third of the film laborious in the extreme as an ill equipped Maria Schell attempts to carry the dialogue driven heavy load.The story is a good one, and Schulman's adaptation doesn't want for trying to reach epic horse opera status. But it's just not a fully formed whole, it comes out as a small group of fine scenes slotted into a gargantuan story of no real distinction. How else can you react to having sat thru two hours of film, to get to the big historical oil strike, to find the film petering out into a series of uninteresting conversations? Much of the problem can maybe be put down to problems off screen? Mann was fired towards the end of production, to be replaced by Charles Walters (High Society), while producer Edmund Grainger himself added scenes in an attempt to clarify the relationship between Yancey (Ford) and Sabra Cravat (Schell). The latter of which was without Mann knowing. This probably accounts for why the final third is so dull. The cast are mostly safe, with Charles McGraw and Aline MacMahon standing out in support slots, the latter of which excels during a graveside scene. But Tamblyn is hopelessly miscast and McCambridge and Baxter are, for different reasons, underused. Waxman scores it as more reflective than sweeping, tho the accompaniment for the "land-rush" sequence is boisterous and uplifting, while hats off to the nice costuming by Walter Plunkett; where Baxter, and us the viewers, benefit greatly.The great scenes make it a film for Western fans to seek out. But in the context of two of the genre's heroes in Ford and Mann, it's one to easily forget about. 5.5/10

I saw this film recently for the first time. I could see the parallels to Ferber's other very famous work, Showboat, which likewise sweeps an epic camera across decades of development in American history. But what really struck me was reading the commentaries by other viewers. Some went to great lengths to summarize Anthony Mann and his directorial career. But despite the numerous titles of his other films which were listed and judged not a single commentator mentioned what just might be his greatest film of all, Devil's Doorway (1950) starring Robert Taylor as a dispossessed native American and war hero. Please go to that movie's IMDb website and read my and others' very admiring reviews of this classic film. I saw Mann's commenting in Cimarron too about race prejudice and legal chicanery and couldn't help but be struck by those echoes of his 1950 masterpiece.

I've always liked the 1960 remake of the RKO classic Cimarron and have never understood why it gets panned by so many people the way it does. Director Anthony Mann who got fired towards the end of the film's production did a very good job with both the cast and the spectacle. The Oklahoma land rush scene was as thrillingly done as it was in the 1931 version.In fact truth be told, Glenn Ford did a better job as frontier renaissance man Yancey Cravat. Richard Dix though nominated for Best Actor in 1931 never did quite master the art of sound film and his star progressively sank lower and lower in Hollywood. Glenn is a strong heroic figure cursed with the fatal flaw of wanderlust.Truth also be told is that many different accents made up the western pioneer population. Maria Schell's German accent is most assuredly not out of place here and she holds her own with Irene Dunne's portrayal of Sabra Cravat.All the characters present in Edna Ferber's saga of the transforming of Oklahoma from territory to state made it from the first film. All of them meet during the Oklahoma land rush and while Glenn and Maria are the leads, the story of the film is what happens to all of them.One character is expanded considerably from the 1931 film. Edna May Oliver was Mrs. Wyatt who was a pioneer woman whose husband we never did meet. Here Mrs. Wyatt is played by Mercedes McCambridge who is married to Arthur O'Connell who is very important to the story. They're this hardscrabble share cropper family who get a real scrubby piece of land at the beginning of the land rush, mainly because O'Connell falls off the stagecoach right at the beginning of the land rush and Mercedes runs across the starting line and she claims the land right at the line.It turns out the land has oil and these people become the proverbial beggars on horseback. McCambridge remains unchanged by their sudden wealth, O'Connell is very much like that other nouveau rich oil millionaire that Edna Ferber created, Jett Rink. From people who the Cravats lent a hand to back in the day, O'Connell at least becomes an opponent.One character that was eliminated thank the Deity was the black kid Isiaih who hero worshiped Richard Dix in the 1931 version. In 1960 that kind of racial stereotype would not have been tolerated.The cast includes also such fine people as Anne Baxter, Edgar Buchanan, Russ Tamblyn, Vic Morrow, Aline McMahon, Robert Keith, Charles McGraw, all ably filling out parts from the original version. The land rush scene is every bit as good as the first time around.I'm at a loss as to why this film was panned the way it was. It's a very good western and fans of the genre will appreciate it.