Cimarron** (1931)

The fourth film to win Best Picture and the first of only three westerns to do so, Cimarron is a tale of how the West was tamed. It features big action sequences, a vast landscape, and tackles complicated moral and social issues of the Old West. What it doesn’t have is staying power. Here is a film that, while immensely popular initially, has not aged well one bit.

Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) is a Western man’s man. He feels the call of the wild and untamed wilderness and seeks to conquer it. Several years after settling the Kansas Territory, Yancey grows restless for a new challenge. When the US government opens up the Oklahoma Territory for settlement, Yancey forces his wife and son to join him as they once again try to make a home and successful enterprise out of new and dangerous land.

I can see how the need for escapist cinema made this film popular in the 1930s. That time period wasn’t too far removed from the Land Rush of 1893 depicted in the film. Perhaps at the beginning of the Depression there was still an urge to go West and make something of yourself. That mindset no longer exists today, however, and this is only one of many generation gaps that sabotage this film.

Yancey Cravat is the kind of hyper-masculine hero that only exists in fables anymore. Why? Because society now (rightfully) expects men to take responsibility for their actions. There are several references to a wild past, suggesting Yancey might, at one time in his youth, have been something of a rebel and not on the side of the law. He’s a crack-shot who is respected among some of the more notable hustlers and thieves of the region. Perhaps the trade-off for conquering a woman was settling down. It seems Yancey did so on his own terms in Kansas, because when he mentions the Oklahoma Land Rush to his wife, she seems to know exactly what it will entail.

Is Yancey arrogant and selfish for putting his own desire for adventure above the safety and security of his family? The current answer is yes. Back in the day, people might have sided with Yancey. His argument is that they could live their already comfortable lives in Kansas or make an even better life for themselves in Oklahoma, where there is no established bureaucracy to work around. Naturally, once they make something of themselves in Oklahoma, Yancey gets antsy for something else to conquer. It’s this farsightedness that makes it hard to like Yancey.

When you don’t completely support your main character (or in the case of a villain, completely hate), it’s hard to stay interested in a film. The glory days of wandering testosterone are long in the past and fail to resonate with modern sensibilities. Does this make Cimarron a bad film? No, but it makes it darn hard to watch.

Cimarron mostly scores well with me for technical reasons. The Land Rush sequence is epic in scope, featuring hundreds of carriages and covered wagons racing across the open plains. The rising city of Osage is impressive because everything looks authentic and it is interesting to see how the façade of the town changes over the film’s 40-year time span. That kind of attention to detail is worth noting.

Unfortunately, technical achievements will only carry you so far. The stereotypical portrayals of American Indians, Jewish peddlers and black servants are kept mostly in the background but they are noticeable. This is all added on top of the fact that only half of our lead couple has a firm grasp on what really matters in life. The end result is one those early Oscar winners that you just can’t quite put in the proper context. It’s a shame that some of the earliest Best Picture winners have been all but forgotten about. The same cannot be said about Cimarron.

RATING: 3.25 out of 5

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

After four solid or better films, Walt Disney and his master craftsmen go out of the 50s with a bang. The combination of a classic fairy tale, gorgeous animation and a tremendous classical score, is it any wonder that Sleeping Beauty is perched high among the best of the studio’s work? Not only is this film one of my personal favorites from the Disney Vault, but it has all the credibility to back up the millions of fans who adore this picture.

A kingdom rejoices at the birth of a daughter for their King Stefan and Queen Leah. Everybody turns out to bestow a blessing upon the dear child- a neighboring king, dignitaries and magical fairies. The joy comes to an abrupt halt when an evil sorceress named Maleficent crashes the party. She places a curse upon the child, dooming her to die on her sixteenth birthday. After Maleficent disappears in supposed triumph, a good fairy does her best to counter the witch’s curse. In an extra effort to protect the child, three fairies take the girl away to raise her in the woods until her ill-fated birthday has passed.

On Princess Aurora’s sixteenth birthday, the fairies’ plan begins to unravel. The truth of her royal standing is hard for the beautiful girl to take, especially after falling in love with a handsome man in the forest earlier that day. To make matters worse, Maleficent has discovered the fairies’ hiding place and swoops in on them to execute her murderous plans. It’s up to the fairies and the handsome man from the forest (a prince, no less!) to save Aurora and restore happiness to the kingdom.

Can Disney do fairy tales or what? These classic tales of beautiful damsels in distress under the oppressive hand of witches and evil step-mothers allow Disney to pull out all the animation stops to create worlds as vivid and beautiful as the ones that exist within our minds. This time around, the Disney team takes an unexpected turn with their work. Many of the backgrounds replicate the look and feel of Middle Ages artworks. Trees and flags are tall and slender, there is a strong emphasis on vertical lines, and the detail is rich and all of it remains in focus.

The richness of many of the backgrounds makes it hard for the foreground to compete, leading the characters to have a flatter look than in previous films. This has been an ongoing trend for Disney productions throughout the 50s. The drive to cut costs hasn’t sacrificed too much quality yet though.

Disney’s obsession with this project comes out best with the music. Instead of risking comparisons to Cinderella by flooding the film with catchy tunes, Sleeping Beauty is built around a pre-existing score. Piotr Tchaikovsky’s gorgeous ballet composition sets the pace and tone of the film. I don’t if know the music used in this film was used at similar moments in the ballet but it matches the action and mood perfectly.

It is clear to see where Disney takes creative liberties with story elements and character personalities. Purists may complain but half the fun of watching the Disney version of a classic fairy tale is to see what little twists are put in. Sleeping Beauty makes bold steps forward while also remembering the classic films that came before it. Just like Snow White and Cinderella, Princess Aurora is friends with all the animals she meets. There is also a clever reference to Fantasia when the fairies are cleaning their cottage.

While the flat animation may not bother most (heck, many won’t even really notice it), it does hold Sleeping Beauty back a hair for me. With the art direction and the music, this film could have topped Cinderella. Instead, they are merely equals for vastly different reasons. Solid story plus Disney’s ingenuity equals a spectacular treat every time. This film marks the end of an era for Disney. Their second classical era closes out with a triumph that makes you yearn for the ‘good old days’ with every film released since.

RATING: 4 out of 5

Raising Arizona (1987)

If ever you wondered what inspired movie and TV show writers to cram endless amounts of intellectualism into characters of decidedly average means and intellect, this absurdist comedy is almost certainly on each and every list. I am sure that there have been numerous witty films using the same character-dialogue pairing as Raising Arizona. Given how near-sighted much of the film and television industries have been recently when looking for inspiration, however, the popularity of this early Coen Brothers film makes it an easy target for imitation.

Herbert “Hi” McDunnough (Nicolas Cage) is a petty thief who speaks like a literature and linguistics professor. Every time he is arrested for robbing convenience stores, he flirts with the same policewoman (Holly Hunter). Over the course of several arrests, he learns that she is newly single after a painful breakup with her fiancé. Upon his latest release from prison, he proposes to his beloved Ed (short for Edwina) and the two marry and settle down in a trailer in the middle of the Arizona landscape.

The pair is desperate to have children but they learn that Ed is infertile. Given Hi’s criminal history, adoption is also out of the question. After seeing a story about a local business tycoon and his wife celebrating the birth of quintuplets, Hi and Ed plot to kidnap one of the youngin’s under the logic that these people have more kids than they need or can manage. Keeping and caring for the child prove to be a challenge as Hi and Ed are beset by the police, a demented bounty hunter, and two of Hi’s bumbling prison pals who just escaped and are looking to make a quick buck with the reward money.

The nice thing about Raising Arizona is that it never plays out under false pretenses. From the very beginning, the characters’ behavior and the writing makes it clear in no certain terms that this film is not to be taken seriously. The trouble with this approach is that it doesn’t guarantee that some viewers won't try to take it seriously anyway. On the flip-side, this absurdist nature of this film’s comedy doesn’t allow for audiences to turn off their brains and chuckle it up for an hour and a half. You do get to turn off a great portion of your brain while taking it all in, but you also need to turn on a very small, specific part of the brain that doesn’t get used often enough.

Nicolas Cage espouses his lines with a dreamy, gentlemanly swagger. His prison pals speak in a similar manner but are nowhere near as eloquent as Hi. Ed, on the other hand, speaks a more normal language. She gets her moments of wordy glory but her common tongue and her spitfire personality plays well against Hi’s drifter-esque mentality. It’s the collision of these attitudes, speech styles and behavior that generate most of the laughs.

Some will find the wordplay over the top and unnecessary. But I ask you, what would this film have going for it otherwise? It would just be a kidnapper comedy with outlandish characters that don’t make sense. If nothing else, the Coen’s verbose script acts as a gateway to accepting the rest of the film. If you can gel with the script, all the gags and situational humor will be easy to digest. If you can’t get past the dialogue, you’re less likely to swallow everything else.

Much of the physical comedy is recycled from nearly a century of cinema silliness. The execution of these gags is always where comedy films rise and fall. Raising Arizona makes them work. The corny, pseudo-intellectual dialogue butters you up enough that everything else in this film is funny by default. The Coen Brothers know their broad target audience will already be having fun with the film and they continually go for broke with what moviegoers typically expect from a comedy.

Is it perfect? No, but you’ll most likely laugh your way through any logical flaws (if you really are determined enough to apply logic here) and other minor mistakes. That is the sign of a classic comedy that will be appreciated by generations to come. Raising Arizona is a fine blend of blue-collar and elitism, the likes of which may be imitated for years to come but never successfully replicated.

RATING: 4 out of 5