My Darling Clementine

Thank goodness for Film Forum; where else in this day of the DVD can one see films as they were meant to be seen, on the large screen in pristine prints?  MoMA , the Lincoln Center Film Society and BAM do show some good films, but their schedules of mostly evening showings are not always compatible with taking care of children.  In any case, thank you Film Forum for bringing us a beautifully restored print of John Ford's My Darling Clementine.  One sometimes has a tendency to dismiss this film because of Ford's comment that it was mainly for children.  And it is considerably less ambivalent about character than most of Ford's glorious Westerns and yes, the women are the Madonna and the Whore.  But it does help to compare it to Allan Dwan's Frontier Marshall (1939) of which this is something of a remake.   Dwan's film is good, workmanlike prose; Ford's film is poetry -- the poetry of the landscape (beautifully shot by Joseph MacDonald); of human movement, especially of Henry Fonda, as he balances on his chair, as he walks slowly with Clementine to the church while "Shall We Gather at the River" plays, as he dances (there's always a dance in Ford's films); and the good and bad poetry of civilization, where the scent of after-shave is beginning to replace that of the desert flower and order is replacing anarchy.