A myth more than a legend
Added 9/10/2009
It's funny to see a standard cow-boy western film of the generation before the spaghetti western. OK Coral is just that. It is good and bad at the same time. Good because it builds a simple plot with land conflicts, security problems, male domination in number and then male aggressiveness to compensate that lack of women, when it is not to conquer or impress the few women there. Then you have the gamblers and the drinking and of course the saloon, the hotel and the Sheriff's office with its jail. Great variation here: the sheriff is a marshal but that changes nothing. The Indians are no longer an option and the Mexicans neither. It is only the description of a white social unit relatively isolated from the civilized world hence on the frontier and the conflicts you can find there. So it is after the Indian wars, or just ignorant of them, and definitely after the war with Mexico. This film is a perfect example of this genre and it avoids the train, though there is a railroad, bank robbing and other standard western problems. That's why this film still has a value: it really shows what social life was then and there in Texas, and what the relations between the people in that community could be, with their conflicts and their sentimental episodes. A rough life anyway. And this very positive point is the negative side of the film too because today we cannot watch this film which probably was considered as a very good example of the genre at the time the same way as then because Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone and Clint Eastwood have come along and transformed the genre. If we forget about this comparative side of things, we can appreciate the film as a well built and well conducted little plot showing human nature is so brittle, so superficial at times, so little civilized and yet so human and always captured through the mind. The mind that distorting mirror by excellence.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
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GREAT WESTERN
Added 8/23/2009
IT MAY NOT HAVE THE BLOOD AND GORE OF TODAYS WESTERNS, BUT SEEING BURT AND KIRK IN ANY FILM TOGETHER IS A CLASSIC. THE MUSIC ALONE IS WORTH THE PRICE.
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Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Added 8/13/2009
One of history mysteries is the friendship of Wyatt Earp and John Holiday. This movie explores that friendship.
What compelled these two men to form a bond is the stuff of legends. The lawman and the gambler came from different worlds.
Wyatt Earp had a dream for the future-a wife, a ranch and a peaceful existence. Doc Holiday had no future except a degenerating death from tuberculosis and an early grave.
The movie touches on various historical events in Dodge City and Tombstone. A great share of the film is Hollywood revisionist history of the two men and actual events.
Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas do an outstanding job. When you toss into the mix,the beautiful Rhonda Fleming, the charm of Jo Van Fleet, the talented John Ireland, the always convincing Deforest Kelley, and the young talents of Earl Holliman, Dennis Hopper, Martin Milner and Lee Van Cleef, you have one great 50's western with Dimitri Tiomkin's score and Frankie Laine singing the haunting ballad throughout the movie.
The screenplay by Leon Uris and John Sturges' direction give life to these two men and to the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral. Of course, the gunfight is not historical like it is in The Hour of the Gun, Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, but it is a well crafted gun battle!
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Squad Tactics
Added 4/28/2009
Sturges makes an interesting choice staging the actual gunfight. Historically it was much more of shootout then here portrayed. In this version the Clantons try to create an ambush by concealing rifle in the wagon. The Earps and Holliday respond tactically as if they were WWII grunts, providing supporting fire to suppress the ambush and allow others to advance.
Okay so it goes wrong and Wyatt has to rescue his brother. It also goes right because they successfully defuse the ambush
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Listen. I get it. You can't compare a movie made in 1957 to a movie like Tombstone. That being said. This flick wasn't even accurate, at all. Wyatt Earp with no mustache? In every picture or tale of this man, he has that big a** mustache. 5 min fight at the O.K. Corrall? It lasted 30 seconds in reality and the list goes on.
The sets, bad. Pacing? Yawn! And Kirk Douglas as Doc? Not horrible but reality is, this was good when we didn't know better.
Get TOMBSTONE! Next to THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, it's the best western ever made. Kurt Russell as Wyatt and Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday (he should have gotten an Academy Award} that's the story you wanna see.
Pass on this.
0 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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A myth more than a legend
Added 9/10/2009
It's funny to see a standard cow-boy western film of the generation before the spaghetti western. OK Coral is just that. It is good and bad at the same time. Good because it builds a simple plot with land conflicts, security problems, male domination in number and then male aggressiveness to compensate that lack of women, when it is not to conquer or impress the few women there. Then you have the gamblers and the drinking and of course the saloon, the hotel and the Sheriff's office with its jail. Great variation here: the sheriff is a marshal but that changes nothing. The Indians are no longer an option and the Mexicans neither. It is only the description of a white social unit relatively isolated from the civilized world hence on the frontier and the conflicts you can find there. So it is after the Indian wars, or just ignorant of them, and definitely after the war with Mexico. This film is a perfect example of this genre and it avoids the train, though there is a railroad, bank robbing and other standard western problems. That's why this film still has a value: it really shows what social life was then and there in Texas, and what the relations between the people in that community could be, with their conflicts and their sentimental episodes. A rough life anyway. And this very positive point is the negative side of the film too because today we cannot watch this film which probably was considered as a very good example of the genre at the time the same way as then because Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone and Clint Eastwood have come along and transformed the genre. If we forget about this comparative side of things, we can appreciate the film as a well built and well conducted little plot showing human nature is so brittle, so superficial at times, so little civilized and yet so human and always captured through the mind. The mind that distorting mirror by excellence.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
GREAT WESTERN
Added 8/23/2009
IT MAY NOT HAVE THE BLOOD AND GORE OF TODAYS WESTERNS, BUT SEEING BURT AND KIRK IN ANY FILM TOGETHER IS A CLASSIC. THE MUSIC ALONE IS WORTH THE PRICE.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Added 8/13/2009
One of history mysteries is the friendship of Wyatt Earp and John Holiday. This movie explores that friendship.
What compelled these two men to form a bond is the stuff of legends. The lawman and the gambler came from different worlds.
Wyatt Earp had a dream for the future-a wife, a ranch and a peaceful existence. Doc Holiday had no future except a degenerating death from tuberculosis and an early grave.
The movie touches on various historical events in Dodge City and Tombstone. A great share of the film is Hollywood revisionist history of the two men and actual events.
Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas do an outstanding job. When you toss into the mix,the beautiful Rhonda Fleming, the charm of Jo Van Fleet, the talented John Ireland, the always convincing Deforest Kelley, and the young talents of Earl Holliman, Dennis Hopper, Martin Milner and Lee Van Cleef, you have one great 50's western with Dimitri Tiomkin's score and Frankie Laine singing the haunting ballad throughout the movie.
The screenplay by Leon Uris and John Sturges' direction give life to these two men and to the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral. Of course, the gunfight is not historical like it is in The Hour of the Gun, Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, but it is a well crafted gun battle!
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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