My Darling Clementine - "A Chihuahua or a Clementine"

My Darling Clementine (1946)

K: We first see Tombstone at night - it's loud, it's dark and the camera is really only on people. You're stuck in the barbershop or the bar. The movie goes from inside one building to inside another building until the end. The town is only exposed when the killers are exposed, right before the shootout. At that point, it's the opposite of how we see it at first. This time it's day, the town is empty, we see the streets. Is this symbolic of the way Wyatt Earp changed the town? Does he improve Tombstone? People were trying to build a church before he got there and Earp admits that the people of the town aren't bad.

H: We do see the worst side of Tombstone before we see the better. The Clanton family tells Earp and his brothers what a nice spot Tombstone is and when they get there a Native American is shooting at people, prostitutes are running around the town, and a man can't get a decent shave without being interrupted by said gunfire.

Later we see that there is a thriving community who likes to dance, they enjoy theater and Shakespeare, and they want to have a school. None of these "good" things about the town are introduced by Earp, but does his presence make it easier for the town to do "good" things, particularly when he rids the town of the Clantons. That's when they get the school going, after all.

K: Earp's way of policing isn't passive but appears passive. When the town wants to put the absent actor on a post and parade him around town, Earp originally supports the idea but soon comes up with a better one that the town agrees to. It was just a matter of finding the right kind of sheriff for Tombstone. He's like a cool older brother (which he actually was).

H: When Earp leaves at the end, should we be afraid that Tombstone will fall back into lawlessness? Does he ever solve any of the longstanding problems of the town that aren't also part of his personal mission to catch the cattle rustlers and the murderers of his brother(s)?

K: It won't fall back into lawlessness because there are men that will stand up for the law. There were men that agreed to help Earp in the shootout at the corral. Men like Earp do exist in Tombstone to keep it safe.

H: Does Earp change Doc Holiday? Early on Doc Holiday presents himself as opposed to Earp, siding with the criminal element in the town. Later, they ally against the Clantons.

K: Doc Holiday is the kind of character that's doomed. He meets his potential as a surgeon, but ultimately his patient dies and he's sick anyway, so there's this black cloud looming over him the whole time. I don't know if it's a change or a realization that his death could mean something. So he goes out to kill the Clantons and gets shot.

H: There's hope for Doc Holiday when we see him pleased with his surgical work on Chihuahua. He doesn't seem to despise himself so much. But then, as you say, Chihuahua dies, sealing his fate too. So Doc Holiday is the almost noirish law-skirting good guy and represents perhaps the duality of the west - he has the skills and background of a well-to-do easterner, but the lawless sense of adventure of the west. What do the Clantons represent?

K: Evil. How many brothers were there? Four evils and a dad evil. They represent the west untamed.

H: But aren't they "tamed" at the end? Earp is the civilizing force and shows us how the west was settled. Holiday and Earp are from further east, whereas the Clantons are probably first generation Westerners. Why is the movie called "My Darling Clementine"? Shouldn't it be called Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)?

K: Clementine is the one link between Earp and true, pre-crime Holiday. Holiday loved her and Earp takes a shinin' to her. Plus she's good looking.

H: Clementine is the opposite of Chihuahua...

K: ..that's why it's not called "My Darling Chihuahua".

H: As I was saying, Clementine is a white, proper girl from the east and Chihuahua is the stereotype of a western woman - she's a native, she's power-seeking, and opportunistic. Why doesn't Doc Holiday love Clementine anymore?

K: Rejecting Clementine is him finally ending his old life. We're led to believe that he ran away from that life, and when it caught up with him, he had to face it. He left his old life because he obviously didn't believe in himself as a doctor and he was sick.

H: So why'd he go for Chihuahua? Cheap thrills? Or did the things about Chihuahua that differentiated her from Clementine help him embrace his new life in the west? This movie seems to idolize women like Clementine for their supposed moral superiority and demonize the native or the ambitious woman. I'm thinking about Ms. Ramirez in High Noon (1952). She's Mexican and owns her own business, yet we're supposed to idolize the trivial fiancee of the Marshall Kane, Gary Cooper's character. We can see complexity develop in the western in the time between these movies through these two characters, but we aren't to the point where Ramirez is the one to be admired, the one with virtues.

If you look at the portrayal of Native Americans in this film, it sticks pretty heavily with the notion that Native Americans are troublemakers who can't handle their liquor. As westerns progress, we can see in John Ford's later movies The Searchers (1956) and especially Cheyenne Autumn (1964) a more complex portrayal of Native Americans and eventually we see that Native Americans are the victims of western expansion, rather the whites pushing west.

K: Those are all good points, Henry.

If Earp is so moral, why does he insist on revenge?

H: When he first reached Tombstone, he saw a lot of lawlessness and that didn't drive him to accepting the tin star. He was driven to action by his brother's murder and he quit the position of sheriff once he took care of the Clantons. So, law and order are only important to him when he's got something personal at stake.

John Ford's westerns and westerns in general are known for the expansive shots of the "west". It shows us that man is small in the face of what seems to be an endless expanse.

K: And our role in the world is either a Chihuahua or a Clementine. Or I guess an Earp or a Holiday.