'Cimarron,' the Fourth Best Picture, Is All but Unwatchable

Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts examining the movies that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Cimarron is a 1931 production from RKO Radio Pictures, directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Richard Dix, Irene Dunne, and Estelle Taylor. It was written by Howard Estabrook and based on a 1930 novel of the same name. In addition to Best Picture, it also took home awards for writing and art direction. It still holds a few notable mentions in Oscar history: it was the first movie to get more than six nominations, and it is one of only two to get nominated in every category. (There were only 7 at the time, so it was just slightly easier to do back then.)

It was also the first movie to be nominated in what would come to be called the Big Five: picture, director, actor, actress, and writing. It’s also one of only two Best Picture winners for storied studio RKO. It was the first, and one of very few, westerns to win Best Picture – the genre, once a staple of Hollywood, would not win again for nearly 60 years until 1990’s Dances With Wolves.

The movie spans 40 years, from the start of the Oklahoma land rush in 1889 through 1929. The story follows Yancy Cravat (Dix), a tough man whom everyone seems to magically know, as he participates in the land rush. After being thwarted in claiming a prime piece of real estate by a prostitute (Taylor), he brings his young wife Sabra (Dunne) and their young son to the boom town on Osage, where he establishes a local newspaper and becomes a leading citizen of the town.

The depiction of the land rush that opens the movie is indeed impressive. The studio used 40 cameras and shot with more than 5,000 costumed extras. The movie, the most expensive production by RKO to that point, required the purchase of 89 acres of land so the huge set of the town of Osage could be built. The set would become the nucleus of RKO’s famed movie ranch.

In attempting to cover such a huge time frame, the movie skips forward semifrequently and often decides to tell, not show. What should have been major events in the family’s lives are glossed over in title cards, from the birth of daughter Donna about a third of the way into the movie to the election of Sabra to the U.S. Congress near its end.

There’s also the problem that the movie’s main character, Yancy, is wholly unlikable. He is portrayed as a success and a hero in everything he does. He’s the main attorney in town. The newspaper editor. Savior of the town when a gang of outlaws, led by a former friend (because of course he also knows everyone), come in and shoot up the place. (It’s never mentioned where the town’s law enforcement is at the time.)

Despite this, he frequently gives in to his wanderlust. When President Cleveland opens up still more of Oklahoma for white settlement, Yancy begs Sabra to go with him to the new land rush. She refuses, so he simply leaves her and his children behind. That he was planning to leave right then – he literally brings it up with her, argues with her about it, and then rides off with his buddies in the matter of a few minutes – makes it so much worse.

And what does Sabra do? We don’t know, really, because, wait for it… a title card simply tells us that 5 years have passed without a word from him. He finally comes riding back and of course is quickly welcomed home by his devoted wife, who has kept the newspaper running, with his name still on the masthead.

Immediately upon returning, though, he learns that the poor prostitute who stole his initial land claim has been arrested and is set to be tried and presumably convicted that very afternoon. Despite Sabra’s objection – not once in the movie does Yancy ever show her even the slightest respect – he rushes off to defend the other woman. Why? Not because he’s having an affair but because it’s simply the Right Thing To Do. Yup. He has no morals at all about leaving his family for years, but the horrible injustice being done to the other woman (who only appears, by the way, when the plot needs to show people being bad to her, and who never appears again after this scene) is a hill he’s willing to die on.

The scattered, disorganized storytelling and 1930’s overacting (the Academy should have considered nominating Dix’s hair for a Supporting Acting award for the court scene alone) aren’t what make the movie so difficult to watch today. That honor ultimately goes to the movie’s portrayal of basically everyone who isn’t a white man.

For the first half of the movie, the Cravats have a young African American boy living with them who just kind of shows up during the land rush. He’s shown doing menial chores, getting excited upon sighting a huge pile of watermelons (yes, really), and then getting unceremoniously shot and killed. Yancy has a brief moment to mourn him before he’s never mentioned again.

The Native American characters are treated slightly better throughout. There’s actually a subplot about Sabra’s racism toward them – contrasted with Yancy’s very pro-Native outlook – and her dealing with her son’s marriage to a young Cherokee woman. But as with everything else in the movie, it’s basically glossed over. At one point, Sabra says she’ll disown the boy for carrying on his relationship, and then the next time we see them together mother has fully accepted daughter-in-law into the family.

But racism isn’t the movie’s only problem. The women are treated as little more than window dressing throughout. They are either literal whores, dutiful housewives who stick with their absentee husbands, or petty gossips. Toward the end of the movie, it becomes clear that the real hero of the story should have been Sabra. She has the interesting story, is raising her children alone, is running the business her husband started, is dealing with her prejudices, and eventually runs for Congress. But telling that story wouldn’t have allowed the studio to have this be a western about the dashing hero in the white hat, so Sabra is relegated to the background, her story told mostly through those damnable title cards.

Its epic production wowed critics at the time, but the years have not been kind to it – today, it has a 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, making it the third-lowest scored Best Picture winner on the ratings site. And I think that rating is very well deserved. I knew going into this project that I would have to sit through some pretty awful movies. Having two of the first four fall into that category makes me start to question the wisdom of this path I’ve chosen. But I will press on.