Stephen O'Riordan <[log in to unmask]> says in discussing Tombstone and
Wyatt Earp
    ~Let us not Forget Ford's MY DARLING CLEMENTINE.  The touchstone for
    ~all Earp Films.
 
    This is one of my favorite films and one which I show to classes
frequently, but it is of a different order than the others.  Scenes like
Fonda playing foot tag with the pole, the dance at the church, Doc's
operation on Rio, all tend toward myth.  The facts are unimportant.  Doc
dies at the OK Corral, Wyatt heads off with his brother's body, etc.
    Tombstone seems to me about revenge, and I think that is why it strikes
such a deep chord in the American people.  It has little of the
self-consciousness that Clint Eastwood brings to the topic.  It tends to
seem like the normal reaction to a violation, much like the American mood
when terrorists strike and there is no way to retaliate.  That kind of
energy, the ability to control the world and get revenge in the name of
justice, is a powerful myth and drives the last part of Tombstone in a crowd
pleasing way.
    On the other hand Wyatt Earp goes back to the mythologizing.  Wyatt,
like Ford's Wyatt, is a family man, and the violation happens between the
distorted families.  The Earp family is based on blood and the legalities of
marriage (except for Wyatt), and the other is conceived in greed and power
and passion.  They represent more the gangs in the urban centers than the
classical savagery of the Western.  In Ford's Clementine,  they were the
harbingers of civilization, and if civilization is to survive, the Clanton's
dysfunctional family must be wiped out.  In Earp's world, as by the way in
the real Tombstone, the continuing ambiguities of society--seen in Dances
with Wolves and Unforgiven--make their way so that only the individual is
capable of acting, and thus Wyatt's revenge has no moral quotient.
    I think what disappointed me  is Costner.  He takes a lot of time with
Wyatt, setting up the family, working through the conflicts, giving each of
the family members time  to establish themselves with the audience in their
moral ambiguity.  As such,  it is a  good effort.  But Costner himself is a
limited actor, likeable as in Bull Durham, idealistic as in Dances, but more
like the opaque characters of A Perfect Day and The Bodyguard.  In
Eastwood's hands, he gives a solid performance, but in his own hands, he
seems limited.  If he is going to be an interior actor, he needs to give
gestures and signs of what is going on.  That doesn't happen in WE, and for
that reason, the film comes off without the emotional charge that we expect
in these films.
        Gerald Forshey, Humanities Dept.
        Daley College
        City Colleges of Chicago