This must have been one of the first Westerns I ever saw, and I was completely bowled over -- not so much by the story as by the tight-knit web of loyalties and obligations that run through the film. Watching it again after a lapse of years and four or five other pictures on the same subject, that knife-edge tension is inevitably spoilt to some degree by foreknowledge: yes, hero and antihero will successfully team up, and Doc Holliday will rise from his deathbed. And I'm more aware of the Western clichés, for example the way that Holliday is repeatedly used to preserve Wyatt's lily-white hero status by stepping in to do the actual shooting; alas, I'll never recapture quite that state of adolescent innocence again.
But if the overall outcome is no longer up for grabs, individual scenes can still despite all logic mesmerise. My adult self knows perfectly well that Wyatt must survive until the end of the film... but watches with bated breath as he faces down an armed drunk by sheer force of will. As for Holliday's tormented relationship with Kate, crippled by mutual self-loathing, almost every scene is a nail-biter as you ache for these two lost souls to stop hurting one another and find some comfort in their shared dependence.
The Holliday role is inevitably the scene-stealer in any version of this story; as the antihero he gets all the best lines. And while the Earps, as lawmen, have to do the right thing (or, at least, are supposed to), for Holliday it remains a matter of active and thus significant choice at every turning. Some of the most agonizing tension in the film comes in the scene where, having given his word 'as a gentleman' not to betray Wyatt's trust by engaging in extra-curricular killing, he is challenged to fight in a matter of personal pride: two codes and two loyalties conflict, with Doc's 'better self' caught hopelessly between them. Does he have the strength of character -- the surviving shred of honour -- to hold out in the face of mounting humiliation? Can he bear to hold to his word at the cost of his reputation?
Ironically, when Wyatt faces the same choice -- between the 'personal' and the 'important' -- he comprehensively fails it: he has to, of course, or there wouldn't be any point to the film's title, but it gives an oddly downbeat note to the final confrontation. By going out hand to hand against the Clantons in revenge for his brother's death, by abandoning the law in a quest for personal vengeance, he is effectively betraying everything he formerly stood for, and he knows it. Again and again we've seen him refuse to escalate under provocation: this time he allows himself to be pulled in. And when the final shot has sounded, his lawman's badge goes spinning down into the silence -- his self-righteous, self-confident days are done.
Most versions of the OK Corral story start with Wyatt & Co riding into Tombstone and planning to hang up their guns for a prosperous civilian life: given its take on the theme, this one chooses to establish its version of the character and of the law on active duty, via a succession of little frontier towns introduced by a sombre common thread -- Boot Hill. While the rapid turnover of locales never becomes confusing, it provides a sense of the way Holliday keeps wearing out his welcome; it also serves to introduce the other side of the lawman's coin, the aging, weakened sheriff Cotton Wilson.
Our first sight of him is through Wyatt's eyes in the character of a respected veteran, and the gap between that perception and the bar-room murmurs of a 'corrupt sheriff' is so wide as to make it hard to draw the connection; but it gradually becomes clear, to Wyatt and to the viewer alike, that Wilson truly has reached "the end of the line" and given up. All he wants any longer is the easy life: he has no real stomach for crime, but he no longer has the moral fibre to stand up in the face of men like Ike Clanton. He is the spectre of Wyatt's future: "a twenty-dollar a week pension... if you live to collect it". It is easy to preach while you still have your strength, and Wyatt has little time or pity for him. But the warning is there from the start.
The script is tautly set up, establishing important characters and information (brother Morgan and the Clanton ranch near Tombstone; Holliday's knife-throwing tendencies) ahead of time, and without obvious effort. The main exception is in the character of Laura Denbow, who makes an assertive entrance only to dwindle into a rather soppy romantic interest and then vanish out of the plot altogether. Her final ultimatum to Wyatt is used to point up the theme that the law will ultimately consume his life to no return, but the character is ill-served overall, creating the sneaking feeling that she is only present to provide some obligatory love-scenes of a wholesome nature. (And given his forthright distaste for Holliday's lifestyle, Wyatt seems remarkably ready to ally with a woman who makes a living at late-night poker!)
In the end, however, this is not the story of one man's journey from badge-holder to disillusioned civilian; despite its title, it's not even the story of the gunfight at the OK Corral. The film's story is that of a strange alliance of obligation and opposites, of self-destruction and dour conviction, and improbable liking and odd loyalty: of unlikely and all-but-unspoken friendship. Of the unforeseen path that brought Doc Holliday -- gambler, killer and long-since-fallen gentleman -- onto the same side as Wyatt Earp.
Its impact lies in that it makes this fragile outcome matter.
But if the overall outcome is no longer up for grabs, individual scenes can still despite all logic mesmerise. My adult self knows perfectly well that Wyatt must survive until the end of the film... but watches with bated breath as he faces down an armed drunk by sheer force of will. As for Holliday's tormented relationship with Kate, crippled by mutual self-loathing, almost every scene is a nail-biter as you ache for these two lost souls to stop hurting one another and find some comfort in their shared dependence.
The Holliday role is inevitably the scene-stealer in any version of this story; as the antihero he gets all the best lines. And while the Earps, as lawmen, have to do the right thing (or, at least, are supposed to), for Holliday it remains a matter of active and thus significant choice at every turning. Some of the most agonizing tension in the film comes in the scene where, having given his word 'as a gentleman' not to betray Wyatt's trust by engaging in extra-curricular killing, he is challenged to fight in a matter of personal pride: two codes and two loyalties conflict, with Doc's 'better self' caught hopelessly between them. Does he have the strength of character -- the surviving shred of honour -- to hold out in the face of mounting humiliation? Can he bear to hold to his word at the cost of his reputation?
Ironically, when Wyatt faces the same choice -- between the 'personal' and the 'important' -- he comprehensively fails it: he has to, of course, or there wouldn't be any point to the film's title, but it gives an oddly downbeat note to the final confrontation. By going out hand to hand against the Clantons in revenge for his brother's death, by abandoning the law in a quest for personal vengeance, he is effectively betraying everything he formerly stood for, and he knows it. Again and again we've seen him refuse to escalate under provocation: this time he allows himself to be pulled in. And when the final shot has sounded, his lawman's badge goes spinning down into the silence -- his self-righteous, self-confident days are done.
Most versions of the OK Corral story start with Wyatt & Co riding into Tombstone and planning to hang up their guns for a prosperous civilian life: given its take on the theme, this one chooses to establish its version of the character and of the law on active duty, via a succession of little frontier towns introduced by a sombre common thread -- Boot Hill. While the rapid turnover of locales never becomes confusing, it provides a sense of the way Holliday keeps wearing out his welcome; it also serves to introduce the other side of the lawman's coin, the aging, weakened sheriff Cotton Wilson.
Our first sight of him is through Wyatt's eyes in the character of a respected veteran, and the gap between that perception and the bar-room murmurs of a 'corrupt sheriff' is so wide as to make it hard to draw the connection; but it gradually becomes clear, to Wyatt and to the viewer alike, that Wilson truly has reached "the end of the line" and given up. All he wants any longer is the easy life: he has no real stomach for crime, but he no longer has the moral fibre to stand up in the face of men like Ike Clanton. He is the spectre of Wyatt's future: "a twenty-dollar a week pension... if you live to collect it". It is easy to preach while you still have your strength, and Wyatt has little time or pity for him. But the warning is there from the start.
The script is tautly set up, establishing important characters and information (brother Morgan and the Clanton ranch near Tombstone; Holliday's knife-throwing tendencies) ahead of time, and without obvious effort. The main exception is in the character of Laura Denbow, who makes an assertive entrance only to dwindle into a rather soppy romantic interest and then vanish out of the plot altogether. Her final ultimatum to Wyatt is used to point up the theme that the law will ultimately consume his life to no return, but the character is ill-served overall, creating the sneaking feeling that she is only present to provide some obligatory love-scenes of a wholesome nature. (And given his forthright distaste for Holliday's lifestyle, Wyatt seems remarkably ready to ally with a woman who makes a living at late-night poker!)
In the end, however, this is not the story of one man's journey from badge-holder to disillusioned civilian; despite its title, it's not even the story of the gunfight at the OK Corral. The film's story is that of a strange alliance of obligation and opposites, of self-destruction and dour conviction, and improbable liking and odd loyalty: of unlikely and all-but-unspoken friendship. Of the unforeseen path that brought Doc Holliday -- gambler, killer and long-since-fallen gentleman -- onto the same side as Wyatt Earp.
Its impact lies in that it makes this fragile outcome matter.