Cimarron is definitely a film that was made for its time and it hasn’t aged completely well but it’s still a grand ambitious Pioneer tail that spans many years. For its time the exterior shots of vast land and the city is truly amazing for the time along with the huge group of extra cast members for the outside shots.

Movie tells a compelling epic story. I like the parallel stories of the growith of the small Western settlement to major city, paired with the main family's humble beginnings, but growing in wealth, power and political influence. And despite his family's success over 40 years, the patriarch still sticks to his ideals of justice and pioneering spirit. Movie justly received Oscars for production design and art direction.

Doesn't really hold up.

This is perhaps the worst film to win Best Picture I've ever seen. I suppose at the time it was lauded and, in full disclosure, I am not a huge western fan and this is only one of three westerns to win Best Picture in history (the first). The movie didn't recoup the budget RKO spent on the film due in large part to the depression. There are strong performances by Irene Dunne and it is riddled with offensive stereotypes. I think the film is an excellent study about how tastes have changed over the years. It's badly dated, slow moving, and pocked with racist caricatures. The recreation of the great 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush remains exciting but unfortunately the film never manages to top the opening shot.

About as ridiculously politically incorrect as you can get but I just love an old western with all the stereotypical characters. It's a load of guff but kept me entertained which wasn't always the case with early best picture wins. Not as bad as some of the dross to pick up the top award. And with that, I'm done. The epic track through best picture winners is over... until this year's winner is announced.

It has aged extremely poorly.

Time for another genre, one certainly overlooked by the Academy, the Old Western. Cimarron, about the American settlement in Osage, Oklahoma, is no doubt the first of that genre to win the gold statuette as well as RKO's only film to do so. In spite of its inception and despite the praise it received at the time, the film is only okay. Cimarron gets its points for historical accuracy, the city's progressive designs, the costume design, and Irene Dunne's mesmerizing performance as Sabra Cravat. However, the main problems come from the melodramatic script as well as it's dated racial stereotypes. Initially, I expected this one to be the worst of the Best Picture films for those reasons, but, as offensive as these caricatures were, they had some level of innocence. On top of that, the movie feels condensed and rushed, as if there were missing scenes that could detail about more important scenarios: Yancey's (Richard Dix) adventures, the black servant's untimely death, or Sabra's disapproval for her son's interracial marriage with a Native American. Maybe this could be remade as a gritty television miniseries about the controversial politics in the 1890's. Instead, we got a flawed, hokey, and unfocused screenplay in a semi-descent, but okay epic. Seriously, the black kid deserves his own movie. (3 Ineffective Bullet Wounds out of 5) (Yance, You've been shot in the arm on both sides. GET A DOCTOR!!)

Starts off with an impressive recreation of the Okie Sooners land grab. Included 5000 extras per wiki. Horrible racial stereo types throughout and somewhat incoherent story line. Certainly better production then Broadway Melody from 1929.

The fourth film to be awarded the Oscar for Best Picture is Cimarron. This 1931 movie spans a forty year period that commences on April 22, 1889, the day the great Oklahoma Land Rush on the Cherokee Strip began. After Yancy Cravat (Richard Dix) is tricked out of the piece of land he wants, he and his wife Sabra (Irene Dunne) and son leave the well-to-do trappings of Sabra's family to set up a new life in the developing boomtown of Osage. Yancy establishes the local newspaper and becomes a well respected leader in the town. The film seeks to set Yancy up as a man of high moral character amongst the lawlessness of the old west. He doesn't speak poorly of Native Americans, he accepts a "colored" boy into his household, speaks heavily of the Christian bible, and defends a prostitute in court. The tale carries the Cravats through Oklahoma's eventual statehood, oil boom and Sabra becoming the State's first congresswoman in 1929, the very time period of the film's development. Though well received when it debuted, this film has not aged well. It is obvious that Dix's career began in silent films. His over expressive eyes and jerk mannerisms are in stark contrast to Dunne's more subdued and natural presence. Though meant to be an upstanding and progressive thinker, Yancy actually comes off as selfish and insufferable prick. He leaves Sabra for years at a time to go off and do as he pleases. He belittles just about everyone he speaks to, and proselytizes at abandon. The movie is filled with racist comments and attitudes, both to Native Americans and African Americans, and is also anti-Semitic to a degree. Everyone in town shoots from the hip, literally, and are all expert marksmen. And while the film takes its time over the initial 10 years, it rushes through the final 30 at such a pace that the Cravat tykes are suddenly teenagers and then married within a disorienting few minutes. And the conclusion with Yancy dying in Sabra's arms after being missing for years couldn't have been more forced. All the supporting characters are completely one-dimensional. There's the dumb one, the stuck up one, the stuttering one, the pretentious one… their names unimportant. This film has the honor of being the first western to win a Best Picture Oscar. Outside of that honor, it is really much more interesting as a character study into the mind frame of 1930's society than it is as an actual story. Many people consider this movie to be the least deserving of the Best Picture Oscar. I will give it some credit by saying that for me, that distinction still belongs to the Greatest Show on Earth. But it's a close call.

It looks like a silent movie with sound... over-the-top expressions of emotions. It is also a "stand by your man" movie to the extreme. On the other hand, Irene Dunne's character is a strong, determined, and succesful woman (albeit racist and judgemental) woman.

Ambitious but exceedingly dated. Dix's Cravat has to be one of the most poorly conceived protagonists in any major Western. He is essentially Tom Sawyer-esque for the majority of the runtime (though his character evolves, the film can be deservedly criticized for not properly explaining these shifts), flippantly jumping from one supposedly noble cause to another without any genuine concern for the well-being of others. It seems that most audiences failed to grasp that Twain intended Sawyer to reflect a failure of American convention rather than a champion of morality. Cimarron's greatest value comes as a vehicle for providing insight into the culture of Depression-era America that venerated it; the fact that the periodic racism and clichéd, inconsistent characters were met with such acclaim is the most interesting feature of the film. (2/5)

Based on a novel by Edna Ferber, Cimarron is notable for being the first of only a small number of westerns to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Despite that fact, it is no longer well-known: in the cluttered field of "Classic Westerns", it is outshone by so much often legendary competition and its critical reception has tarnished over time. But there is much here to enjoy. Cimarron is an epic, which covers a span of forty years from the Oklahoma land rush of 1889. The story follows Yancey Cravat and his wife Sabra, as he tries to win a patch of land but is beaten to it by prostitute Dixie Lee, prompting him and Sabra to settle instead in the town of Osage where he becomes a newspaperman. The film then charts the Cravats lives over the subsequent four decades, culminating in Yancey's death and Sabra becoming Oklahoma's first female congresswoman. The film is character-led, and the characters work well. Yancey has a strong sense of morality and is very fair-minded. He's a newspaper man who quotes Shakespeare and Milton but who is handy with a gun. When the Kid and his gang attack the town – and kill Isaiah in the crossfire – he kills the Kid, but steal feels guilty. In contrast to Sabra, he stands up for the Native Americans who have been disposed by white settlers, and later clashes with his bigoted wife by defending Dixie Lee, insisting that everyone has a right to legal defence in court. He tells Sabra that she is blaming Dixie for problems caused by social injustice. Sabra meanwhile mellowed by her husband and by the events of her life: she warns her young son Cim about "dirty filthy Indians" but when he grows-up – to her horror – he marries a Cherokee named Ruby; eventually, Sabra eventually comes to admire her. Author Edna Ferber's work was characterised by strong women, and this is apparent not just in Sabra and her eventual rise to political power, but also in Dixie Lee who makes her own way in the world and is punished for it. Ferber's work also addressed issues of racism, and this too is key theme here as Yancey on several occasions defends the rights of the Native Americans. Unfortunately, this is somewhat undermined by the fact that Ruby is the only named Native American character and she hardly gets any lines. It's further undermined by the fact Isaiah Eugene Jackson's Isaiah is an appalling racial stereotype. This is possibly a failing of the screenplay Howard Estabrook and Louis Sarecky rather than Ferber's novel (which I haven't read), but nonetheless the film's heart is in the right place even if its brain isn't. The acting is pretty good too. Stocky and physically imposing Richard Dix makes a charismatic leading man as Yancey and is entirely believable in the role, whilst Irene Dunne is equally impressive as Sabra. The large supporting cast impresses too, with all the actors giving convincing performances. Director Wesley Ruggles also makes the film a visual spectacle to match the scope of the story: the mise-en-scéne includes the impressive and evolving Osage sets, whilst the famous opening scenes of the land rush are well-realised. Planned meticulously by cinematogragher Edward Cronjager, the sequence has aged well, thanks to the use of more than 5,000 extras and nearly thirty cameramen. Additionally, the camera often tracks the characters as they walk around, giving a sense of space to the production, and there is much use of medium- and wide-angle shots which have the same effect. The location filming recreates the rugged beauty of the American west perfectly, even though the film was actually shot on a ranch near Los Angeles. Rugges adds other nice touches, for example the revelation of Donna's birth via a close-up of a newspaper announcement and the use of title cards to advance the plot whenever the story leaps forward a few years. Cimarron shows its age, but that's pretty much inevitable: whilst its reputation has dwindled over time and it certainly isn't perfect, it's an impressive film nonetheless and – I would argue – now somewhat underrated.

While this film may have been seen as a progressive in 1931, the intention is lost in cringe inducing stereotypes, primarily of gender and race, that make for an often uncomfortable watch in the present day. The action is very front loaded, making everything that follows the spectacular Land Rush sequence seem decidedly underwhelming. Cimarron does present an intriguing notion of what was considered a prised and upstanding citizen. Nowadays, the audience is left bewildered by Sabra's compulsion to embrace her abandoning husband in the final scene having had over 2 hours to foster a strong distaste for Yancey's smarmy sanctimony and complete disregard for his family.

The best part of this picture is the epic Oklahoma land rush scene, which thankfully occurs early in the film so you can skip the rest of it. More than 5,000 extras participated, and it took nearly 30 camera crews to capture. Cimarron glamorizes the period from 1890 to 1929 in which Indian lands in what is now Oklahoma were given away to very fast white people. The story follows a frontier family's rise to prominence. Wanderlust in Richard Dix's white-hatted husband/father character forces Irene Dunne's matriarch character to build a business and forge a life of privilege for her children. Though Cimarron may be viewed as a feminist film in some respects, Dunne's constant deferral to her unpredictable husband and unwillingness to replace him (i/e remove his name as proprietor of the newspaper she built) weakens that argument somewhat. The blatant and bold black and native racial stereotypes throughout this film will leave you wanting to take a shower after viewing. By the end of Cimarron, the son marries a Native American woman in a weak gesture of racial acceptance, but it is not nearly enough, as she is merely token public proof of the family's false social and racial tolerance. Like many films from this period, the story in Cimmaron has not aged well, and I can't say if the problems in this film are derived from the book the film is based on, the screen play or both. Frankly, after the amazing and beautifully filmed land rush scene, what follows is a disappointing morass of idiotic stereotypical western characters, and over simplification and glorification of 'manifest destiny.' In a year in which other legendary films might have won Best Picture (City Lights, Dracula, Frankenstein, Little Caesar, Public Enemy), how forgettable drivel like Cimmaron won Best Picture certainly must have had more to do with Hollywood studio politics than art. Yet, if you seek a benchmark of the progress that Hollywood has made over the past 90 years to change racial stereotyping, then Cimarron is a place to start your analysis, even as there remains a long, long way to go. By the way, if you wonder what Cimarron means, the best I can guess is that it seems to refers to the Indian lands that had yet to be stolen.

Cimarron, while being the fist Western to win for Best Picture, is only half of a Western in my opinion. The first half has many of the classic Western elements from the main character's white hat to a shootout in town. But as the main character gets tired of one location, so too does the film for the Western drama. The later half show many time-skips illustrating the development of Oklahoma into the state it was at the time of filming. This was personally interesting in the way a period/historical piece is today.

It's very hard for me, a person born in the 21st century, to evaluate a film released in 1931 but because Cimarron won Best Picture in 1932 I am going to have to. This is a very, very strange film as it feels like a bad mash up of Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and yet it is completely lifeless. The lead performance of Richard Dix doesn't help as he overacts 100% of the time and the screenplay picks up and drops characters at a moment's notice without giving various subplots satisfying endings, if any are given at all. I was hoping to enjoy this film because most people I have met who have seen it have hated it but I found that there was so little to it and it was so poorly executed that it was hard to find any good in it. The fancifully named Yancey Cravat, Richard Dix, must stake his claim on lands, as many Americans did, in Oklahoma after the land rush of 1889 that belongs to Native Americans. We see his life and that of his racist wife Sabra, Irene Dunne, and a crafty prostitute Dixie Lee, Estelle Taylor, develop and change over the next 40 years. The Cravats have two children, Donna, Judith Barrett, and Cim, one of whom marries a Native American. Cravat is always and I mean always right about the conflicts that are going to occur and he is able to defend racial minorities, Native Americans and Jewish people, against the attacks of his wife and local vagrants. The only thing I was able to appreciate about the film was it's remarkably liberal and modern treatment of sex workers as Dixie Lee, the crafty prostitute, is seen as a woman with power and agency. Although his defense of her exists primarily to show what a great guy Yancey is we understand that Lee is worthy of respect. Taylor's performance has aged better than most in the film and she has a certain sexuality that is timeless. Comparing the treatment of her character to the strange writing of Sabra she has a far more consistent arc and doesn't appear to be explicitly racist at any point. Beyond this the film is pretty awful on most other accounts. Dix and Dunne give performances that feel very of their time and although Dunne would evolve and give a very good performance in Love Affair (1939) she is screechy and lacking in charisma here. The makeup applied doesn't help as it is so thick that it is hard to buy into them as real people without considering how big the production is. If Clark Gable and Joan Crawford had been cast in the leading roles I think that they would have been far more exciting to watch and although they are not the best actors in the world they would still have charisma. When comparing this epic film to other Best Picture winning epics, mostly Gone with the Wind it's weaknesses are fully revealed. Where Gone with the Wind is based on one of the greatest novels ever written and features compelling but flawed characters this film is based on a critically derided book that features thinly written characters. The production design was not on the level of Ben-Hur (1959) or Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and there was no tension built up unlike in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). The two epics that are as bad as this film are Dances with Wolves (1990) and Gandhi (1982) which are both overly long and squander interesting subject matter. I think it's obvious that of the Best Picture nominees One Hour with You (1931) is the strongest. This is not a film that I recommend anyone watch because it contains bad performances, production design and has very little personality but if you want to see an early example of respect for women then I am sure you can find sections of the film on YouTube. I really hope that the Best Picture winners get better throughout the 1930s as so far only Gone with the Wind and It Happened One Night (1934) could be considered good films by today's standards.

A 2+ hour film completely overshadowed by its first 8 minutes, Cimarron covers a 40-year period, and is certainly epic in that regard, but in all others, it falls noticeably short. The acting is nothing special, the dialogue is excessive and dull, the pacing is slow and the video quality, unsurprisingly for the time, can be generously described as primitive. All Quiet On The Western Front, which won the Best Picture award the year before, vastly surpasses it in ever way. Cimarron has dated far worse than many other films of its time, in terms of both technical quality and entertainment value. It's the kind of film you'd watch because it was an early Academy Award winner and holds some historical value, but you would certainly never watch it again. The lead disappears for large stretches of the narrative and somehow manages to perfectly slot himself back into the action with few questions from the rest of the characters. It feels epic in timescale but not in story, and the performances are unnecessarily melodramatic. A lot of its faults can be blamed on the period in which it came out, and the fact that cinema was still largely in its infancy back then, but this along with its scattershot story and bland dialogue make it hard enough to watch once, let alone multiple times.

This is an okay film, there's just nothing overly unique about it. Doesn't hold up when compared to other westerns or best picture winners. Unless you're a big western or Irene Dunne fan, you should probably spend your time watching something else.

The best movie ever made! With the best movie character ever portrayed: Richard Dix as Yancey Cravat!

Continuing my goal of watching every single winner of Best Picture in the Oscars, I watched Cimarron. Watching that opening sequence, knowing what filmmaking was like back in the early 1930s, left me in awe. Knowing that the filmmakers had to work with all those animals, extras and scenery made me appreciate that this film could win such a prestigious award. Once the story and the "plot" started moving forward however, I found myself questioning how bad the other movies up for best picture truly were. This film is held together barely by the amazing portrayal of Sabra Cravat by Irene Dunne. I also found myself many times asking, "Who is this guy?", referring to Sabra's adventure loving every-man husband Yancey. He seems to be the most popular man on the planet, everybody knows who he is. He even has a theme song that is sung a couple of times during the film. Yet he seems like nothing more then an olden days lawyer and newspaper editor. He also is a superb marksman, shooting with impunity and amazing accuracy during several tense moments with outlaws. This film seriously lacked focus and motivation. It went from telling a story from Yancey's point of view to finishing the story from Sabra's view. Also, the racist leanings towards the Native Americans is of the time but the various characters seem to flip back and forth on whether they support the people or if they revere them. For all the completionists out there, this movie is a 2 hour romp that will leave you scratching your head trying to figure out what's happening and where the characters see themselves in their own minds. The opening sequence and Irene Dunne's work are definitely bonuses within this movie.