At its core, John Sturges’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is another retelling of the exploits of Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) and Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas) where the facts are buried under layers of myth. Doc is introduced as a surly card sharp and drunk, and he’s ultimately steered out of trouble by Wyatt. This is a different approach from John Ford’s My Darling Clementine, in which Doc doesn’t appear until well into the film and is a public nuisance to Wyatt and others. By initially focusing on Doc, who’s more receptive to Wyatt’s council here, the film winds up giving the men equal footing as protagonists, making this something closer to a buddy picture.
After a prologue set in Fort Griffin, Texas, the film’s story is neatly mapped out in a two-act structure, with the characters travelling from Dodge City to Tombstone, where the titular gunfight inevitably takes place. Whether the characters are in saloons or bedrooms or out in the wild, cinematographer Charles Lang crafts lush Technicolor imagery that sublimely contrasts the steady stream of gunplay and tough talk. The men may be covered in dirt and motivated by bad intentions, but you could eat off these images.
Sturges’s finest films, including Bad Day at Black Rock and The Magnificent Seven, are possessed of a masculine energy that propels them forward. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is no less keyed to its characters’ death drives, and it’s arguably Sturges’s most essential study in how stubborn men resolve their differences. Throughout, there’s a fascinating ebb and flow to the conflict between clans before it all boils over in an impeccably staged shootout.
Leon Uris and George Scullin’s screenplay doesn’t lack for incident, and while certain moments can feel unnecessarily elongated, most are redeemed by a nifty payoff. Take Billy Clanton (Dennis Hopper), a minor character at the center of two scenes that emphasize his growing disgust with his older brothers’ bloodlust. His exchanges with Wyatt, who encourages him to take a different path, seem superfluous for so pointedly dramatizing the dilemma of a mostly insignificant figure. But, in the end, Billy’s fate is one of the film’s starkest moments for the way he’s unceremoniously gunned down, his moral conflictions perversely rendered moot.
The film’s romantic elements are its least convincing. Doc likes to shack up every now and again with Kate (Jo Van Fleet), and after finding out that she’s been seeing a fellow gunslinger, Ringo (John Ireland), the men’s rivalry becomes grist for the feud mill but in ways that feel almost tenuous. Elsewhere, Wyatt develops feelings for Laura Denbow (Rhonda Fleming), a card sharp in her own right, and the two agree to be married—at least, after Wyatt manages to rescue his brothers and clean up Tombstone. Some scenes, like one in which Wyatt and Laura talk in the woods, backed by Dimitri Tiomkin’s mournful score, establish a certain wistful mood, but most are stilted and feel conspicuously shoehorned into the film.
Before the melancholic farewell that closes it, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral springs one of the greatest shootouts ever depicted in an American western. Between the geometry of cuts and camera angles and the striking emphasis on silences punctuated by roars of hot lead, this climactic sequence clearly served as a blueprint for Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, among other westerns. With each bullet that rings out near the end of titular gunfight, we’re hearing not just the sound of a great film coming to a close, but a new stripe of western being born.
Image/Sound
Never has the green felt on poker tables suggested such a world unto itself. From the nuanced, uncrushed black levels to the improved depth and more dynamic coloring, this release blows previous home video presentations of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral out of the water.
There are two audio tracks on this release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. The former has the better dynamic field, namely for the way it opens up many of the sequences, but the subtleties of the sound design, especially during the titular stand-off, are equally effective on the latter, and dialogue is consistently clear on both tracks.
Extras
Aside from a trailer for the film and other titles in Kino’s library, the only other extra is a commentary track by author and screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner and film historian Henry Parke. These two know their stuff, detailing the “expansive history” surrounding the film’s making and comparing the historical record with how certain events are depicted on screen. While there are a number of “inconsistencies,” they say, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral embodies the “print the legend” ethos that would be thematized a handful of years later in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. They also offer intriguing insight on producer Hal B. Wallis’s career, particularly what led to his move from Warner to Paramount in the ’40s.
Overall
It’s easy to imagine this release of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral being used as a gold standard for how to make sure all westerns mosey their way onto 4K UHD looking as spiffy as possible.
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