This western epic follows one family over the course of 40 years, beginning with the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush and ending in the oil fields in 1929. The film is based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber (Show Boat), and like the previous two Oscar winners it has several nice qualities, but it is also very much a product of its era.
There is quite a bit of overt racism in the movie, some of it intentional to portray the progress of the treatment of Native Americans during the four decades the movie spans, but also several elements that probably were acceptable at the time but that are fairly offensive with today's standards.
The main character, the flawed hero, Yancey Cravat, repeatedly defends Native American customs while his wife, Sabra, describes them as "dirty, filthy savages." He also has no problem with his son (Cimarron) wanting to marry an Indian woman, and fights for Native American's right to become U.S. citizens. At the same time, the movie depicts their African-American servant boy in very sterotypical fashion as comic relief, who for most of the movie runs around making a fool of himself and saying "yes, masser" and "please, masser".
On the other hand, the movie is suprisingly modern in its potrayal of Sabra as a strong, independent woman. Yancey's tragic fault is his unquenchable thirst for adventure, and only a few years after having settled in the frontier town and started the town newspaper, he grows restless and deserts his wife and children for a second land rush. He is not heard from for years, and in the meantime, Sabra successfully runs the newspaper and becomes a leading town character. When Yancey returns to town, his larger-than-life persona temporarily takes over, but when after he leaves again a few years later, Sabra makes a life for herself again and eventually becomes the first woman from Oklahoma elected to Congress, only a decade or so after women gained the right to vote.
Overall, I liked the film. It is certainly an epic, but the characters are complex and full of life, and while I've mostly focused on the blatancy above, there is room for subtlety as well. One example is the unspoken romantic interest in Sabra from the Jewish character Sol, which only manifests itself in an intense loyalty to her cause while Yancey is gone. If you plan to see the movie, be ready to forgive it its faults as there is more to it than that. (7/10)
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