Wyatt Earp is not a passive man, but he does wish to remove himself from the violence of Dodge City and the wild west. My Darling Clementine was released in 1946, the film can be interpreted as the soldiers who fought in Europe and the Pacific return back to the US for a quieter life. Earp is the gold standard for Western heroes, righteous man with always the righteous cause. Never does he go looking for trouble, it goes looking for him. Earp is Henry Fonda and John Ford, both combat veterans looking to leave that life behind and much like Earp, there is a place out west for them. This was still the Big Studio days and actors like Ford or Jimmy Stewart were welcomed back with open arms. Contrast that with the blue-collar workers in The Best Years of Our Lives and Vietnam veterans like Travis who don’t experience a welcoming, instead are rejected. The world of Fonda and Ford is not as inviting as it is for the common man. …show more content…
Godard shot in wine villas, island with waters so blue, stylish apartments, but that’s only on the surface. Remember the film begins at the ruins of Benito Mussolini’s propaganda studio soundstages once grand, some now reduced to rubble in some cases, casualty of war, but simply neglected through time. There is graffiti, overgrown grass and a general lack of care in Cinicittá. Decayed, ravaged through time, neglected, basically 1970’s New York. Godard is not a veteran like Ford, neither is Scorsese, but he grew up in post-war France when there was much rebuilding for Paris and the rest of Europe. The old Cinicittá studio representative of that new Europe, what was once destroyed can be rebuilt, by the Americans at least. An in particularly criticism of the United States, what they are rebuilding in foreign countries is not something to be proud