"My DarlingClementine incidentally elevated Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday intoperennial icons of the American Western. But much more was going on inFord's first postwar movie as he integrated prolonged lyrical passagesinto more traditional studio conventions. The gunfights were nowherenear as memorable in the film as the manner in which Ford createdpowerful moods and deep longings in the poetic gaps between theshowdowns-when men took time out for haircuts, to court theirsweethearts, and even to enjoy fragments of frontier culture. Fordvirtually revolutionized the showdown by shooting the climactic fight inthe OK Corral in long shot and by blasting the space open with wind anddust whirling through the terrain. Fonda's Earp, a family-oriented,outdoors type of man, was more likely to be framed by a square dance orcaptured at ease sunning himself on a porch than gearing up forgun-play. As distinct from Mature's interpretation of Holliday, anoirish relic of the forties, Fonda was the precursor of the newelemental Ford hero, a character able to acknowledge the present-tensebeauties of the Western format while drenched in Ford's progressivesense of pastness." Andrew Sarris, Tom Allen, Village Voice