Film

Cimarron

Name: Cimarron
Genre: Western, Drama
Released: 1931
Cast: Richard Dix, Irene Dunne, Estelle Taylor, Nance O'Neil, William Collier Jr.

The first Western to win Best Picture, and for decades the only one — a sprawling Oklahoma land-rush saga that swings from stampede spectacle to four-decade family drama. Richard Dix's restless pioneer keeps riding off toward the next boomtown while Irene Dunne's Sabra quietly becomes the more interesting person left behind. Watch it for the opening rush and the woman who outgrows the myth around her.

TMDb rating

5.5

If you liked this

Giant1956

Edna Ferber's other great Texas-sized saga, following a marriage and a fortune across decades of oil and cattle. Same restless ambition, same sense of land as destiny, but with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson at their most magnetic.

But Three hours and change, and it takes its sweet time getting anywhere near the point.

Far and Away1992no page yet

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman literally ride the same 1893 Oklahoma land rush Cimarron opens with, filmed as pure widescreen spectacle decades later with modern stunt scale and a full-blooded romance.

But The Irish accents wobble and the plot is pure soap; go for the horses, not the dialogue.

How the West Was Won1962no page yet

An all-star, multi-decade frontier saga told in Cinerama scale, following one family across the same westward push that drives Cimarron — wagon trains, railroads, outlaws, the whole sweep of the myth.

But Episodic almost to a fault, with five directors and a runtime that shows it.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Killers of the Flower Moon2023

Cimarron romanticizes the Oklahoma land rush as heroic opportunity; this film returns to the same soil a generation later to show the human cost the myth left out.

Scorsese's true story of the Osage murders happens in the same Oklahoma oil boom Cimarron treats as opportunity, and shows exactly whose land and lives that boom was built on.

But It's long, deliberate, and genuinely bleak — a reckoning, not an adventure.

The Big Country1958

A different kind of Western epic — land feuds and stubborn pride instead of boomtowns — but the same widescreen confidence and interest in what the frontier does to marriages and men.

But Gregory Peck's outsider-hero pacifism plays slower than the shootouts you might be expecting.

Dances with Wolves1990

Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning epic takes the same frontier mythology Cimarron trades in and turns it inside out, asking who actually lost when the West was won. Gorgeous, unhurried, genuinely moving.

But Three hours long and unashamedly earnest — it wants you to sit with its guilt, not rush through it.

Lonesome Dove

A six-hour miniseries that does for the cattle-drive West what Cimarron did for the land rush: turns frontier ambition into a decades-spanning story about the men and women who paid for it.

But It's a serious time commitment, and its pace rewards patience more than urgency.

The Searchers1956

John Ford and John Wayne at their most complicated, wrestling with the same frontier obsession and moral rot Cimarron only glances at — a classic Western that still unsettles.

But Wayne's character is genuinely hard to root for, by design, which some viewers find hard to sit with.

Little House on the Prairie1974

The gentler, family-hour version of frontier hardship — a long-running series about building a life on the plains, with the domestic resilience Cimarron gives Sabra stretched into a whole show.

But It's wholesome to the point of syrupy, and nine seasons is a serious commitment for comfort viewing.

Oklahoma!1955

The musical version of the same territory and era, all sunshine and show-tunes where Cimarron plays it straight. A good palate-cleanser if the drama got heavy and you want the myth with singing.

But It's a full-throated Broadway musical — if that's not your register at all, skip it.

The Covered Wagon1923no page yet

It's the film Cimarron was consciously chasing and improving on — the wagon-train spectacle and westward myth-making, minus sound, minus polish, a decade earlier.

A silent epic from eight years before Cimarron, following a wagon train across the plains with real stunt spectacle and none of the dialogue to slow it down. This is where the genre's DNA comes from.

But Silent, scratchy by modern restoration standards, and its pacing is very much of its era.

Dallas1978

Same Oklahoma-to-Texas oil money and the same arc of a resourceful woman outlasting a restless, larger-than-life man — just played as pure soap instead of Oscar bait.

Take Cimarron's oil-and-land ambition, strip out the historical prestige, and pump it full of nighttime-soap melodrama — feuding families, fortunes, and a woman who gets tougher every season her men let her down.

But It's gloriously trashy prime-time television, with none of the restraint or seriousness of the original.