John Ford - S/D

"Fort Apache"- Henry Fonda as a cruel and obsessed military man trying to regain his honour by going to war with the Cochise. John Wayne is the cool-headed, warm-hearted officer trying to stop this; Shirley Temple is rowr (and legal, before anyone asks.)

"She Wore A Yellow Ribbon"- John Wayne is about to retire from service when indian attacks prompt much fear and suspicion. Big love interest subplot, in fact you could probably say it's the main plot actually.

Haven't seen "Rio Grande" yet, but those two come highly reccomended.

Anyway, Ford's movies tend to leave me...exhausted. They always feel much longer than any other movies of that time, even tho they aren't.

Question: Is his portrayal of indians ahead or behind the times for Hollywood of that era? From what I've seen, there's a fair bit of noble savage fetischizing in there, but he does at least treat them as human beings, and even when they're villains they're hardly one-dimensional.

My only serious John Ford quibble: fist-fights aren't that funny, dude.

See also: drunk comedy irishmen.

The most blatant pro-Indian sentiment of his career is his penultimate film, Cheyenne Autumn (still from the era where Euro-Americans played everyone, so the Cheyenne are played by Sal Mineo, Ricardo Montalban etc). Certainly Wayne in The Searchers seems as unhinged, and more racist, than Chief Scar. Apparently the tribes Ford worked with on location felt warmly toward him and gave him ceremonial honors (how much of this was PR I can't be sure).

to be honest, even tho i think ford is great and all, i often find myself not being all that...interested in his subject matter, somehow. it's not always easy to see the sadness and ambiguity behind all the macho bluster and not-very-funny "comic" interludes in some of those films. but it's definitely there.

The Quiet Man has too much ruddy Irish blarney for my taste, and would be my choice to destroy.

http://melbotis.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/quiet_man_kiss-799335.jpg

In the last shot of "The Searchers," the camera, from deep inside the cozy recesses of a frontier homestead, peers out though an open doorway into the bright sunshine. The contrast between the dim interior and the daylight outside creates a second frame within the wide expanse of the screen. Inside that smaller space, the desert glare highlights the shape and darkens the features of the man who lingers just beyond the threshold. Everyone else has come inside: the other surviving characters, who have endured grief, violence, the loss of kin and the agony of waiting, and also, implicitly, the audience, which has anxiously anticipated this homecoming. But the hero, whose ruthlessness and obstinacy have made it possible, is excluded, and our last glimpse of him emphasizes his solitude, his separateness, his alienation — from his friends and family, and also from us.

Even if you are watching "The Searchers" for the first time — perhaps on the beautiful new DVD that Warner Home Video has just released to mark the film's 50th anniversary — this final shot may look familiar. For one thing, it deliberately replicates the first image you see after the opening titles — a view of a nearly identical vista from a very similar perspective. Indeed, the frame-within-the-frame created by shooting through relative darkness into a sliver of intense natural light is a notable motif in this movie, and elsewhere in the work of its director, John Ford. Especially in his westerns, Ford loved to create bustling, busy interiors full of life and feeling, and he was equally fond of positioning human figures, alone or in small, vulnerable groups, against vast, obliterating landscapes. Shooting from the indoors out is his way of yoking together these two realms of experience — the domestic and the wild, the social and the natural — and also of acknowledging the almost metaphysical gap between them, the threshold that cannot be crossed.

But that image of John Wayne's shadow in the doorway — he plays the solitary hero, Ethan Edwards — does not just pick up on other such moments in "The Searchers." Perhaps because the shot is thematically rich as well as visually arresting — because it so perfectly unites showing and telling — it has become a touchstone, promiscuously quoted, consciously or not, by filmmakers whose debt to Ford might not be otherwise apparent. Ernest Hemingway once said that all of American literature could be traced back to one book, Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," and something similar might be said of American cinema and "The Searchers." It has become one of those movies that you see, in part, through the movies that came after it and that show traces of its influence. "Apocalypse Now," "Punch-Drunk Love," "Kill Bill," "Brokeback Mountain": those were the titles that flickered in my consciousness in the final seconds of a recent screening in Cannes of Ford's masterwork, all because, at crucial moments, they seem to pay homage to that single, signature shot.

At the end of "Brokeback Mountain," for instance, we are inside Ennis Del Mar's trailer, looking out the window onto the Wyoming rangeland, from a domestic space into the wilderness, as in "The Searchers." But in this case, the interior, rather than a warm, buzzing home, is barren, the scene of Ennis's desolation. The outside, insofar as it recalls the mountain where he and Jack Twist spent their youthful summer of love together, is an unattainable place of freedom and companionship, rather than a zone of danger and loneliness as it was in the earlier film. Ennis is severed from those he loves, and from his own nature, by the strictures of civilization, while Ethan's violent nature renders him an exile from civilized life, condemned to wander on the margins of law, stability and order.

Of course, "Brokeback Mountain" is a western by virtue of its setting rather than its themes, which recall the forbidden-love mid-1950's melodramas of Douglas Sirk more than anything Ford was doing at the time. But just about any movie that ventures into the territory of the western — and a great many that do not — has a way of bumping up against not only Ford's images but also his ideas.

He did not invent the genre, of course, and hardly restricted himself to it in the course of a career that began in the silent era and lasted more than 50 years. There will always be those who find the frontier visions of Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and Howard Hawks more complex, more authentic or more varied than Ford's, as well as those who seek out western heroes less obvious than John Wayne. But like it or not, Wayne and Ford, whose long association is sampled in a new eight-movie boxed set and examined in a recent PBS documentary, "John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend," directed by Sam Pollard, have long since come to represent the classic, canonical idea of the American West on film.

Which is to say that their movies, however deeply revered and frequently imitated, have also been attacked, mocked, dismissed and misunderstood. If, from the late 1930's to the early 1960's, they defined the classic western — a tableau involving marauding Indians, fearless gunslingers, ruthless outlaws and the occasional high-spirited gal in a calico dress — they also begat the countertendency that came to be known as the revisionist western, with its nihilism, its brutality and its harsh demystification of the threadbare legends of the old West. Thus, after Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, after "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Unforgiven," after "Dead Man" and "Deadwood," the brightly colored black-and-white world of "The Searchers" might look quaint, simplistic and not a little retrograde.

It certainly looked that way at Bennington College in 1982, when the novelist Jonathan Lethem saw the film for the first time. He recalls the laughter of his fellow undergraduates in an essay called "Defending 'The Searchers,' " which also recalls his own earnest intellectual obsession with the film. His first attempt to appreciate it ends in defeat — " 'The Searchers' was only a camp opportunity after all. I was a fool" — but he keeps returning to contend with the sneers and shrugs of academic and bohemian friends and acquaintances, who can't see what he's so excited about. "Come on, Jonathan," one of them says, "it's a Hollywood western."

So it is, which means that it's open to the usual accusations of racism, sentimentality and wishful thinking. David Thomson, in his "Biographical Dictionary of Film," tips his hat to "The Searchers," but only in the midst of a thorough ideological demolition of its director, whose "male chauvinism believes in uniforms, drunken candor, fresh-faced little women (though never sexuality), a gallery of supporting players bristling with tedious eccentricity and the elevation of these random prejudices into a near-political attitude." The idea that Ford is an apologist for violence and a falsifier of history, as Mr. Thomson insists, dovetails with a longstanding liberal suspicion (articulated most fully by Garry Wills in his book "John Wayne's America") of Wayne, one of Hollywood's most outspoken conservatives for most of his career. And of course, the presumed attitudes that make Wayne and Ford anathema at one end of the spectrum turn them into heroes at the other.

But as the PBS documentary makes clear, the two men did not always march in political lockstep. And in any case, the closer you look at the movies themselves, the less comfortably they fit within any neat political scheme. Even the portrayal of Indian and Mexican characters, once you get past the accents and the face paint, cannot quite be reduced to caricature.

And Wayne himself, from his star-making entrance as the Ringo Kid in "Stagecoach" (1939) to his valedictory performance in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962), his last western with Ford, is hardly the simple personification of manly virtue his critics disdain and his admirers long for. Even when he drifts toward playing a John Wayne type rather than a fully formed character, there is enough unacknowledged sorrow in his broad features, and enough uncontrolled anger in that slow, hesitant phrasing, to make him seem dangerous, unpredictable: someone to watch. He is never quite who you think he will be.

And this is never truer than in "The Searchers," where much about Ethan's personality and personal history remains in the shadows. A former soldier in the Confederate Army, he arrives in Texas (though the film was shot in Monument Valley in Utah) three years after the end of the Civil War, with no way of accounting for the time lag apart from the angry insistence that he didn't spend it in California. Wherever he was, he acquired both a virulent hatred of Indians and an intimate understanding of their ways. When his two young nieces are kidnapped by Comanches — their parents and brothers are scalped and the farmstead burned — he sets out on a search that will last for years and that will blur the distinction between rescue and vengeance. It becomes clear toward the end that he wants to find the surviving niece (now played by Natalie Wood) so that he can kill her.

This impulse points to a terrifying, pathological conception of honor, sexual and racial, and for much of "The Searchers" Ethan's heroism is inseparable from his mania. To the horror and bafflement of his companions (one of whom is both a preacher and a Texas Ranger, and thus a perfect embodiment of civilized order), Ethan shoots out the eyes of a dead Comanche, and exults that this posthumous blinding will prevent this enemy from finding his way to paradise. But when you think about it, Ethan's ability to commit such an atrocity rests on a form of respect, since unlike the others he not only knows something about Comanche beliefs but is also willing to accept their reality. And the film, for its part (the script is by Frank S. Nugent, who was once a film critic for The New York Times before he took up screenwriting), acknowledges the reality of Ethan's prejudices and blind spots, which is not the same as sharing or condoning them.

The Indian wars of the post-Civil War era form a tragic backdrop in most of Ford's post-World War II westerns, much as the earlier conflicts between settlers and natives did in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. That the Indians are defending their land, and enacting their own vengeance for earlier attacks, is widely acknowledged, even insisted upon. The real subject, though, is not how the West was conquered, but how — according to what codes, values and customs — it will be governed. The real battles are internal, and they turn on the character of the society being forged, in violence, by the settlers. Where, in this new society, will the frontier be drawn between vengeance and justice? Between loyalty to one's kind and the more abstract obligations of human decency? Between the rule of law and the law of the jungle? Between virtue and power? Between — to paraphrase one of Ford's best-known and most controversial formulations — truth and legend?

Ford's way of posing these questions seems more urgent — and more subtle — now than it may have at the time, precisely because his films are so overtly concerned with the kind of moral argument that is, or should be, at the center of American political discourse at a time of war and terrorism. He is concerned not as much with the conflict between good and evil as with contradictory notions of right, with the contradictory tensions that bedevil people who are, in the larger scheme, on the same side. When should we fight? How should we conduct ourselves when we must? In "Fort Apache," for example, the elaborate codes of military duty, without which the intricate and closely observed society of the isolated fort would fall apart, are exactly what lead it toward catastrophe. Wayne, as a savvy and moderate-tempered officer, has no choice but to obey his headstrong and vainglorious commander, played by Henry Fonda, who provokes an unnecessary and disastrous confrontation with the Apaches. In the end, Wayne, smiling mysteriously, tells a group of eager journalists that Fonda's character was a brave and brilliant military tactician. It's a lie, but apparently the public does not require — or can't handle — the truth.

In telling it, Wayne is writing himself out of history, which is also his fate in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (not, unfortunately, one of the discs in the Warner box). That film — which contains the famous line "When legend becomes fact, print the legend!" —throws Wayne's man of action and James Stewart's man of principle into a wary, rivalrous alliance. Their common enemy is an almost cartoonish thug played by Lee Marvin, but the real conflict is between Stewart's lawyer and Wayne's mysterious gunman, one of whom will be remembered as the man who shot Liberty Valance.

What we learn, in the course of the film's long flashbacks, is that the triumph of civilization over barbarism is founded on a necessary lie, and that underneath its polished procedures and high-minded institutions is a buried legacy of bloodshed. The idea that virtue can exist without violence is as untenable, as unrealistic, as the belief — central to the revisionist tradition, and advanced with particular fervor in HBO's "Deadwood" — that human society is defined by gradations of brutality, raw power, cynicism and greed.

If only things were that simple. But everywhere you look in Ford's world — certainly in "Fort Apache," in "The Searchers," in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" — you see truth shading into lie, righteousness into brutality, high honor into blind obedience. You also see, in the boisterous emoting of the secondary characters, the society that these confused ideals and complicated heroes exist to preserve: a place where people can dance (frequently), drink (constantly), flirt (occasionally) and act silly.

And everywhere else — after Ford, beyond his movies — you find the same thing. The monomaniacal quest for vengeance, undertaken by a hero at odds with the society he is expected to protect: it's sometimes hard to think of a movie from the past 30 years, from "Taxi Driver" to "Batman Begins," that doesn't take up this theme. And the deeper question of where vengeance should stop, and how it can be distinguished from justice, surfaces in "Unforgiven" and "In the Bedroom," in "Mystic River" and "Munich."

In "Munich" the Mossad assassins spend most of the film in a limbo that Ethan Edwards would recognize, even though it takes place amid the man-made monuments of Europe rather than the wind-hewn rock formations of Monument Valley. The Israeli agents are far from home, exiled from the democratic, law-governed society in whose name they commit their acts of vengeance and pre-emption, and frighteningly close both to their enemies and to a state of pure, violent retaliatory anarchy. With more anguish, perhaps, than characters in a John Ford movie, they often find themselves arguing with one another, trying to overcome, or at least to rationalize, the contradictions of what they are doing. They appeal to various texts and traditions, but they might do better to pay attention to the television that is on in the background at one point in the movie: another frame within the frame, tuned, hardly by accident, to "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

funny you should mention cooper--he and ford were partners in an independent production company, but no, he didn't have a hand in this one.

how hot is grace kelly in this?

(I guess Jon Stewart's jokey Western clips re Brokeback were even more OTM than suspected)

http://desordre.blog.excite.it/img/johnandjohn.jpg

http://www.oasismag.com/Issues/0006/images/mann.jpg

Move over, Bogdanovich!

Eric, you sleek young ageist, that's mean; I'm sure they both looked tight and cruisy on the Stagecoach set.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/tv/reviews/7352/directed-by-john-ford/

This fella with some quality early-Ford-at-Fox bloggery:

http://videoarcadia.blogspot.com/2008/01/shadow-play-in-early-john-ford.html

so Drums Along The Mohawk. Yes?

It's nice but his 3rd-best film of '39.

They Were Expendable. Yes?

Been a long time, I remember liking it. Lindsay Anderson loved it.

If I had to vote for anything it would be Ford's segment in How The West Was Won if only for that Cinerama shot of the blood being washed off the table right at you.

super deluxo ultraultra restoration blu-ray of how the west was won coming in september
http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2006/apr-jun/film-restoration/frame1_large.jpg

also with a second disc presenting the film in "Smilebox"
http://www.mindspring.com/~lizap/smilebox.jpg
(shot is from a different movie)

I'm looking fwd to West, never saw

I did rent TWE.

If I had to vote for anything it would be Ford's segment in How The West Was Won if only for that Cinerama shot of the blood being washed off the table right at you.

-- Elvis Telecom

this sounds fantastic.

the spielberg story upthread is the source of a song on the new drive-by truckers album. hum.

Cheyenne Autumn – yes?

Saw that once a long time ago, liked it but suffers from a lotta stars in redface (see way up above).

have you seen The Sun Shines Bright or Wagonmaster?

anyone wanna defend fort apache? the ending, in particular.

i've read various critical appreciations, but they all end up sounding like excuses to me. the only things that make sense to me are either a huge failure of nerve or an actual conviction about the social necessity of military heroism, no matter how fictional. either way, leaves a bad taste to me.

(and it's a well made movie with plenty of good scenes and henry fonda's very good, i'm not arguing any of that.)

ok so thinking about it more i realize that what the movie was really up to was trying to validate the experience and class resentments of wwii vets (many of whom no doubt had less than glowing thoughts about the officer corps), but then at the end pivoting to say, "yes, but what's really important is the big picture -- honor, duty, country." the reason nobody rebels against fonda is that the movie does not want to endorse rebellion. it basically and more or less sincerely argues for respecting hierarchies and obeying orders, even bad ones, because it works out best for everyone.

Does it really, though? Does the end really undo the two hours that came before it? Maybe it does, depending on the viewer. Or maybe it elicits a more complex response since as with Liberty Valance, Ford prints both the fact and the legend at the end of Fort Apache. York's homage to Thursday builds some distance into the film (as does the casting against type with Henry Fonda playing a role typically associated with John Wayne* and vice-versa) so that we CAN look back at what's just transpired and assess - did Thursday's genocidal racism serve any good? It certainly propagated the world Ford so assiduously delineated for us. But is there any positive in that? If not, then in what ways are we benefiting from these murderous actions today and should we therefore look upon our own world with disdain (or distance at least)?

I think the individual vs. community tensions characteristic of so many westerns is really complicated here in that there are so many different individuals that Thursday takes along with him in his suicidal run (and to whom York also pays homage at the end, successfully or not) which again complicates our response. Did some cavalry men have better reasons than others for sacrificing themselves to a greater good? And what does it mean to even ask such a question?

This is the benefit of Ford's "rambling," non-linear, three-act-structure-eschewing narrative - following so many characters, going off on so many different tangents, etc. ensures that the fact/legend ending does not impinge upon one character/narrative trajectory.

And speaking of assiduously delineated worlds, Wagon Master, Ford's very best western, is out on DVD and looking as gorgeous as it has every right to be.

* And then check out the even odder role Ford carves out for Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

but fort apache is really about upholding the sanctity of the army hierarchy (and by extension the social hierarchy) at all costs. it's complex and savvy enough to acknowledge the injustices in the system (which, again, after wwii were freshly revealed to millions of working-class americans), but the "good" characters -- york and sgt. o'rourke especially -- always ultimately defer to authority. they register their objections, but then they fall in line -- and they make sure everyone else does the same. the only act of rebellion in the whole movie is the four sergeants drinking the whiskey they're supposed to dispose of -- and they are roundly punished. i think people who want to read the movie as morally complex or ambiguous are giving both it and ford too much credit. i think it's more like morally repugnant. it's a postwar movie on the cusp of the mccarthy era, and its real aim is to sell the idea that maintaining the established order is best for everyone, even if it means tolerating the jackasses who happen to be in charge.

i think people who want to read the movie as morally complex or ambiguous

People like me, you mean?

I'm not denying that the ending upholds the sanctity of the army hierarchy or even that such an ending is morally repugnant. But everything you've written above assumes that the ending (and perhaps all endings?) is/are binding, i.e. the entire film and/or Ford upholds the sanctity of the army hierarchy and/or is morally repugnant. I think it's difficult to argue that there are no critiques of Thursday and maybe even the entire world of the cavalry all throughout the film. The question is whether or not the ending undoes all of that. For you, it clearly has. For others (myself included), it hasn't (and makes me think about the things I talked about above). Plus it helps to situate this film in the context of Ford's oeuvre in that Fort Apache marks the beginning of an increasing suspicion of authority figures and upholding tradition.

Fred Camper has influenced me a lot here. Check out his fantastic review of Mizoguchi's The Loyal 47 Ronin (quite similar films in many ways).

stagecoach!!!

the searchers looks so good on blu-ray. like even though the middle section is a bunch of generic western hokum, it's some amazing looking hokum.

stagecoach!!!

― truffle fries are not a meme. truffle fries are not a meme is a meme (Lamp), Thursday, June 3, 2010 10:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

previously lost ford silent film discovered in new zealand (along w/ a trailer for another lost ford film, amongst other treasures):

http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/new-zealand-project-films-highlights

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962)

Great moments and scenes.

Wonderful performance from Wayne, but what a sad ending. Stewart's character has been a good man throughout the film, yet is left with a sense of unfulfilment.

being a Man of Civilization has its price

Jeff Wells in Monument Valley:

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/08/changeup_settle.php

apparently sergio leone hasnt seen 3 bad men:

With John Ford, people look out of the window with hope. Me, I show people who are scared to even open the door. And if they do, they tend to get a bullet right between the eyes.

Jonathan Lethem on his cinematic influences and Ford in particular:

I came to film in a backward way. Thanks to my parents’ cosmopolitan/bohemian appetites, with the exception of [Alfred] Hitchcock, I watched a lot of European cinema before I watched a lot of classical Hollywood cinema. I really knew [Jean-Luc] Godard and [Francois] Truffaut and [Michelangelo] Antonioni and a bunch of other stuff. Then, of course, I was aware of contemporary English language films that were exciting to my parents and me. Films by [Stanley] Kubrick and [Robert] Altman. I knew all the stuff that you’d see in a New York art house environment as a teenager. Then, in my twenties, I had to go back and figured out how the body of American classical cinema was terrifically important to me. It was really film noir that drew me back. That was when I watched [Howard] Hawks and Ford and [Orson] Welles. The American Fritz Lang films and all these things became really, really powerful and defining for me. I didn’t grow up with them, mostly. Ford was a great discovery of my twenties and I became consumingly interested in him. He’s a counterpoint, in a way, to the narrower stylistic and emotional intensity of film noir or even of someone like Hawks or Welles. He had more of literary amplitude. He’s like a [Charles] Dickens. He puts all of life into the story and he’s not afraid of sentiment in certain ways that the others have to ‘hard boil’ it in order to tolerate it. The Searchers meant a lot to me, in some ways, as an embarrassing but really compelling antidote to the cool of film noir. It probably helped lead me through Girl in Landscape then into the more diverse and sprawling canvas of something like Fortress of Solitude and what I’m working on now. It becomes excruciating hearing myself have to claim the influence, exactly. What mattered was that I loved the movies. I just started to want to devour every Ford film I could see. I probably, to this day, can’t even say why it mattered so much to me then or why they continue to matter to me in retrospect. He just became really moving to me. Someone who I wanted to be around. His voice and his sensibility, even though, obviously, there are great variations. They’re not all as paradoxical. You could study The Searchers forever. You can study The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance forever. Or you can go back to something like Long Voyage Home or Wagon Master and just breathe it in endlessly because it’s so perfect. Then there are a lot of really homely or strange or incomplete pieces like Two Rode Together. This is a movie I wouldn’t recommend to anyone, necessarily. But it all mattered to me at one point.

http://www.fandor.com/blog/spontaneous-similitude-jonathan-lethem

RIP Harry Carey Jr

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-harry-carey-jr-1921-2012

RIP.

In (Three Godfathers), Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz and Carey Jr, as the Abilene Kid, are three "wise" bank-robbing bandits on the run in the desert, who rescue a baby after the death of his mother. Carey sings Streets of Laredo as a lullaby and has a moving death scene in which he lapses back into childhood to recite the Lord's Prayer. According to Carey, after the first take of the death scene, which he fluffed, Ford left him to bake in the scorching heat of Death Valley for 30 minutes. When the director returned, a near delirious Carey delivered his speech, his mouth so dry he could not swallow and with a voice that resembled the croaking of a dying man. "Why didn't you do that the first time?" a grinning Ford asked Carey. "See how easy it was? You done good! That's a wrap!"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/dec/30/harry-carey-jr

Saw Cheyenne Autumn again, had to tell laughing 'hipsters' at Lincoln Center to shut up when they lol'd at Dolores del Rio wailing over corpses.

Watch it, then read this by Toshi Fujiwara:

http://www.fipresci.org/undercurrent/issue_0509/cheyenne.htm

The centerpiece sequence with James Stewart as Wyatt Earp is a slapstick sketch of white settlement as an amok devolution: Manifest Idiocy.

Dave Kehr on the new Blu-rays of How Green Was My Valley & The Quiet Man:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/movies/homevideo/new-dvds-how-green-was-my-valley-and-quiet-man.html

The scene where the brothers confront Crisp about unionizing is a marvel.

I'm glad Kent Jones was the one to administer this scholarly spanking:

The Searchers is about the toll of vengeance on actual human beings, while Tarantino’s recent work is about the celebration of orgiastic vengeance as a symbolic correction of history. Ford’s film has had a vast and long-lasting effect on American cinema, while the impact of Tarantino’s film has, I suspect, already come and gone.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/intolerance-quentin-tarantino-john-ford

yeah, QT is really full of shit there.

yeah that's one of jones's best essays IMO

quentin, racism in movies is like tap-dancing in movies

it's like anything else, quentin

it's cinema

a lovely paragraph:

The idea of the American West was always more a matter of solitude and space and the balance between individualism and community than a matter of conquest. Along with the city as theater of life in the Thirties or bourgeois existence as genteel prison in the Fifties, the idea belonged to no director or writer, and the culture breathed it long before the movies began. That the idea was built on the backs of indigenous Americans who were, in Ford’s own words, “cheated and robbed, killed, murdered, massacred and everything else,” was not exactly hidden from view, but relegated to the background of the story that the culture was telling itself through paintings and dime novels and traveling shows and, finally, movies—albeit never quite as comfortably as is now imagined. It’s curious that American culture and history are still so commonly viewed through a New Left prism, by means of which 1964 or thereabouts has become a Year Zero of political enlightenment; as a consequence, the preferred stance remains that of the outsider looking in, or in this case back, at a supposedly gullible and delusional pre-Sixties America. It’s certainly preferable to right-wing orthodoxy, but that’s hardly a compliment. The New Left is now very old but its rhetoric lives on, many times removed from its original context, and that rhetoric seems to have found a welcome home in film criticism.

however:

yet another revenge fantasy—that makes five in a row.

dunno if Jackie Brown is a revenge fantasy. It strikes me as a suburban California picture.

suburban California fantasy

seems dlh is volunteering for Jones's "fool's errand"

i am parodying qt on violence; it is not a fair equivalency but on the other hand fuck him

think the general stuff about view-of-history here (as in alfred's graf or the one right after it) is rly important

ok, I admit I avoid the Q's words whenever I can.

caught how green was my valley for like the third time a couple weeks back but for some reason it really hit me on a emotional level this time, also the cinematography was just stunning. kudos, arthur c miller

A well written piece, and this guy is mostly right on in his defence of Ford, but his apologetic stance towards Birth of a Nation bothers me far more than the fact that he obviously hasn't seen Jackie Brown.

yet another revenge fantasy—that makes five in a row.

dunno if Jackie Brown is a revenge fantasy. It strikes me as a suburban California picture.

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 3, 2013 8:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

1. kill bill 1
2. kill bill 2
3. death proof
4. inglorious basterds
5. django unchained

caught how green was my valley for like the third time a couple weeks back but for some reason it really hit me on a emotional level this time, also the cinematography was just stunning. kudos, arthur c miller

― buzza, Friday, May 3, 2013 8:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a slept-on ford/miller collab is wee willie winkie. it's an awesome movie, and it is stunningly shot. i've seen a 35mm print twice (one tinted, the other not) and I can't imagine the DVD provides the same effect but it should probably still be pretty impressive.

sarris says it's a better move than the informer and he's right

i have to admit i didn't quite follow some of jones's stuff about BoaN not being "propaganda." not in the strictest sense, no, but it does essentially advocate race war. and i think it's unfair to griffith if we think he was somehow unaware of or indifferent to that. i also think it's important to remember that many people in 1915 felt the film was an abomination (notably the emergent NAACP, which published a pamphlet against it). so it's at as though condemning it is simply holding it to an anachronistic standard, not that jones makes this argument.

anyway i do think he acknowledges the vile racism in BoaN, but it seems like he's distancing that from griffith a little bit. i wouldn't call him an apologist for BoaN, maybe a _slight_ apologist for DWG.

i also think he understates the extent to which indian/white encounters (and violence) were central to the western genre in literature and film. it's right there, in much of its complexity, in last of the mohicans.

but overall his points are well-taken and i think it's a lovely, bracing corrective not just to tarantino but to all the other folks (including henry louis gates, who was interviewing tarantino) who would make stupid assumptions/generalizations about the western in general and john ford in particular.

god I forgot Death Proof

I think what he's saying is we have to reckon with the racism in BoaN, not come to reductive conclusions that lead us to make movies like QT's.

That Kent Jones piece is great and was a long time in coming.

I've seen a lot of westerns in my day. I grew up in the Golden Age of tv westerns. They were on prime time every night, and the old movie western serials from the 30s and 40s still got a lot of play in off hours. Certainly, native americans were often protrayed as sneaky, untrustworthy and bloodthisty savages, although not always. As the presence of living native americans receded to the far margins of the American scene, 'good indians' started to appear in westerns more often.

Casting my mind back, I'd say that nasty evil white men FAR outnumbered the injuns when it came to who were the prominently featured bad guys, by at least 50:1. This makes perfect sense when you realize just how limited your plot possibilities are when your bad guys live entirely outside the culture of your good guys. It's very hard to bring them together into the same scene.

watching The Prisoner of Shark Island tonight.

Dave Kehr on the 5-film Columbia box:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/movies/homevideo/tcm-offers-john-ford-the-columbia-films-collection.html

Two Rode Together is essential, and I like The Last Hurrah and Gideon's Day. Never have caught The Whole Town's Talking.

"when you shoot, kill a man!"

"If they move...kill 'em!"

Sorry, wrong thread

Watched They Were Expendable last week after finishing Mark Harris' new book. A flop on release, and I can see why: it lacks grand flourishes, concentrating on men entering and exiting destroyers and battleships and shit.

Never watched that one. Eager to know how you liked that book, Alfred.

Harris on Pappy and the war (I reserved it at the liberry):

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2014/04/image-of-the-day-41114.html

that book was very enjoyable and prompted me to watch the long voyage home which was good and not just because of john wayne's attempted swedish accent

Ford at Fox megabox for $50 today only (GRAPES code)

http://www.foxconnect.com/ford-at-fox-the-collection.html

"when you shoot, kill a man!"

― espring (amateurist), Tuesday, March 25, 2014 5:09 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is this walter brennan horsewhipping his boys in my darling clementine? Evil Walter Brennan is the best fucking idea in the history of movies.

yup

morbius, i have to thank you for that. wow.

just payin it fwd, saddlebritches

When you do, it will be a magnificent obsession.

Sorry, wrong thread.

I broke into my F@F box last night and started with Up the River, a prison comedy (the "serio" elements are negligible) best known for the debuts of Tracy and Bogart, w/ a few genuine laughs, some knockabout action (Ward Bond surfaces just to take a KO punch from Tracy), and just for Alfred a closeup of inmates at a variety show while "M-O-T-H-E-R" is sung.

Bogart acts nothing like Bogart -- playing a rich New England kid a la his tennis-racket-carrying Broadway roles, apparently -- but Spence is in the wisecracking mode that would carry him through his other early Fox pictures. Also there's the indispensible palooka Warren Hymer as ST's sidekick.

ok, nobody reads my Spencer Tracy thread, but The Last Hurrah is worth it for the lead and its conviction as an old Irish machine-pol wake, in spite of Jeffrey Hunter and any scenes featuring actors born after 1905.

http://p7.storage.canalblog.com/70/45/110219/48200843.png

from TCM.com:

Pat O'Brien recalled that on the set... Ford "would never talk the part you were playing, he'd just tell you what he wanted. 'I hope you can get it,' he'd say, chewing on that handkerchief he always had. When you failed, he'd say, 'That wasn't what I wanted. Try to get what I wanted. We're going to take another whack at it and it better be good.' And after you finally got it he'd come over and put his arms around you. 'Why the hell didn't you get it in the first place?' he'd say. Ford was the genius of them all. He was an artist drawing a portrait in oil."

The only potentially disruptive incident that occurred during the filming was when someone showed up with a case of whiskey in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. Ford, who was a heavy drinker like most of the Irish cast and crew members, exploded in anger, "Jesus Christ, what do you want to do, shut down the picture?" and the booze was carted off.

top ten Fords

http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/57-lfu-24/386-top-ten-john-ford-s-movies

and other stuff

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-the-essential-john-ford

http://www.movingimage.us/films/2015/07/03/detail/the-essential-john-ford/

suspect i will get to The Long Gray Line (hv never seen) and Sgt Rutledge (once) in 35mm this weekend.

Maureen O'Hara gives one of her best performance in The Long Gray Line as Tyrone Power's steadfast wife, and aside from the vaudeville brogue TP is better than usual. It has a much darker view of 50 years at West Point than you might expect from a '55 film made by veterans. Also enough blarney to make Alfred squirm in agony.

Sergeant Rutledge falls well short of masterpiece, thx to courtroom formula bits (esp the Perry Mason-style climax), but Woody Strode is iconically ideal throughout, esp his "I'm a man" outburst on the stand (the scene Ford made sure he was severely hung over for).

Maureen is 95 today

http://time.com/3996875/maureen-ohara-photos/

happy birthday beautiful!

quite a quintet in one of those Havana pics

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/50706606-unidentified-alec-guinness-maureen-ohara-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=OCUJ5gVf7YdJQI2Xhkc2QD0KZ08rggOL8PsqmULUGupnQkYg36wmfsUVIxQjxS7oQRFx181NR%2BGuglhd3Cgmsz0Q%2FuYLF0vcfVLe1a8yzY8%3D

of course, G Greene is in the shadows

RIP M O'H

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_noN7QdT3n8

Mo link roundup

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-maureen-ohara-1920-2015

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/22/john-ford-and-the-politics-of-the-western/

this article isn't very well written but some interesting points here

For example, in SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, Wayne ends the film as a disillusioned and disenchanted officer in the Calvary. He tells lies about a famous battle that featured a Custer-like military blowhard played by Henry Fonda but in his eyes you see how sickened he is by the lie.

this is fort apache, not yellow ribbon, but it's complicated: after wearily telling the ghouls what they want to hear wayne turns to the window and delivers an earnest paean to the Men Of The Cavalry. it plays enough like a good-men-bad-leaders thing to keep the movie patriotically untroubling if you want it that way but it's also easy to see wayne, obscurely, as trying to convince himself of something.

iirc both apache and ribbon have scenes where wayne parleys with a native american chief to avert bloodshed; in the former he's betrayed by henry fonda but in the latter he and the (similarly aging) chief just hang out comfortably a while talking, and we are meant i think to see them as parallel. imo there is a dark sense in this scene that both chiefs could lose control of the young men they command if they push too hard against the inertia of war -- that all the work the movie's done setting wayne up as an exemplary, compassionate, cautious commander is actually setting him up to be an abandoned one -- but then everything works out fine. often in ford there are these sort of dark possibilities that don't happen (let's go home, debbie) -- i used to think these were "pulled punches" or even hayes artifacts (hayes used here really as synecdoche for, like, america) but that's not really it.

oh hey there's quite a bit of good talk upthread about the end of apache.

3 GodFathers, which I saw a couple weeks ago, is bizarre, alternating from harrowing disaster drama (Wayne, Almendariz, Carey in the desert) to filmed realization of a children's Bible.

who's seen donovan's reef? (i haven't.) late wayne hangs out w lee marvin and jack warden on south pacific island governed by cesar romero and played by kauai. would like to see john ford shoot kauai.

Stagecoach is just as brilliant as iconic as its champions have said for 78 years. Key dialogue:

Thieving Banker: "What this country needs is a businessman for president!"

Drunken Doctor: "What this country needs is more fuddle."

The action sequence at the end is truly astonishing.

Spielberg swiped two of the Apache-battle stunts for Raiders.

The way he introduces the ten or so main characters (save for Ringo) in the first 13 minutes or so is a model of expressive and economical narrative. No Hollywood 'epic' would do it in less than 40 today.

intriguing Ford-Wayne book?

"Ford was terrified of his own feminine side, so he foisted a longed-for masculinity on Wayne. A much simpler creature than Ford, Wayne turned this into a cartoon, and then went further and politicized it. There was an awful pathos to their relationship—Wayne patterning himself on Ford, at the same time that Ford was turning Wayne into a paragon no man could live up to. . . . The invention of John Wayne—is there a more primal scene of masculinity being stripped of utility and endowed with dubious political karma?”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/john-wayne-john-ford/544113/

!

It was left to Maureen O’Hara, one of Ford’s favorite actresses, to be more direct. In her 2004 memoir, she speculates that Ford was gay. (She claims she walked in on the director kissing a leading man.)

The two of them playing a game of macho chicken. I want John Waters to adapt their story.

I see now we were already down this road back in '06.

rowr @ Wayne necking with Thomas Mitchell

We are talking about the director of Men Without Women. I leave it to others to comment on Air Male Mail.

Ford is the one Mo walked in on... most likely with Tyrone Power! UPI, 2004:

Recalling the incident on the set of the 1955 film, "The Long Gray Line," the 83-year-old screen legend writes: "I walked into his office without knocking and could hardly believe my eyes. Ford had his arms around another man and was kissing him. I was shocked and speechless. I quickly dropped the sketches on the floor, then knelt down to pick them up ...

"They were on opposite sides of the room in a flash," she said.

Identifying the man with Ford only as "one of the most famous leading men in the picture business," O'Hara said he later approached her and asked her why she had never mentioned Ford was gay.

"I answered, 'How could I tell you something I knew nothing about?'"

If there was a bigger male hoo'er in Hollywood in that era than Tyrone Power, I'm not sure who that person would be.

that Scotty Bowers guy wd know.

If I had to vote for anything it would be Ford's segment in How The West Was Won if only for that Cinerama shot of the blood being washed off the table right at you.

I finally watched this on Blu last night; while it's borderline trivial aside from its technological significance as one of two Cinerama narrative features -- and JF's Civil War segment is only 20 minutes -- the bloody moments are shocking, including a PTSD-suffering George Peppard dashing through a red creek after a deadly encounter with Russ Tamblyn.

Also, that buffalo stampede in one of the later (Henry Hathaway) reels, wow.

http://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/624_5.jpg

Rewatched Young Mr. Lincoln yesterday, right after first viewing of The Prisoner of Shark Island (which is fine but no lost classic, though the characterization of the fairly large contingent of black men guarding the prison is fascinating).

YML might've been the first Ford movie I saw as a kid, multiple times. I enjoy the Fonda story about him being dressed down by Ford when he initially rejected the role -- "Do you think you're playing the fucking Great Emancipator? He's a goddamn jackleg lawyer!" The Criterion commentary reveals that one of Ford's fave TV shows was Perry Mason, hilarious given that Ward Bond's climactic breakdown in the courtroom could've been in any PM episode.

Also hadn't known that Alice Brady, who plays the illiterate mother of the two young men on trial, was dying of cancer during production (she looks way older than 46).

Boy do I love that movie (YML).

Tag Gallagher:

At the time of my first book, much conventional opinion (outside California) held that Ford the epitome of everything despicable: racist, sexist, militarist, chauvinist, boring. My effort was to refute such nonsense, not by debating it, but by putting forth an alternate vision of Ford as the profoundly anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-militarist, anti-chauvinist, and the most inventive and imaginative of American moviemakers. At a time when Hollywood movies were rarely taken seriously, I said he was our greatest native-born artist.

Others joined this effort, and I believe that today we have largely succeeded.

Finally, why John Ford? Well, to paraphrase Bertolucci, because we cannot live without Ford.

http://filmint.nu/?p=25553

Saw Young Mr. Lincoln at a theater a couple weeks ago, small crowd gave a standing ovation at the end. I was surprised how riveting it was, I watched it at home less than a year ago, and it went way up in my estimation. Saw The Magician at the same theater a week later and Ford's influence on Bergman was clear, especially in the opening when they're in a horse-driven carriage in foggy woods.

Beyond these, what are the gems to see before Liberty Valance?

Stagecoach
Young Mr. Lincoln
My Darling Clementine
Fort Apache
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Rio Grande
The Quiet Man
The Searchers

imho,

The Iron Horse
at least one of the Will Rogers films (Judge Priest)
The Prisoner of Shark Island
How Green Was My Valley
Wagonmaster
The Sun Shines Bright
The Long Gray Line

and

3 Godfathers (or 3 Bad Men, silent)
Sergeant Rutledge

I'll second The Prisoner of Shark Island and How Green Was My Valley and add The Grapes of Wrath and Cheyenne Autumn.

of course Grapes. Cheyenne is after Liberty Valance, so i'd suggest flappy save that one.

Wagonmaster definitely.

found Cheyenne Autumn oddly inert. appreciated it simply from a historical perspective in terms of seeing actual Navajos onscreen (standing in for the Cheyenne) and speaking their own language (albeit mostly for lolz: Dialogue that is supposed to be the "Cheyenne language" is actually Navajo. This made little differences to white audiences, but for Navajo communities, the film became very popular because the Navajo actors openly were using ribald and crude language that had nothing to do with the film. For example, during the scene where the treaty is signed, the chief's solemn speech just pokes fun at the size of the colonel's penis. Academics now consider this an important moment in the development of Native Americans' identity because they are able to mock Hollywood's historical interpretation of the American West.)

And of course it looked great, but the story seemed poorly formed, Widmark is irritating, the Dodge City interlude is nonsensical, the narration is bad, etc.

also watched Stagecoach, which was great. I like my Westerns strewn with memorable character bits.

rio bravo

Hawks always said he was extremely flattered when people thought Red River was a John Ford movie.

Yeah, I've heard Hawks sing Ford's praises. Welles did, too.

flip thought i was on the john wayne thread didni

How Green Was My Valley

Welles' two favorite directors were Ford and Renoir.

so how do you all feel about Mogambo? I have it rented out, looked like an interesting outlier.
thanks for the recs also! the store has most of them, tho I haven't gotten around to any yet. bought the bargain bin HGWMV blu ray so sitting on that as well.

Mogambo is not as funny as Red Dust (orig version) bcz no Jean Harlow

it's flat

“We Cannot Live Without Ford”: An Interview with Tag Gallagher

Thank you, currently immersed in the MUBI Straub-Huillet season at present, so loved this nugget esp:

I once asked Jean-Marie Straub what “an experimental film” is. He slammed the table and declared, “The Long Gray Line! That’s an experimental film, no?”

The Iron Horse: US or UK version?

& of the list above, I only have The Iron Horse and Wagon Master left. Any others to check out before Liberty Valance?

you should be OK

i dont know of diff versions

The Iron Horse: stunning but not necessarily moving

3 Bad Men: same here, but both are enormously compelling, his composition is so perfect

Doctor Bull: my favorite of the Will Rogers pictures, genuinely very funny ("why are we staring at the cemetery? somebody get out?")

Judge Priest: very good but the DVD I watched was awful quality, need to rewatch. first "speaking to a dead loved one" scene?

Steamboat Round the Bend: underrated, the girl is great. there's an amazing moment where an angry mob of Confederate vets salute a mannequin of Robert E. Lee with utmost seriousness, feels like a classic Ford image.

The Prisoner of Shark Island: more than any other, Ford's influence on Ingmar Bergman is so clear here: shadow of Lincoln's dying face through mesh door, Mrs. Mudd revealed in the reflection of the bulletin board door condemning her husband, arrow pattern of the water as the boat draws closer to Shark Island.

The Grapes of Wrath: it's reassuring to know that "Oscar movies" haven't changed much in 80 years

How Green Was My Valley: so immersive and painterly, unlike TGOW, which is much more stark and barren

3 Godfathers: nice but overlong and not as good as 3 Bad Men

Wagon Master: more than any other film here, this one really invites multiple viewings... a distillation of running themes that is somehow more elusive than any other film here

The Sun Shines Bright: very good but the brutal racism here and in Judge Priest is really hard to get past for me, like the parade march is clearly a moving scene but watching that dude (and Rogers earlier) call black men "boy" throughout the movie makes it hard for me to get swept up

The Long Gray Line: the most bizarre discovery of this run, one of the most structurally unusual films I've ever seen, the first 90 minutes are the type of sentimental slapstick that sunk The Quiet Man for me, but once the clock really starts moving the momentum of the movie really has a powerful effect... this movie is the final shot of Fort Apache expanded into a ~135 minute movie. pretty great

Sergeant Rutledge: another outlier stylistically, it doesn't have the look of a Ford picture, feels shockingly modern. love the old ladies. Ford's preference for shooting as few takes as possible fails Woody Strode here, he's consistently compelling but there are a handful of really bad takes that sort of break the spell of his character for me

and I will watch The Fugitive before LV, only because it was one of Ford's favorites (along w/ TSSB and WM)

The Grapes of Wrath: it's reassuring to know that "Oscar movies" haven't changed much in 80 years

damn, it's not my favorite but you're so rong

it's a great movie, stylistically unique and truly evocative of a barren America, but it's a message movie with long speeches, otherwise anathema to Ford.

The Grapes of Wrath has directly been cited as one of the earliest examples of what we now know to be an "Oscar movie." (Inaccurately, I'd say; The Crowd was a best picture nominee at the first Academy Awards.)

i think Grapes is better than the book (and the Steppenwolf stage version i saw about 30 years ago)

oh it's much better than the book even though Steinbeck is too unfairly forgotten these days

The book develops quite slowly and lays a very broad foundation under the Joads' story that the movie couldn't possibly replicate. I can see where the slow pace of the book is completely out of synch with contemporary audiences, who can encompass the film much more easily, but Steinbeck's version was a whole education compared to the movie.

yes, it's a more sweeping social panorama, but such are the two media

I'm assuming Ford was more judicious about what pages he ripped out of the script of Grapes. I haven't read the book, but the movie seemed faithful to a fault to the text, but again I'm assuming he didn't really have a choice with such a major book.

another thing that struck me about Grapes was how much of it was shot on sets with backdrops - it counterintuitively makes the landscape feel so huge and empty, unlike any of the movies shot in Monument Valley where the landscape is so inviting and postcard ready. the America of Grapes is practically post-apocalyptic

the America of Grapes is practically post-apocalyptic

The Great Depression really was an apocalypse for millions of Americans. Try to get ahold of Wild Boys of the Road for an even more post-apocalyptic movie.

I know, I specifically meant the mis en scene of the movie - he really pulls it off in creative ways. very limited use of sound, too. lots of quiet wind throughout. I'll check out Wild Boys of the Road

not entirely faithful

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath_(film)#Differences_from_the_novel

If I remember tomorrow evening I'll check out The Grapes of Wrath.

In the meantime, in the last several weeks I have seen:

1) The Informer: Drastically inferior to the 1929 Arthur Robison silent version. Between this and Hangman's House (1928) I'm convinced Expressionism was a bad influence on Ford. The opening bit with the heroine about to Sell Herself to a bowler-hatted toff for her passage to America was as risibly transparent as certain special effects conveying Gypo's thought processes.

2) Hangman's House: Are all of Ford's treatments of Irish themes this heavy-handed?

3) Bucking Broadway: Now this I liked, especially the finale (the hero and his sidekicks literally ride into a New York hotel full of dudes with Dishonest Intentions towards women, and proceeds to kick their fancy asses).

At this point, my favorite Ford film is still The Whole Town's Talking. And if you have not seen Wild Boys of the Road (Wellman, 1933), do so at your first opportunity.

I've never seen The Whole Town's Talking, or Hangman's House. I *have* seen Bucking Broadway, and that is a pip.

The Great Depression against the Dust Bowl just seems like something none of this generation is equipped to comprehend even though we're all clearly going to go through something just as bad.

and there won't be any studio films about ours

The Florida Project, as a snapshot of capitalism carried to its logical ends, is probably the closest we'll get to an American successor to The Grapes of Wrath. The works of the Dardenne Brothers also owe something to this tradition. But I cannot imagine a major American studio of today letting itself be associated with a work of this nature. For that matter I can't quite place this movie in pre-war filmmaking, even by comparison with Our Daily Bread or Man's Castle. I am assuming Joseph Breen took a firm and verbose stance on what could and couldn't make it into the movie.

What Price Glory (1952) or When Willie Comes Marching Home?

got a super cheap DVD comp of 6 of Ford's comedies & these are the only ones left

they're in my Fox box, haven't watched em

WPG is a remake

John Ford receives the Presidential Medal of Honor from Richard Milhous Nixon. Like it or not folks... this is what Irish-American excellence looks like. pic.twitter.com/FLPdyEGKFz

— ℑ 𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲 (@NickPinkerton) October 8, 2019

If I want Irish-American excellence I'll watch a Cagney movie. What Price Glory watch party anyone?

my mother always said, "Nixon's not Irish."

Since when was Nixon Irish?

he claimed to be at some point, i think on a state visit to Ireland

Every US President claims they're Irish. Apart from Trump, probably his one redeeming quality.

What they usually mean by Irish is Protestant settlers in Ireland from Scotland or England sent there as colonizers.

Ford's one of the few directors whose work Nixon could identify by name.

well, kinda hard not to

same of the general public, after Hitchcock and Chaplin

a side note:

https://epicchq.com/us-presidents-with-irish-heritage/

As my dad used to say, they've had one Catholic president and look what they did to him.

When Willie Comes Marching Home is one of his better comedies w/o Will Rogers. not totally fluff either, goes well with The Long Gray Line as movies about the conflicted feelings of military personnel stationed at home who never see combat. Willie is dying to fight in the war, and his WWI vet dad resents him being stationed in his home town, despite the fact that he was such a good gunner that they made him the instructor. it's from 1950 so it looks great & he wrings so much out of the thin premise and a mostly light script.

just noticed that Robert Wagner is in the remake of What Price Glory

It is with heavy heart that I announce that I apparently will be forced to see Roland Emmerich's Midway. pic.twitter.com/nZZ1nyeISS

— ℑ 𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲 (@NickPinkerton) November 6, 2019

Watched Wagon Master last night. Good lil western. Only really knew Ben Johnson from Last Picture Show so didn't even recognize him. Pretty effortless acting from him. And christ could he ride a horse. The scene where he's escaping from Indians, every other rider in the scene is getting bounced around on their horse, while Ben is going twice and fast and doesn't move an inch.

Ford pegged it as one of his favorites. I've heard it was one of the most enjoyable sets he had. Makes ya wonder how much the experience of filming has on a director's or actor's personal favorites rather then purely the end result.

I think it's set in 1880. Which means it was as distant from 1950 as 1950 is from now whoa.

well, Ford knew old Wyatt Earp

speaking of Wyatt Earp...the Dodge City diversion section in Cheyenne Autumn is bizarre. I get what he was trying to say with it but it's pretty jarring and superfluous.

yeah I watched that recently and had a similar reaction.

also u+k:
Ford used Navajo people to portray the Cheyenne. Dialogue that is supposed to be the "Cheyenne language" is actually Navajo. This made little differences to white audiences, but for Navajo communities, the film became very popular because the Navajo actors openly were using ribald and crude language that had nothing to do with the film. For example, during the scene where the treaty is signed, the chief's solemn speech just pokes fun at the size of the colonel's penis. Academics now consider this an important moment in the development of Native Americans' identity because they are able to mock Hollywood's historical interpretation of the American West.

Remembering hearing something about that, but didn't know which film it happened in. Awesome. I'm sure they patted themselves on the back simply for having actual Native Americans in the film and speaking their own language in parts. But he wasn't about to fly in Cheyenne to the film shoot in AZ/UT.

for a guy born in the 1890s working in the western genre, my impression is that Ford treated the Natives fairly well. He wasn't a superman.

I also think they probably pranked the dialogue earlier than that film.

Oh for sure. I mean the plot for CA is very pro Native anti US govt. That was rare in early 60s afaik.
A bit similar to Smoki "tribe" I knew about before but was just reading about in a magazine today: white biz men from Prescott AZ doing "burlesque" snake dances in full Indian garb and face paint sounds awful and ridiculous now, but for the time that was progressive relative to the official doctrine of banning and trying to extinguish any Native Am culture.

he be sittin down

https://www.publicartportland.org/project/the-john-ford-statue/

https://silver.afi.com/Browsing/EventsAndExperiences/EventDetails/0000000028

Some Ford silents will be screened as part of this series. Any other ILXors interested in going?

pic.twitter.com/Ci3zWpIbFN

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) February 19, 2020

I was surprised to learn, after watching Wagon Master, that it enjoyed such a strong rep among Ford cultists. I found it kinda slight, mostly due to the weakness of Johnson and Carey Jr. as leads and Ford's unwillingness to exploit the full menacing potential of the Clegg gang.

P tempted by this new set from Indicator

https://www.powerhousefilms.co.uk/collections/frontpage/products/john-ford-at-columbia-1935-1958-le

I think the ensemble nature of Wagon Master is part of its appeal, tho along those lines i prefer The Sun Shines Bright.

The Long Gray Line is his weirdest movie
xp

The Long Voyage Home was and is easily overshadowed by Ford's other film from 1940, but I liked it mostly for featuring Wayne at his most boyish, and for the scene where the crew ambushes the suspected spy only to learn things they didn't expect to learn from reading through his letters. Also, it was shot by Gregg Toland, so of course it looks stunning.

Strange, though, that the Janus logo appeared at the front of the TCM broadcast I watched, but the film is not in the Criterion Collection. I guess one might be coming along at some point?

I liked it more than I expected.

has anyone seen "Young Cassidy?" Started by Ford, then completed by Jack Cardiff after he fell ill. I have to say I'm intrigued by a film based on the life of Sean O'Casey with this poster

https://pics.filmaffinity.com/Young_Cassidy-636490032-large.jpg

Yes, it's not bad. Julie Christie is in and out of the film pretty quickly; Maggie Smith carries the rest. Nice location shooting in Dublin. Can't say I learned that much about the nature of O'Casey's work but it did make me curious about it.

Should say, yes, O'Casey is portrayed as rugged in the film, but as sensitive as well. It's not like just a parade of brawls. However, the scene I do recall most is the one indicated at top right of the poster - a street confrontation that is shot quite realistically and effectively.

It's about O'Casey?? But he's renamed Cassidy?

I note above that Ford to others referred to Wayne as 'DUKE WAYNE'.

Not Ford but I happened to see ROOSTER COGBURN (1975) yesterday.

It's about O'Casey?? But he's renamed Cassidy?

yup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjNUV0Y6Dxg

and thanks for the insight Josefa!

I recorded that one off TCM but than that cable box died so never actually watched it.

Then

Incredible to see W.B. Yeats in that trailer.

I tried to watch How the West Was Won on TCM last night just to get to the Ford sequence but had to bail after about 15 minutes.

oh, you

On Twitter a couple days ago I saw a quote by some international arthouse auteur that The Long Gray Line is a "great experimental film," but now I can't find it.

I just don't think it works on a flat screen, a four-square western epic whose every frame looks like Seconds.

I tried to watch How the West Was Won on TCM last night just to get to the Ford sequence but had to bail after about 15 minutes.

― coronoshebettadontvirus (Eric H.),

Congrats! You beat me!

oh, you

On Twitter a couple days ago I saw a quote by some international arthouse auteur that The Long Gray Line is a "great experimental film," but now I can't find it.

thx

Been digging into my Ford At Fox box... recommend both the silent Four Sons and 1933's Pilgrimage as very different motherhood tales centered on World War I.

haven't seen "how the west was won" yet, but dave kehr raves about ford's sequence:

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/movies/homevideo/09dvds.html

It's the best segment in the film, for sure.

The lead actress in Pilgrimage, Henrietta Crosman, gives a very strong and detailed performance as a Bad Mother who gets her son drafted and killed rather than see him marry. The film's about her redemption, of course, but to ultimately touching effect.

how's The Horse Soldiers? got the blu ray for $6 at a pharmacy

Watched his What Price Glory recently, a weaker one with a handful of really beautiful moments (the girl singing to the soldier). the opening is particularly striking and nightmarish, a garish set of the aftermath of a horrible battle with a haunted, minor key military crew singing in the deep distance. again, it doesn't really come together as a movie, but even in these whiffs there is often a bit of the sublime.

yay/nay on The Horse Soldiers (1959) ?

uploaded less than 2 months ago, I think recorded this year? PB looking OK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weHUnrrmpnM

Bird: THE HORSE SOLDIERS is wonderful. I've seen it about 4 times on TV. Probably one of my favourite Westerns and one of the Ford films I most admire. Curiously serious about war, and curiously packed with distinct scenes and set-pieces.

Yes it is! I didn't know it came right before Sergeant Rutledge. You can see it coming, sort of.

THE LAST HURRAH: yay / nay?

ah, yay!

two months pass...
ok, nobody reads my Spencer Tracy thread, but The Last Hurrah is worth it for the lead and its conviction as an old Irish machine-pol wake, in spite of Jeffrey Hunter and any scenes featuring actors born after 1905.

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, September 24, 2014 2:50 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

from TCM.com:

Pat O'Brien recalled that on the set... Ford "would never talk the part you were playing, he'd just tell you what he wanted. 'I hope you can get it,' he'd say, chewing on that handkerchief he always had. When you failed, he'd say, 'That wasn't what I wanted. Try to get what I wanted. We're going to take another whack at it and it better be good.' And after you finally got it he'd come over and put his arms around you. 'Why the hell didn't you get it in the first place?' he'd say. Ford was the genius of them all. He was an artist drawing a portrait in oil."

The only potentially disruptive incident that occurred during the filming was when someone showed up with a case of whiskey in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. Ford, who was a heavy drinker like most of the Irish cast and crew members, exploded in anger, "Jesus Christ, what do you want to do, shut down the picture?" and the booze was carted off.

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, September 24, 2014 3:12 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I find it REALLY weird that he only made ONE movie about/set during the Civil War (the horse soldiers)

A tremendous film!

plus his segment in How the West Was Won

TOBACCO ROAD! such a great B-side to Grapes. Amusing Gene Tierney performance as a very dirty, near feral young woman with only one line at the very end--"Yes, ma'am!"

Reader in the "Hey Bill" section of Bill James' website:

After the recent discussion here on "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," I wrote a letter to Vera Miles, who played Hallie, asking her about the points raised about her feelings for Tom Doniphon. She wrote back: "Never occurred to me to wonder if Hallie was going to hitch up with Tom in the absence of Ransom. In retrospect, I believe Tom (Duke) was the man of choice. (He didn’t care if she could read or not.)"

So if you have any questions on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, you can write Vera Miles directly. Actual letter, please--no e-mail.

Holy shit

Started Scott Nyman's massive PRINT THE LEGEND bio recently, trying to pace myself because it's so good (his SPEED OF SOUND is one of the best film books I've ever read).

I've been leafing thru the Ford bio for months now tho. I didn't know about April Morning, or the extent of his alcoholism, or the bucket he started having with him on set in his last years...

Thank you, Bill.

was coming here to post that

Young Mr. Lincoln - 7/10
Clouds of Sils Maria - 9/10
Leningrad Cowboys Go America - 10/10
Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses - 10/10

i'm not sure you get John Ford, flapp

― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Sunday, June 10, 2018 12:53 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

He was right. I'm glad I listened.

<3

Love ya 4ever, Morbs aka Pappy <3

Just watched Riley the Cop (1928). A slight farce heavily dependent on Irish-American stereotypes, but the slight farce of a master. RIP Morbz.

the best moment in Mister Roberts is the dolly in on Jack Lemmon as he's reading the letter that says that Fonda is dead--going in and out of focus--was directed by Mervyn Le Roy (a retake, requested by Lemmon. Ford upbraided him some months later: "Thought you could do it better, EHHHH??")

Only one of two movies he made in CinemaScope / 2:35:1. It doesn't look like a Ford film, unlike The Long Gray Line, although so much of it is stuck in that fucking ship, there isn't a lot to do, particularly with such a wide frame. Despite his dislike of the format, The Long Gray Line is a visually interesting and dynamic movie.

For a while, this was on MOVIES! everytime I had lunch. Still haven't seen all of it, but the liberty sequence is amazing, and above that, the stand off between Cagney and Fonda is two legends being legendary at each other in the best way.

A slight farce heavily dependent on Irish-American stereotype

One thing about Ford is that his embrace of all sorts of offensive ethnic caricatures for comic relief very much included his own ethnic background, which is weird considering how big of an issue it was for him.

my darling clementine great as ever but i can't stop scolding all the characters for standing too close to doc

ha! They'll be alright...

Got a nice poster of that in the mail the other day

Was shocked to realize, while reading Scott Eyman's Ford bio, that Walter Brennan only ever worked with Ford once, on My Darling Clementine. They did not get along...

Because Brennan keep asking Ford "you ever been bit by a dead bee?"

it’s a career performance too! his leaning thoughtfully over the reins in the first scene, framed so it’s just his head and the curve of a whip. his holding Walter Brennan Voice in quiet reserve until it’s time to say “marshal? in tombstone?!”

Lol, Aimless.

Walter Brennan plays the deputy BUGS in Fritz Lang's first US film, FURY (1936).

He's not a wicked character but his actions, arresting Spencer Tracy's protagonist, do lead to disaster.

got hold of that eyman bio on flappy's authority and lol @ this telegram from will rogers:

PUT THE NAME DR BULL ON OUR NEXT PICTURE. SOME HALFWIT SUGGESTED LIFE'S WORTH LIVING. NOW WE FIND THAT THEY HAVE TRIED TO HANG THAT TITLE ON EVERY FOX PICTURE SINCE OVER THE HILL. SO THEY FINALLY SAID GIVE IT TO ROGERS. LIFE'S WORTH LIVING SOUNDS LIKE A GRADUATION ESSAY. AS A MATTER OF FACT IF YOU DON'T MAKE SOME BETTER PICTURES LIFE WON'T BE WORTH LIVING

watched doctor bull the other day actually; ~resonance~ for sure

framed so it’s just his head and the curve of a whip

(subtle elegance of this moment in clementine compares v well to the late-career brechtian spectacle of lee marvin ripping jimmy stewart's law book literally in two and then dramatically hoisting a knout into its vacated position in the frame, not that both these modes don't have their pleasures)

So just read that Cheyenne Autumn was supposed to be a tribute to Native Americans and their abuse by the US govt and presumably also in Ford's earlier films. I was looking the film up since i heard teh book its partially based on and lifts its name from is actually an early book to be told from the indian perspective. I had thought on first seeing it come up in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's AN Indigienous People's History of the United States that it might be about to get criticised for being Eurocentirc. But looks like it is sympathetic . Not sure how well it stands up now but may give it a read.
Also hearing taht teh Navajos that replace the Cheyenne in the film were using their own native language and being very crude in what they were saying since it wouldn't be understood. There's apparently a treaty signing scene where the Indians are talking about the colonel having a very small penis throughout. & being able to get away with things like that in the film caused Native American scholars to talk further about misrepresentation in film, Ideas of not actually being remotely understood, probably teh extent to which they were played by European and Latin (or whatever the contemporary term would have been) actors portraying them to the exclusion of actual Indians. I think also that one tribe being used as another is extremely questionable.

Haven't seen the film i years. Did think it wasa bit questionable in who stood in for who in terms of ethnicity and think that had turned up in films or documehtaries on teh subject I'd seen. Possibly better to see it as a big budget came laden film of teh period possibly if it stands up at all.

The Quiet Man had been on my "haven't seen" list for so long that Morbs once gave me shit about it person. I had the same valid knee-jerk reasons the other Destroyers on this thread do: sentimentality, etc. that I'd just be echo chambering. A long ambling slog that felt way longer than two hours and mostly an adult Disney movie of stereotypes. Nevertheless, the flashback to Thornton in the ring and the aftermath might be one of the best scenes in American cinema. I've never seen Wayne become so haunted - he barely has any words and just acts with his face. Goddamn.

Anyway, I checked it off. My fave Ford is still Mister Roberts which IIRC Morbs said was a typical choice for someone like me.

Just watched Mister Roberts for the first time and enjoyed it. The Fonda/Powell/Lemmon axis was a thing of comedic beauty.

i love that one

IT IS I ENSIGN PULVER AND I JUST THREW YOUR STINKIN PALM TREE OVERBOARD

now whats all this crud about no movie tonight

The late, great David Bordwell writes some wonderful analysis on the physical acting during the scene where they concoct the booze (scroll down):

https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2012/01/18/hand-jive/

That was one of my grandpa’s favorite movies, very very fond memories. Jack Lemmon just on fire.

My Dad was a big fan of Mister Roberts and the sequel Ensign Pulver.

The sequel had Robert Walker Jr in Lemmon's role as Pulver and had a good cast with Berl Ives, Walter Matthau and early appearances by Larry Hagman and Jack Nicholson.

birdistheword thanks for that link. I also love your posts in general.

Aw, thanks for the kind words!

Yeah, I am a fan of yours as well.

Aw, thanks James!

Screening The Horse Soldiers rn, and I really want a wacky caper film centering on the Confederate deserters played by Denver Pyle & Strother Martin in that one scene.

I've never seen The Whole Town's Talking, or Hangman's House. I *have* seen Bucking Broadway, and that is a pip.

I have it in that box set Indicator put out several years ago. It's very good.

I just watched it last night and this morning and enjoyed every moment of it from beginning to end.

Apparently it was Jean Arthur's breakout role, before Capra.

I can believe it, she's definitely great in that movie and so many others. If I had to pick a favorite film with her, it would probably be Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings.

Heh, Scott Eyman is very dismissive of the film in question but Joseph McBride seems to have a higher opinion of it.

John Arthur on John Ford:
"He's got this handkerchief in his mouth and chews on it while he's talking to you. And Eddie Robinson always has a pipe in his mouth. Between the two of them I couldn't understand a word. I finally said would you please take that stuff out of your mouths so I can know what you're talking about."

And:
“Ford always had a handkerchief or a pipe hangin’ out of his mouth,” she recalled. “He chewed on it and you never knew what he said. And Robinson had a pipe that he’d chew. They’d stand there, these two guys, and never give you any directions at all or anything much. I’d say, ‘How do I know what I’m gonna do if you don’t talk?’ And they said, ‘Well, we talk with our brains. We don’t need to verbalize things.’”