The greatest director in cinema history along with Mizoguchi and Chaplin. The problem is that lots of his films will remain unknown; another problem is that lots of his films are lost.
However, that quote is wonderful.
“But I don’t like you, C.B. I don’t like what you stand for and I don’t like what you’ve been saying here tonight.”
I’ll laugh on this for a half an hour.
The fact that some of his films are lost is a tragedy, although at least there are a ton of available films.
Seriously, how many people would call out DeMille like that? Ford is so fucking cool. Apparently during shooting he once took an associate producer out in front of the cast and crew and told them, “This is an associate producer — take a good look because you won’t be seeing him on this picture again”
That all just sounds like an angry, sloppy, bad drunk talking, to me. I’m sorry. I’m just not into “macho” culture. Or rather, not the way it’s presented here. I don’t like DeMille either, but if you’re scoring coolness points off such an easy target, I think that’s kind of telling. Ford’s much closer to being DeMille than he is to being Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann or Sam Fuller. Anyway, it has nada to do with his films either way.
Intriguingly Ford’s politics were closer to DeMille’s as well. But taking a stand against a loyalty oath at the height of the Red scare and McCarthy’s “investigation” into Hollywood was note merely “scoring coolness,” Justin. It was a very brave stand. Writers and directors were being sent to jail just for having been members of the Communist Party - which was perfectly legal for them, by the way; the Party was even included on California ballots.
I don’t think DeMille was much of an easy target at that point in time, and Ford was one of the few people willing to openly criticize his McCarthyist function.
And I think Ford and sloppy part ways at his filmmaking. The man’s films were incredibly exact, he’d shoot very little beyond what he needed and he would shoot as chronologically as possible. When producers attempted to interfere, he’d showcase his carefully erected tough-guy visage, but to be honest (at least as far as I’ve encountered in my reading) he was an incredibly sensitive, smart person when not in public. He used his image to bully executives into getting what he wanted, and he deserved it.
I think he’s in a completely different spectrum than Ray, Mann and Fuller, all of whom I respect immensely. Ford was a ‘macho’ director, as you put it, but he was also one of the few directors I’d say were capable of myth-making. At times his characters were larger than life as was his personality, and I think that’s what makes him so able to work with archetypes while maintaining his individuality.
“Intriguingly Ford’s politics were closer to DeMille’s as well.”
I don’t think Ford was as right-wing as people think, at least not until much later in his career.
I don’t need to believe in myths. In fact, I think quite strongly that it’s the duty of all art (and all entertainment) to destroy myths.
Ford could get away with baiting DeMille because he was as far to the right, even if he didn’t back McCarthy. In this case, it took one to get one.
Geez, lighten up, Justin.
It’s true, I don’t believe in mythic thinking. I’m not any more overcast than usual, RUS.
I don’t think it’s a matter of believing in myths, insofar as you believe in any fictional narrative, but that Ford takes these mythlike figures, of whom John Wayne is the most prominent, and brings them to our level. So in some of his films Wayne may be Good and someone else may be Evil, but he is able to bring out the human drama of these figures.
One of the many remarkable facets of Ford is that he was able to do this, and do it well, and then transition into something as complicated and as deconstructive as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which questions the entire notion of an absolute morality and of the validity of myths.
I don’t know, Joshua. I don’t see as much nuance there as you do. And not all fictional narrative equals myth-making. I just don’t trust the preemptive, larger than life scenario.
I didn’t mean to equate all fictional narrative with myth-making, I just mean that I don’t think either requires more belief in the material than the other to enjoy it. To put it another way, I don’t feel any need to believe in myths any more than I feel the need to believe in family dramas, and that that separation from belief can actual be beneficial to the viewing experience.
>>“Intriguingly Ford’s politics were closer to DeMille’s as well.”
I don’t think Ford was as right-wing as people think, at least not until much later in his career.<<
Uh, Joshua, this WAS later in his career.
And the question has always been an open one as to whether he was more liberal in the 1930s or whether he just happened to be working with a more liberal scriptwriter.
Yeah, but I’m talking about even later in his career. As in the years from the mid-sixties leading up to the Nixon administration as opposed to the rise of McCarthyism in the early fifties. As for what is known and what’s left ambiguous of his political beliefs, I do know that he was an early advocate of JFK and that he had a history of liberal tendencies.
It was WWII that brought out the worst in Ford. It’s no accident that the much-decorated Audie Murphy became a Ford western star — the connections between good infantry and good calvary were too hard to resist. Where many Hollywood filmmakers were making cynical postwar noirs that reflected the problems in society, Ford was making movies like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and My Darling Clementine.
If Ford were alive today, he’d be working with actors like John Cena.
But all political questions aside, I don’t see Ford as an essential director in aesthetic terms either. Plenty of other guys had a similar if not sharper pictorial sense, and an ability to pace dramatic scenes of action. Plus, they were more modern in their outlook toward people and in their ability to hold contradictory ideas about the world, as expressed in bittersweet or tragic endings — Out of the Past; They Live by Night; In a Lonely Place.
You know, you’re never going to hear me badmouth Out of the Past, They Live by Night or In a Lonely Place. Beautiful, beautiful films with more than a little class, style and conflict.
However, I don’t think John Ford and postwar disillusionment would have made for great bedfellows. He was a classical director, rigid in form, and his best films are concerned with more universal, timeless themes as opposed to reacting to political situations. I think that’s a big part of why his films are still so great today, they don’t need to be seen in context to have their optimal effect. It’s also why filmmakers can boost so much from him (Paul Schrader, I’m looking at you) and have it still be relevant and effective.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is clearly about demythologizing the western. I love the film for what it is but, when attempting to rank and place such films you do have to ask yourself if a film such as that or say, Watchmen’s attempt to demythologize the superhero genre (regardless of how much less successfully it achieves it’s aims) is as worthy a piece of art as films which are already aware that heroic myths are silly, such as the Rules of the Game. The attempt to deconstruct genres only provides strong interest to those who take the genre seriously in the first place. Historically speaking,this is an accomplishment as TMWSLV paved the way for my favorite wester, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The question still remains, however, by building up these myths, and then later striking them down, wasn’t John Ford way behind Renoir, Welles, Bresson and a whole host of others? Just asking.
“The question still remains, however, by building up these myths, and then later striking them down, wasn’t John Ford way behind Renoir, Welles, Bresson and a whole host of others? Just asking.”
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘behind’. Do you mean these directors had already gone through the same arc, or that they had already been deconstructing myths?
And maybe you’re right. Maybe Ford’s later efforts to deconstruct his own myths are only of interest to those interested in the Western genre. I can’t say for certain because I love Westerns too much to be able to achieve any objectivity. But from my perspective, they are much more poignant and effective for his absolute knowledge of the genre, indeed, his complete mapping of its conventions and then deconstruction of them. I touched on this in the horror thread, I find genre films that break the mold only work if you know the trappings and conventions of the genre. And that’s why Liberty Valance is so brilliant, because Ford clearly knows exactly what he’s doing and thus is able to navigate the audience through the genre while completely subverting it at the same time. Which is fascinating because I already enjoy his classical films so much on their own.
>>you do have to ask yourself if a film such as that or say, Watchmen’s attempt to demythologize the superhero genre (regardless of how much less successfully it achieves it’s aims) is as worthy a piece of art as films which are already aware that heroic myths are silly, such as the Rules of the Game<<
That’s an intriguing point, Mike. And one to which I’ll have to give some thought, partly because there are no easy answers and also because I think we tend to throw the word “deconstruct” around much too freely. Any genre film that does some rethinking is referred to as a deconstruction. Is LIBERTY VALANCE a deconstruction or just an ironic rumination?
>>I don’t see Ford as an essential director in aesthetic terms either<<
I have to admit that I rarely consider Ford any time in in some sort of list-making mode, but that’s primarily because, after a certain point, he concentrated on Westerns & I’m not very fond of them. But a good many film directors I admire laud Ford (Welles ran STAGECOACH over and over in preparation for directing CITIZEN KANE), so attention must be paid.
It’s ironic that the line Print the Legend from TMWSLV is associated so strongly with Ford’s career when the film actually undermines the “reality” it shows as phoney myth. But it certainly doesn’t deconstruct John Wayne (more reactionary than Ford), and Ford remained generally too macho and dangerously mythologising a director for my taste, even while i admire that calculated economy and control of the shooting method, leaving little chance of messing up his vision in the editing. Credit to Ford for standing up against De Mille but Justin does have a point that he was on stronger grounds than most in being able to do so. There were some right-wingers who were decent enough to resist McCarthyism, and some liberals turned tail.
@Justin
Do you watch movies? You’re aware that Audie Murphy never made a film with Ford, right? A typical Murphy picture like Kansas Raiders (which was one of Murphy’s better films) is not even 1/10th the film of anything Ford made.
I really think you need to go back and watch these films again and reconsider your comments.
Ford’s postwar films, especially My Darling Clementine and The Cavalry Trilogy are at the peak, visually, of American filmmaking. You’re casual dismissal of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and My Darling Clementine suggests that you may not have even seen them. Victor Mature’s Doc Holliday in Clementine is one of Ford’s darkest characters and these four films really presage the cynicism that would mark the end of his career, in films like The Searchers and The Man who Shot Liberty Valance. It’s silly to hear someone say that these postwar films don’t compare to other American films of the time, they do compare: they’re better.
And for someone obsessed the the social import of films (we all know you can’t enjoy a film unless it in some way damns society and everything else) go back and take a look at Fort Apache and tell me it is not an ambiguous social commentary.
Furthermore, I’m surprised that many intelligent viewers here seem to assume that Ford actually believed the sentiment of “print the legend.” He actually believed quite the opposite, an ambiguity found throughout his films, Fort Apache and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance especially.
“Is LIBERTY VALANCE a deconstruction or just an ironic rumination?”
I’m going with the textbook definition that a deconstruction is ‘an approach (whether in philosophy, literary analysis, or in other fields) which rigorously pursues the meaning of a text to the point of undoing the oppositions on which it is apparently founded, and to the point of showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable or, indeed, impossible.’ And in that case I think Liberty Valance (as well as a couple other Ford films) fits the label. I think by establishing a conventional setup: ‘weaker candidate wins gunfight thanks to the stronger one’s boasting nature’ and then completely twisting it on its head, first by giving Jimmy Stewart an immense amount of guilt, and then by the big reveal of John Wayne as the murderer, he’s deconstructing one of the central themes he established. He’s showing how complicated that situation would be in reality, and how it would never actually occur in that fashion.
However, I agree that the word gets thrown around a lot. Every action film that’s not Die Hard gets called a deconstruction, etc.
“Furthermore, I’m surprised that many intelligent viewers here seem to assume that Ford actually believed the sentiment of “print the legend.” He actually believed quite the opposite, an ambiguity found throughout his films, Fort Apache and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance especially.”
Ford realizes the value of myths, but also the value of truth and with the aforementioned films the ‘deconstruction’ element comes into play in that he’s pessimistically stating that the audience prefers the impossible myth. So he could go ahead and make movies that were ‘the legend’ and then go right ahead and show the truth, which is what makes him such a valuable and unusually effective filmmaker.
I agree there’s ambiguity to be found in many of his films (Liberty Valance, The Searchers, Fort Apache) but he did as much as anyone to fix in the public mind the idea of the cavalry way of life as a generally positive aspect of the West, reactionary John Wayne as all American tough hero, and in establishing the white viewpoint, largely ignoring the reality of what was basically genocide, while too often depicting Native Americans as fair game for being shot down. And later demythologising or questioning of some earlier films- or how they were perceived- wasn’t enough to erase this. But there’s no denying his storytelling ability, his use of location, poetic lyricism and visual beauty. The socio-political element in films is still important though and i’m often uncomfortable with Ford’s presentation and attitudes. I think Penn’s Little Big Man demytholigises or challenges the screen history of Westerns, more strongly than Ford ever did. And that still left room for improvement.
I have not seen a big number of Fords films. But what i have seen, How the West Was Won, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, Mister Roberts, Mogambo and What Price Glory…… I have liked. I can tell you the only John Wayne films i can watch are the Ford films.
I am always struck by his landscapes. All very Ansel Adams. I was very enertained with the Bio i read “Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford” by Scott Eyman.
“We’ve treated them badly, it’s a blot on our shield; we’ve robbed, cheated, murdered and massacred them, but they kill one white man and God, out come the troops.”
-John Ford
Ok, Rus, no need to be snide and dismissive of my movie-watching credentials. I misremembered Murphy being in the cavalry pictures, it’s not the crux of what I’m saying. The jingoism of those 40s films was still wartime-related. I watched all those movies on Saturday afternoon tv when I was a small child, which is probably the best time of life to watch John Ford. Far from needing every film I watch to be social commentary, I simply am not grabbed by Ford’s message. Whether or not he injected mild forms of irony in this film or that film (and I believe he always left the door open wide enough that you could go home and sleep tight believing white makes might makes right), he and I and John Wayne will never be drinking buddies.
Well, that’s an awfully superficial response to Ford and it seems like it would be pointless to continue arguing it.
Joshua W
There’s been some dissent in other threads surrounding the godfather of the western, and I wanted to consolidate it a bit more so that we’d have one place to argue, rather than ruin other people’s threads. I guess I’ll let the man introduce himself, in a roundabout way that illustrates one of the key aspects to his personality that makes me love him, his boldness. This is excerpted from a Director’s Guild meeting during the rise of McCarthyism where Cecil B. DeMille was trying to make it mandatory that all members sign a loyalty oath:
“My name’s John Ford. I make Westerns. I don’t think there’s anyone in this room who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. DeMille — and he certainly knows how to give it to them…. [looking at DeMille] But I don’t like you, C.B. I don’t like what you stand for and I don’t like what you’ve been saying here tonight.”
Ford stands as probably the most influential director since D.W. Griffith, a giant of the big screen, influencing directors like Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa (who donned his dark glasses in imitation), Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, Sam Peckinpah, Francois Truffaut, Satyajit Ray and Jean-Luc Godard, and singers from Bob Dylan to Buddy Holly. I’ve always seen Ford as the sturdy foundation of Western filmmaking, someone whose work has been so sprawling and polarizing that he created The Informer, Stagecoach, Rio Grande, The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Cheyenne Autumn, all within the same lifetime. He was prolific, technically awe-inspiring, and was determined to tell complicated stories in an entertaining fashion.
One of my favorite directors, I consider Ford to be top of the heap. He may not have been as ambiguous or as gruesome or as pessimistic as other directors (although at times he was all three), but I’ll be goddamned if he didn’t know how to craft a riveting narrative.
Addendum: Yes, I do know that this will probably end up as a discussion of the perceived racism in his films and am prepared for that, but I wanted to start this off on a more… reverential note, I suppose.