The chapter on THE HORSE SOLDIERS and Fred Kennedy, Ford’s stuntman who died from a broken neck, recounts one of the most heartbreaking moments in film history, and McBride’s well-researched telling of how it went down is the high point of his book. It relates in many ways to Ford’s whole approach to filmmaking: personal, sentimental (don’t mind David Thomson, he got Rivette and Hawks but totally missed the boat on Ford), full of contradictions (for instance, compare Ford’s recklessness as a filmmaker watching over the well-being of his actors in the silent days to the incident surrounding THE HORSE SOLDIERS), and totally capable of problematizing and ultimately transcending his moral outlook (THE SEARCHERS, but also THE LONG GRAY LINE, TWO RODE TOGETHER, etc)… Most of the conservative Ford critics thought he got worse with age. Many of the newer and more open Ford defenders (after Lindsay Anderson and Bogdanovich, probably starting with Tag Gallagher and his unabashed affection for films like THIS IS KOREA! and 7 WOMEN, both masterpieces) think his late period contains the best stuff. There’s something in every Ford film… even the absolutely dreadful TV film THE BAMBOO CROSS. (One only has to look at three or four minutes of VIETNAM VIETNAM to know it’s not really a Ford film. Everything else is worth a look.) And like Welles and Sternberg, he is in an important period of rediscovery and reappraisal. Most people will never get past THE SEARCHERS. For the rest of us, John Ford may be the most important litmus test in film history. I think he’s the greatest American filmmaker who ever lived. No one could film dances, graveyards, or brawls like him. He was one of the few American filmmakers who knew how to use expressionism, and he was as important to the documentary tradition as Flaherty or the Maysles much later. Many people overlook the docs, but they contain many of his finest moments. If I could only pick fifteen Fords for a course syllabus (a difficult task), they would be: STRAIGHT SHOOTING, THREE BAD MEN, PILGRIMAGE, JUDGE PRIEST, WEE WILLIE WINKIE, STAGECOACH, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY, THEY WERE EXPENDABLE, FORT APACHE, WAGON MASTER, THIS IS KOREA!, THE SEARCHERS, THE LONG GRAY LINE, and 7 WOMEN. (Painfully leaving out such Fords as RILEY THE COP, AIRMAIL, LONG VOYAGE HOME, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, THE QUIET MAN, THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT, THE WINGS OF EAGLES, and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE.)
Mr. John Ford - Your take over 2 years ago
The chapter on THE HORSE SOLDIERS and Fred Kennedy, Ford’s stuntman who died from a broken neck, recounts one of the most heartbreaking moments in film history, and McBride’s well-researched telling of how it went down is the high point of his book. It relates in many ways to Ford’s whole approach to filmmaking: personal, sentimental (don’t mind David Thomson, he got Rivette and Hawks but totally missed the boat on Ford), full of contradictions (for instance, compare Ford’s recklessness as a filmmaker watching over the well-being of his actors in the silent days to the incident surrounding THE HORSE SOLDIERS), and totally capable of problematizing and ultimately transcending his moral outlook (THE SEARCHERS, but also THE LONG GRAY LINE, TWO RODE TOGETHER, etc)… Most of the conservative Ford critics thought he got worse with age. Many of the newer and more open Ford defenders (after Lindsay Anderson and Bogdanovich, probably starting with Tag Gallagher and his unabashed affection for films like THIS IS KOREA! and 7 WOMEN, both masterpieces) think his late period contains the best stuff. There’s something in every Ford film… even the absolutely dreadful TV film THE BAMBOO CROSS. (One only has to look at three or four minutes of VIETNAM VIETNAM to know it’s not really a Ford film. Everything else is worth a look.) And like Welles and Sternberg, he is in an important period of rediscovery and reappraisal. Most people will never get past THE SEARCHERS. For the rest of us, John Ford may be the most important litmus test in film history. I think he’s the greatest American filmmaker who ever lived. No one could film dances, graveyards, or brawls like him. He was one of the few American filmmakers who knew how to use expressionism, and he was as important to the documentary tradition as Flaherty or the Maysles much later. Many people overlook the docs, but they contain many of his finest moments. If I could only pick fifteen Fords for a course syllabus (a difficult task), they would be: STRAIGHT SHOOTING, THREE BAD MEN, PILGRIMAGE, JUDGE PRIEST, WEE WILLIE WINKIE, STAGECOACH, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY, THEY WERE EXPENDABLE, FORT APACHE, WAGON MASTER, THIS IS KOREA!, THE SEARCHERS, THE LONG GRAY LINE, and 7 WOMEN. (Painfully leaving out such Fords as RILEY THE COP, AIRMAIL, LONG VOYAGE HOME, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, THE QUIET MAN, THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT, THE WINGS OF EAGLES, and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE.)
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