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Location: Bolton, Lancashire
Join Date: Apr 2003
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Local Date: 10-14-2008
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Re: *** Official FORD AT FOX - THE COLLECTION Review Thread
I don't know how far we're supposed to go with the reviews, but as I've got a draft that I'm preparing for my own blog, I might as well go ahead with that though it lacks polish. Smack my hands if it's over the top:
Who was John Ford?
Artist and artisan, romantic and misanthrope, a loyal friend who could be cold-heart mean to those closest to him, an intellectual who wrapped himself in the cloak of a clod, a liberal with hawkish tendencies, a director to whom home and family were central motifs, yet who couldn't cope with family life, could not wait to get away from home. And hide himself behind the cameras.
Nobody, not any of the great Ford biographers and scholars (Joe McBride's Searching For John Ford, and the Andrew Sarris tome The John Ford Movie Mystery sum up the hopelessness of the task in their titles), his family, the members of his 'stock company', his closest friends, have revealed the essence of 'Pappy', the secret of just who Ford really was, and more importantly perhaps, why.
Of course, there are theories, and McBride's mighty biography maybe more than most, postulates a good handful of them. But at the end, the real John Martin Feeney, an inveterate teller of tall tales, inventions and outright lies, refuses to stand up, and any impression we grab at seems to run through our fingers like fine sand. There appears to be no truth to tell; we print the legend. Ford would have loved that.
Nick Redman's new documentary, Becoming John Ford, ostensively tells the story of the evolution of 'A John Ford Picture', and the title gives hope that some of the many unanswered questions will be addressed. Essentially, it's the story of Ford's tenure at Fox and the pictures he made under the stewardship of producer Darryl F. Zanuck; we learn a little of Ford's eponymous 'becoming', but the core conundrum remains. A tightly wound Gordian knot that simply deflects every investigative sword blow.
Not that there's any attempt to disguise the problem. At one point, writer Lem Dobbs says, almost in exasperation: "All this jibber-jabber about John Ford and talking about his films, and all the books that have been written, and the essays and articles in Cahiers du Cinema; you know it's nonsense in the end because it doesn't ever explain anything."
For the 'jibber-jabber', Redman has lined up an impressive array of 'Fordians' and film historians - Dobbs, Joe McBride, James d'Arc, Rudy Behlmer, Janet Bergstrom, Jean-Christophe Jeuffre - plus Peter Fonda and Tom Mankiewicz. Director Walter Hill, a lifelong Ford fan, provides the off-screen voice of Ford himself, gruff and no nonsense, writer/director Ron Shelton is a business like, if somewhat snippy, Zanuck.
What we get in a little over 93 minutes is a fairly rapid run-through of Ford's early years, how he teamed up with Harry Carey to establish himself as 'a director of westerns', signed an exclusive deal with William Fox, and though he'd been making pictures some seven years made the film world sit up and take notice with The Iron Horse. When Fox signed the German director F.W. Murnau, proclaiming him to be an 'artist of the cinema', Ford gaped at Sunrise and declared it the best film he'd ever seen. For several years, he aped European expressionist cinema, until finally, the story teller, the guy who 'only had an eye for composition', the artist, became John Ford.
It's not until Fox merges with Zanuck's 20th Century Pictures in the mid-'30s, and genius meets genius, that we get to the heart of the story. Zanuck would later proclaim Ford as the best of directors, a true master (Ford's response was typical: 'That's horseshit'), while Ford, untypically, reciprocated: "Darryl's a genius; head and shoulders above the rest."
Zanuck himself said that he would 'cut through the hokum', the assumption being that he stymied some of Ford's proclivities for humour that could be considered too broad, or for meandering from the essentials of the story. Ford trusted him enough to let him free reign in the editing room, though he'd long perfected the technique of cutting in the camera, leaving barely enough trims to let anyone stray too far from his vision.
They proved a formidable partnership; Zanuck who loved Americana, and the red, white and blue director who was born to portray the history of his country in film after film.
Though Ford railed against studio interference, claiming Steamboat Round The Bend could have been a 'great picture' but for 'the new studio heads' shoving their noses in, he and Zanuck quickly came to form a close and mutually beneficial alliance. Ford's throwaway comment that he shot the moving military funeral scene in Wee Willie Winkie on the spur of the moment, belies the truth. It was, in fact, Zanuck's flash of inspiration during discussions the previous night. And, of course, it was Zanuck himself who put Ford at the wheel of a Shirley Temple vehicle, a film for which, Joe McBride insists, Ford should have received an Oscar, and not for The Informer, McBride claiming the latter an inferior work.
Zanuck was never a wannabee director, instead he proved a motivational figure, allowing Ford a high degree of artistic freedom. Together they made their studio piles of money, and their respective mantles were piled high with awards. From The Prisoner of Shark Island, to Young Mr Lincoln, Drums Along The Mohawk and The Grapes of Wrath, Ford and Zanuck would continue with America's story.
Rudy Behlmer says that The Prisoner of Shark Island is historically accurate. It's not, but it doesn't matter; as Bergstrom says, it was the French who first pointed out that what Ford was doing was not portraying reality, but America's great mythology. Print the legend was this story teller's credo.
There are hints that, even before My Darling Clementine, Zanuck and Ford banged heads. It was Zanuck's idea to shoot a more optimistic ending to The Grapes of Wrath, and when Ford slowed the tempo during Drums Along The Mohawk, Zanuck complained it 'too draggy' adding tersely 'They are called moving pictures because they move.' I've long pondered just how much Zanuck influenced 'Drums', but that's Becoming John Ford's only clue.
Both Zanuck and Ford served their country during wartime, and their final collaboration at Fox proved to be possibly the most contentious. It was Zanuck's insistence to shoot the kiss to end My Darling Clementine, simply because preview audiences demanded it, but it wasn't his only change; edits were made to speed up the action and more music added to underscore certain sequences. James d'Arc says he prefers Zanuck's final edit, but an extant preview cut is (available on Fox's current DVD of the film), to my mind, the far superior version - either way, it was the Zanuck / Ford collaboration's valediction.
For those new to Ford's world, Becoming John Ford provides a wealth of information, though there's so much more to tell. Then again, what are libraries for? The documentary is available on it's own, but it works best if you already have a number of the films in your collection, or if you buy it as part of the gargantuan Ford at Fox set - even at an hour and a half, there are precious few clips.
For dyed-in-the-wool Ford fans, there's little here that they won't have read or heard before, though there are some nuggets; Mankowicz tells of a fresh faced Robert Wagner overhearing Ford discussing a problem with his cameraman on What Price Glory. Thinking he would bring an apple to the teacher, the naive Wagner piped up: "I have an idea Mr Ford..." He got no further because his director decked him.
There are also some interesting opinions, particularly from Dobbs who says that Howard Hawks' heroes were all about professionalism, getting the job done, Walsh's heroes were all adventurers, while Ford's were all about tradition. Dobbs says that 'tradition' is the most interesting, and I, not surprisingly as an unashamed Ford fan, would agree.
It's Dobbs who also asks - and here we are back to our problem again - "How did this crude, ugly man in many respects, achieve a body of work of surpassing beauty and poetry and depth and complexity?" McBride says that the mask Ford wore was part of his "devious, Irish self-protection", while d'Arc claims that My Darling Clementine is worth another look for evidence. Victor Mature's Doc Holliday can, he argues, be read as Ford's on-screen doppelganger, a man who is afraid of expressing his true feelings, slightly afraid of woman and relationships, who astonishes all when he quotes a Shakespeare soliloquy word for word. The big pointer, says d'Arc, is the handkerchief, the last thing that Holliday releases as he falls into the dirt. It's an interesting theory.
Presented in Academy Ratio, the better to accomodate the film clips, Becoming John Ford is fascinating stuff, each talking head interviewed in situ as if they were in a cinema, watching a Ford movie and commenting on it and it's author. Christopher Caliendo's unobstrusive score is rather nice and Redman's direction is neat and unflashy; at least it seems he had a budget to work on here, unlike the impoverished offerings in Warner's Peckinpah box set.
The extras include Ford's colour 16mm documentary The Battle of Midway, an 18 minute tribute to the men who fought off the Japanese fleet to take this strategic Pacific Ocean island. Ford said that if the camera shakes - and it does, frequently - it's not for effect, it's because shells were exploding at his feet. Watching it today is still quite an emotional and visceral experience; quite how it affected wartime cinema audiences I can only guess.
The Battle of Midway is in quite extraordinary condition, as is the additional Midway footage, also included. You'll also find the shortened version of Gregg Toland's (who was also part of Ford's wartime film unit) December 7th, which is in rather less fine condition, besides displaying the kind of vicious wartime racism that 'Midway' eschews. Rounding off the wartime films is a short (eight minutes), Torpedo Squadron, filmed without narration using footage from his time shooting 'Midway', and simply a memorial to Torpedo Squadron 8, most of whom died during the fighting. I can barely watch this kind of stuff without shedding a tear, which marks me, not a veteran of course, but as the son of a family that served their country and paid the price.
Sound comes in English stereo, with English, French and Spanish subtitles.
Last word from John Ford himself: "Y'know, I don't want this to get out" intones a conspiratorial Hill as Ford "I posed as an illiterate.
"Auditory imagery; the chance to project symphonic qualities for the creation and holding of a mood, so that pictures will no longer be limited to pure and simple narrative for material."
"Oh, I like talking pictures."
So many films, so little time...
Film Journal Blog
Emily Collingwood: I can't see him. All I can see is the flags...
Last edited by John Hodson : 12-31-2007 at 10:29 AM.
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