Thoughts on John Ford

I've been going through a few of John Ford's films these past few days, most of them have been his late-thirties early 40s work like "Stagecoach", "The Grapes of Wrath" and "How Green was My Valley". Films like these always drew me in with its poetry, John Ford perhaps more than any other western filmmaker was a poet, I'm amazed with some long stretches of poignant silence in his films which always grabbed me. It was in "The Grapes of Wrath" in particular that really pulled me in. In one of the more famous scenes in the film, Ma Joad (played by Jane Darwell) is in the family kitchen near the wood stove burning little odds and ends the family can't afford to bring with them, she sees a pair of earrings and holds them to her ears as she sees her weary reflection in an old dusty mirror. For me it's one of the saddest images in all of cinema seeing a shadow of a woman looking at who she once was and not knowing what will come next. Ford was a master at capturing sad scenes like these so well.

There's always a reluctance in a lot of Ford films to let go of the past, the modern world looks to be an unstoppable machine which destroys a certain traditional way of life. Even though Ford has an acceptance of modern times it is a melancholy acceptance. It is because of this, Ford films keep American history alive, the characters constantly live in the past, some keep the past alive in any way they can even going to lengths of talking to the dead by their graves which was a scene Ford did more than once. My favorite of these scenes comes in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" where John Wayne's aging Calvary officer speaks to his wife. The way he speaks is real dialogue but it's as if it were a poem.

I sometimes get a feeling of peace out of Ford films like I do with the great Japanese filmmakers like Ozu and Kurosawa both of whom have dealt with the older generation vs the younger, Kurosawa in particular has been influenced by Ford films.

Ford has always stood apart from contemporaries like Hawks and Capra both of whom were known for speeding up their story with fast paced dialogue or montage. Ford takes his time in his films, you can really breath in his world none more significantly than in his westerns with his great monument valley backdrop, this is where he achieved mythical significance and also where he brought down some older myths themselves. Ford never sugarcoated the past, even when it came to the U.S. Calvary which he sometimes (but not all the time) romanticised. One just has to look at his "Fort Apache" and Henry Fonda's portrayal of a stubborn officer fixated on starting a win less war with the Apache.

John Ford is America's most prolific filmmaker making over 100 films, which makes me think I have only scratched the surface of what this man is all about. For those who have yet to experience John Ford, it is impossible for me to give a starting point, for me I started near the end of his career with "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance", but whether you start there or to his silent period with "The Iron Horse" the themes don't often change, but what does change perhaps is Ford himself who seems to get more wiser and more aware of the world as it changed.