The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (147 page)

Star Wars
(77, Lucas) changed his status, yet Ford seldom seems susceptible to confidence. He continued to make forgettable films as his power grew:
Heroes
(77, Jeremy Paul Kagan);
The Possessed
(77, Jerry Thorpe) for TV;
Force 10 from Navarone
(78, Guy Hamilton);
Hanover Street
(79, Peter Hyams), where he showed no instinct for romance; small roles in
Apocalypse Now
(79, Coppola) and
More American Graffiti
(79, B. L. W. Norton); and
The Frisco Kid
(79, Robert Aldrich).

It was in the early eighties that he became a passive phenomenon, though he clearly enjoyed the role of Indiana Jones and gave a nice self-deprecating humor to those films:
The Empire Strikes Back
(80, Irvin Kershner);
Raiders of the Lost Ark
(81, Steven Spielberg);
Blade Runner
(82, Ridley Scott), his best film to date, and one helped by Ford’s willingness to be harsh and shabby;
Return of the Jedi
(83, Richard Marquand); and
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(84, Spielberg).

The straightforward needs of
Witness
(85, Peter Weir) suited him very well, and the love scenes with Kelly McGillis were touching. In
Frantic
(88, Roman Polanski), he ran around getting nowhere—and it was clear that he was growing an anxious gaze, like that of Gary Cooper.
Working Girl
(88, Mike Nichols) had him as the least active corner of a triangle, but his comedy was deft. In
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(89, Spielberg) he benefited from the presence of Sean Connery.

In
Presumed Innocent
(90, Alan J. Pakula), he enhanced the overall mood of joylessness. In
Regarding Henry
, he seemed to pass.
Patriot Games
(92, Phillip Noyce) was further evidence of the look of ordeal on his face. He did Indiana Jones again in an episode of the TV series
Young Indiana Jones
(93, Carl Schultz). As for
The Fugitive
(93, Andrew Davis), he did his usual solid work, but the picture and its implausibility owed so much to the storming energy of Tommy Lee Jones. Ford may be a superstar—but had he ever carried a picture?

In general, he slipped in the nineties—especially in
Sabrina
(95, Sydney Pollack),
The Devil’s Own
(97, Pakula),
Six Days, Seven Nights
(98, Ivan Reitman);
Random Hearts
(99, Pollack) and
What Lies Beneath
(00, Robert Zemeckis)—which is a lot of especially. But in
Air Force One
(97, Wolfgang Petersen) he did carry the entire daft venture—he seemed to be carrying the aircraft itself. He is Russian in
K-19: The Widowmaker
(02, Kathryn Bigelow)—for $25 million. Then he did
Hollywood Homicide
(03, Ron Shelton).

He had talked of retiring—he turned down
Traffic, Syriana
, and
The History of Violence
—but he did
Firewall
(06, Richard Loncraine);
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
(08, Spielberg);
Crossing Over
(09, Wayne Kramer);
Extraordinary Measures
(10, Tom Vaughan).

John Ford
(Sean Aloysius O’Feeney) (1895–1973), b. Cape Elizabeth, Maine
1917:
The Tornado; The Trail of Hate; The Scrapper; The Soul Herder; Cheyenne’s Pal; Straight Shooting; The Secret Man; A Marked Man; Bucking Broadway
. 1918:
Phantom Riders; Wild Women; Thieves’ Gold; The Scarlet Drop; Hell Bent; Delirium; A Woman’s Fool; Three Mounted Men
. 1919:
Roped; A Fight for Love; The Fighting Brothers; Bare Fists; The Gun Packer; Riders of Vengeance; The Last Outlaw; The Outcasts of Poker Flat; Ace of the Saddle; Rider of the Law; A Gun Fightin’ Gentleman; Marked Men
. 1920:
The Prince of Avenue A; The Girl in Number 29; Hitchin’ Posts; Just Pals
. 1921:
The Big Punch; The Freeze-Out; The Wallop; Desperate Trails; Action; Sure Fire; Jackie
. 1922:
Little Miss Smiles; Silver Wings
(codirected with Edwin Carewe);
The Village Blacksmith
. 1923:
The Face on the BarRoom Floor; Three Jumps Ahead; Cameo Kirby
. 1924:
Hoodman Blind; North of Hudson Bay; The Iron Horse; Hearts of Oak
. 1925:
Lightnin’; Kentucky Pride; The Fighting Heart; Thank You
. 1926:
The Blue Eagle; The Shamrock Handicap; Three Bad Men
. 1927:
Upstream
. 1928:
Four Sons; Mother Machree; Napoleon’s Barber; Riley the Cop; Hangman’s House
. 1929:
Strong Boy; The Black Watch
(codirected with Lumsden Hare);
Salute
. 1930:
Men Without Women; Born Reckless
(codirected with Andrew Bennison);
Up the River
. 1931:
Seas Beneath; The Brat; Arrowsmith
. 1932:
Air Mail; Flesh
. 1933:
Pilgrimage; Doctor Bull
. 1934:
The Lost Patrol; The World Moves On; Judge Priest
. 1935:
The Whole Town’s Talking; The Informer; Steamboat Round the Bend
. 1936:
The Prisoner of Shark Island; Mary of Scotland
. 1937:
The Plough and the Stars; Wee Willie Winkie
. 1938:
The Hurricane; Four Men and a Prayer; Submarine Patrol
. 1939:
Stagecoach; Young Mr. Lincoln; Drums Along the Mohawk
. 1940:
The Grapes of Wrath; The Long Voyage Home
. 1941:
Tobacco Road; Sex Hygiene
(d);
How Green Was My Valley
. 1942:
The Battle of Midway
(d). 1943:
December 7th
(d);
We Sail at Midnight
(d). 1945:
They Were Expendable
. 1946:
My Darling Clementine
. 1947:
The Fugitive
. 1948:
Fort Apache; Three Godfathers
. 1949:
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
. 1950:
When Willie Comes Marching Home; Wagonmaster; Rio Grande
. 1951:
This Is Korea
(d). 1952:
What Price Glory?; The Quiet Man
. 1953:
Mogambo; The Sun Shines Bright
. 1955:
The Long Gray Line; Mister Roberts
(codirected with Mervyn Le Roy). 1956:
The Searchers
. 1957:
The Wings of Eagles; The Rising of the Moon
. 1958:
The Last Hurrah; Gideon’s Day
. 1959:
Korea
(d);
The Horse Soldiers
. 1960:
Sergeant Rutledge
. 1961:
Two Rode Together
. 1962:
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
. 1963:
How the West Was Won
(Civil War episode);
Donovan’s Reef
. 1964:
Cheyenne Autumn
. 1965:
Young Cassidy
(a Ford project, taken over by and credited to Jack Cardiff). 1966:
Seven Women
. 1968:
Vietnam, Vietnam
(d).

Sheer longevity made Ford a major director. If that suggests no personal enthusiasm, I must confess to being daunted by the booze mythology of complacency and sentimentality in Ford’s films. No one has done so much to invalidate the Western as a form. Apart from
The Searchers
—which is a very moving and mysterious film that does not cheat on a serious subject, and that beautifully relates the landscape to its theme—I find his Westerns pictorial, tediously rowdy, and based on cavalier treatment of American history. With
Liberty Valance
and
Cheyenne Autumn
, Ford had seemed slightly guilty about the travesty of Tombstone in
My Darling Clementine
and the offhand dismissal of Indians in the cavalry films. But it is notable that
Cheyenne Autumn
was disorganized, deprived of Ford’s ball-and-socket military simplicity.

It might be argued that Hawks’s West is equally romantic. But in
Red River
and
Rio Bravo
it is only a background for character studies that are profound, humane, and touched by sadness. Ford was so often bigoted, grandiloquent, and maudlin. It cannot be escaped that his curious Irish/American romance celebrated the tyrannical hero without any great qualification or demur. The rank emotionalism of the Victor McLaglen character in
The Informer
is the obverse of the vaunted resolution of the John Wayne character in
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, The Horse Soldiers
, and
Donovan’s Reef
. Ford’s 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—thus Ford’s pioneers talk of enterprise but show narrowness and reaction. Above all, his characters are accepted on their own terms—the hope of every drunk—and never viewed critically. In
Red River
, Wayne’s brutality is revealed as odious, and in
Rio Bravo
he is made to respond to other characters. But
The Quiet Man
is an entertainment for an IRA club night, the cavalry films as much endorsements of the military as the wartime documentaries, and
My Darling Clementine
nostalgia for a world and code that never existed.

The Ford philosophy is a rambling apologia for unthinking violence later disguised by the sham legends of old men fuddled by drink and glory. The visual poetry so often attributed to Ford seems to me claptrap in that it amounts to the prettification of a lie—Fonda in the chair in
Clementine
, the lines of cavalry in so many films, the lone figure in Monument Valley, the homestead interior, as airy and vulgar as gravure advertisements for kitchenware. It is worth emphasizing how far Penn, Anthony Mann, Fuller, Nicholas Ray, and Peckinpah have disproved those rosy, statuesque images. Could Ford match the harrowing historical perspective of
Little Big Man
, the moral ambiguity of
The Far Country
, the painful violence of
Run of the Arrow
, the passion of
Johnny Guitar
, or the unsentimental veterans of
The Wild Bunch?

But if the Westerns are fraudulent, what of Ford’s other movies? When diverted to literature or socioreligious gravity he is as bad a director as Kramer.
The Grapes of Wrath
is an appallingly hollow posture of stoicism;
The Informer
risible;
How Green Was My Valley
a monstrous slurry of tears and coal dust;
Tobacco Road
meandering nonsense;
Three Godfathers
shameless; and
The Fugitive
inane.
Mister Roberts
is pious;
Gideon
boring;
The Long Gray Line
monotonous.
Stagecoach
is sometimes cited for its masterly construction. But it stresses narrative sequence and visual prettiness to the disadvantage of character, action, and the out-of-doors. The assembly of stock caricatures, the ritual images of Monument Valley—of Wayne firing into the back projection and of Indians tumbling in the dust—are as mechanical as the supposedly more reflective “human” touches: Mitchell’s alcoholic doctor being regenerated, for instance. As for the very striking interior compositions—at the prairie way station—next year, in
The Long Voyage Home
, Ford innocuously indulged Gregg Toland’s deep-focus studio photography in as senseless a display of beauty as Hollywood ever achieved. Ford’s visual grace, it seems to me, needs the flush of drink in the viewer before it is sufficiently lulling to disguise the lack of intellectual integrity. It is a tipsy, self-regarding director that could repeat the abstract elegance of shadows on the ground before the house is destroyed in
The Grapes of Wrath
. Ford is walled up in a tradition of helpless, rosy lament, the cinema of distracting pipe dream.

I should add that Andrew Sarris has compared Ford with Orson Welles, as two poets of nostalgia. But that seems to me only to reveal Ford’s weakness. Welles recalls a lost order, but sees all its flaws; whereas Ford dumbly regrets the passing of a make-believe stability that has served as an obstacle to any necessary critical sensibility.

It is sometimes claimed that Ford is a superb visual storyteller; that he unerringly places his camera and edits his footage. But the same could be said for Leni Riefenstahl. The glorification of Ford’s simplicity as an artist should not conceal the fact that his message is trite, callous, and evasive. Sadly, it comes as no surprise to discover that Ford was most attached to the reckless, barnstorming bigotry of
Steamboat Round the Bend
and
The Sun Shines Bright
. His message is the stupid, beaming farewell from
Stagecoach
, as Wayne and Claire Trevor go off together—“They’re safe from the blessings of civilization.”

The above was written for the 1975 edition, when Ford was already dead. It was also written before the author had spent any time in the American West, and before he had begun to consider the tangle that has been made between Hollywood movies and what Americans take for their history. I say that to deter the hopes of those who like Ford
and
this book, and who anticipated some greater kindness toward the director. My dismay is deeper now; my case, it seems to me, is more damning.

Still, I erred if my earlier blast suggested that Ford was without talent or interest. He was a natural storyteller; he made lovely scenes—he understood his own effects; he had an eye. Though, with the latter, I would point to the odd artistic link between Ford’s Monument Valley Westerns and the current wave of automobile and fashion advertising that has seized on the Valley as a backdrop. In both cases, there is a lust for epic, clichéd panoramas, which forgets or forsakes the real meaning of that location—as geology, for its natives, and for the rest of America living on the edges of the empty quarter. In other words, the West deserves real journey, witness, walking, riding, living, and being there, patient enough to see through the first spectacle. It also requires a study of its culture: what it has meant to, say, the Navajo, the Hopi, Willa Cather, Edward Abbey, and Edward Curtis. Ford’s eye refused to contemplate history or responsibility.