John Ford | Just Pals | The Shamrock Handicap | 3 Bad Men | The Blue Eagle | Four Sons | Born Reckless | Up the River | Seas Beneath | Pilgrimage | Four Men and a Prayer | Stagecoach | Fort Apache | When Willie Comes Marching Home | The Quiet Man | The Long Gray Line | Gideon's Day | The Last Hurrah | The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Classic Film and Television Home Page

John Ford

John Ford's films are noted for their pictorial beauty. Ford became a director long before that other great creator of visual beauty on the screen, Josef von Sternberg, and his films constitute a parallel tradition to those of Sternberg and his followers.

Some common characteristics of Ford films:

• Vertical architecture, which the hero climbs up or down.
• Gaps or chasms, over which people cross or meet. (Ship-submarine gap: Seas Beneath, dock-ship: When Willie Comes Marching Home, jumping over cliff gaps: Cheyenne Autumn)
• Fences, often of rails.
• Nocturnal cityscapes, full of street lights.
• Deliberately set small fires, as a campaign tactic.
• Sailors.
• Parades, with militaristic discipline.
• Uniforms.
• Buglers.
• Horse races.
• Ships and trains.
• Older man - younger man relationships.
• Relations between a working class and a middle class man.
• Ethnographic portraits of a culture, time or place.
• Concern with Civil Rights and racial prejudice.
• Anti-war films.
• Sinister actions of the rich. (Four Men and a Prayer, The Last Hurrah, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)
• Democracy and voting. (Stagecoach, The Last Hurrah, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)
• Westerns set in Monument Valley.
• Politicians who love oratory. (Born Reckless, Pilgrimage, When Willie Comes Marching Home, The Last Hurrah, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Cheyenne Autumn)
• Families.
• Family meals.
• Heroes who don't like routine work.
• Men who seek permission to marry.
• Men who love women, who are in turn controlled by another man.
• Hoaxes, deception and double lives, which give the hoaxer pleasure.
• Concern over lying in the press, and its effect on society. (Fort Apache, The Last Hurrah, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Cheyenne Autumn)
• Visionary experiences, which people see, and sometimes later enter. (fake family: Just Pals, mystery ship, panic drill, dance sequence: Seas Beneath, revolution: Four Men and a Prayer, trip abroad: When Willie Comes Marching Home, tour of West Point, kitchen: The Long Gray Line, campaign: The Last Hurrah, shooting: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance)
• Lateral camera movements, recalling the track-to-the-swamp in Sunrise. (monk through the countryside: Hangman's House, through a swamp: Born Reckless, opening: Pilgrimage)
• Strong composition.

Just Pals

Just Pals (1920) is a delightful comedy drama.

The small town and characters are like an expanded version of the Springfield prologue of The Iron Horse.

The small town persecutes the hero, as an outsider. Later, in Pilgrimage, the small town will torment young Jimmy for being illegitimate.

Anti-Work

• The hero of Born Reckless pretends to be working man, concealing his life of crime. He clearly relishes his imposture, as a defiance of the work ethic.
• The son in Pilgrimage wants to get away from the farm, and its backbreaking toil.
• The office in The Whole Town's Talking is depicted as a nightmare.
• The absconding banker in Stagecoach perhaps wants to get out of the rat race.
• The hero of When Willie Comes Marching Home wants to get out of his training job.
• The hero of The Quiet Man wants to retire, and live in Ireland.
• The hero of The Long Gray Line dislikes his job washing dishes, and gets a better position as an athletic coach.
• The rich son in The Last Hurrah is a playboy, disappointing his father.

Vertical Architecture

• The barn loft in Just Pals is accessed by rope.
• The hero of Born Reckless goes up and down the staircase at his parents.
• Sailors in Seas Beneath climb riggings, and also climb up ropes to board ships. A sailor also climbs a balcony, on shore.
• The hero of Pilgrimage leaves his house via the roof. Later, he goes up into a hay loft, rather like the one in Just Pals.
• People climb ship's masts and rigging in The Hurricane.
• The steep building staircase is used by the revolutionaries in Four Men and a Prayer.
• The heroine at the end of Stagecoach, goes up and down a steep outdoor staircase.

Trains

Visionary Experience

The young man goes to live among the fake family. As in some other Ford films, the young man experiences the vision from the inside. He participates in it.

The fake family suggests skepticism about "family values". This family's values are just a hoax. The fake mother anticipates the rotten mother of Pilgrimage.

The Shamrock Handicap

The Shamrock Handicap (1926) is a horse racing picture, set in both Ireland and the United States.

The Irish scenes at the beginning are the best part of The Shamrock Handicap. Even at this early date, Ford is oriented to an ethnographic reconstruction of folk life styles and customs. I have no idea if other silent film makers also liked this approach. I have never seen anything else like it, but my knowledge of silent film is still woefully fragmentary and incomplete. Here, Ford is recreating Ireland. Two years later, in Four Sons (1928), Ford is showing us Bavaria. Ford will follow this throughout his entire career. There is a similar approach in such later works as How Green Was My Valley (1941). Ford uses the same techniques in 1928 and 1941.

There are plot elements in common, as well. All of these films put heavy emphasis on parent-child interactions. All have emigration to America as a major theme.

3 Bad Men

3 Bad Men (1926) is a Western. Its first half is mainly comedy and romance; its second half is full of drama and action.

Outlaws and Good Guys

Later, in Stagecoach (1939), Ford will make an outlaw himself, the Ringo Kid, be the romantic lead in the picture. In 3 Bad Men, the hero played by George O'Brien is a complete good guy, and the outlaws are his girl friend's protectors. In Stagecoach, the young hero once again has older men protectors, but here they are honest characters: the sheriff and the doctor. This is a role reversal between the two films. A bunch of older male characters also look after the young romantic hero (John Agar) in Fort Apache (1948), although neither Agar nor his protectors are crooks in that film.

Although George O'Brien is the romantic lead, in many ways the actual lead is one of the three bad men, Bull, played by Thomas Santschi. Although Thomas Santschi made nearly 150 films, mainly silents, thus is the only film of his I've ever had a chance to see. This is an index of how poorly silent films are preserved and distributed today. Santschi gives a fine performance as Bull, the leader of the three outlaws.

The Land Rush

Ford likes to shoot his characters, so that they are seen as small but important figures on the horizon. This gives a tremendous sense of atmosphere. It is if they were the harbingers of change, a new force that is about to enter the life of the world. We frequently see groups people on horseback at long distance, including the three outlaws of the title. And the long panning shot, showing the settlers as a thin line on the horizon, awaiting the start of the land rush, is one of the great spectacles of the film. This shot pleasantly seems to go on forever. One keeps expecting Ford to run out of image. Instead, the shot keeps turning and turning, revealing more and more settlers lined up on the horizon. Meanwhile, beautiful hills tower above them, seeming to convey a message about the West, or maybe about life.

Masking

Today, masking looks like an anti-illusionist device. It makes the viewer conscious that what they are seeing on the screen is a photograph of reality, not reality itself. That other silent movie device, cross-cutting, also has a similar effect. (Cross-cutting is not much employed in 3 Bad Men.) In general, silent films often seem more like a "collection of photographs about a subject", and less like an illusionistic "you are really there watching the action of the film" medium. I suspect that such anti-illusionism is only a side effect of masking, however.

Its real purpose seems to be to add to the beauty of the compositions shown on screen, by adding a differently shaped screen border surrounding the composition. It is consistently employed in this way by Ford throughout 3 Bad Men. Masking is rarely used to highlight a piece of action, or to make a story point. Instead, its main use seems to be to add to the beauty and complexity of the compositions. Masking often appears in long shots, when Ford is creating beautiful panoramas of Western spectacle, such as horse riders, wagon trains, or the settlers organizing for the land rush.

The Blue Eagle

Male Bonding and Sailors

Visual Style

George Schneiderman's photography has a startling, "you are there" quality. It seems as immediate as modern day video filming, used for soap operas and news broadcasts. One often feels that one is in a room with George O'Brien, and that he is standing right in front of you. There is none of the filtered, shadowed silent art photography that one sees in many great silent films.

Four Sons

Four Sons (1928) is a pacifist picture, looking at how a Bavarian mother's children get caught up in the horrific war machine of World War I Germany. Ford would return to pacifist themes later in his career, notably in Pilgrimage (1933) and The Long Gray Line (1955). Both Four Sons and Pilgrimage are based on stories by I. A. R. Wylie.

Ford had consistent liberal messages throughout his career, from such pacifist attacks on World War I as Four Sons (1928), to his pro-black Western Sergeant Rutledge (1960). He depicted himself as a Democrat, and supported Roosevelt and the New Deal in the 1930's, and JFK and Civil Rights in the 1960's. Such a politics in his personal life was consistent with what appeared on screen. Ford was clearly neither a conservative nor a Communist. Attempts to herd him into either of these two categories are clearly counter to much evidence.

Born Reckless

A Comic Riff on Gangster Films

The hero starts out as a crook: a member of a gang that commits burglaries. While technically thus a "gangster", he never becomes a big time criminal, and never becomes involved in bootlegging or other typical activities of Al Capone era gangdom. And he keeps trying to get out of this world, during most of the picture. Neither Born Reckless nor Ford approve of gangsters. Unlike most "real" gangster movies, Born Reckless does not idolize or glorify gangsters. Instead, it views them in a negative and satirical light.

Born Reckless is based on the novel Louis Beretti (1929) by Donald Henderson Clarke. By 1929, gang tales were popular in stage and prose fiction, as well as movies.

Both before and after Born Reckless, night clubs were common in gangster tales. The owner-manager of such clubs were glamorous, but often sinister figures, always tough, sometimes more honest and sometimes more crooked. This is a great role for hero Beretti, allowing him interaction with everyone from rich to working class to gangster characters.

An Episodic Film without Goals

Today, it seems useful to re-state Sarris' and Gallagher's points in the terminology of David Bordwell. Born Reckless lacks a goal. Many films, as Bordwell points out, have a goal: something which the hero is trying to accomplish throughout the picture, and at which he succeeds or fails at the film's end. Born Reckless is completely without such a goal. Individual scenes move towards a bewildering multiplicity of sub-goals, as Sarris points out, but there is no overarching common goal to the picture.

Sarris implies that this lack of goal makes Born Reckless a failure (and he condemns the film in no uncertain terms). I have respectfully to disagree. I don't want to claim that the lack of goal in Born Reckless is a positive virtue - or that it is the most interesting thing in the film. Still, it does not hurt the film either. It has the mild virtues-in-passing, that it encourages a rich diversity of plot material in the movie. It also helps to surprise us - the audience never knows where the film is going next. If the movie could be retitled Thirty-two Short Films About Louis Beretti, it is at least rich in plot and incident throughout.

Gay Relationships

Next, Ford moves to a service comedy. Here he stresses the growing bond between the hero, and a rich man who's also joined the Army. Like his brother-in-law, we have the contrast between the ethnic hero from a poverty stricken family, and a more respectable guy from an upscale background. Both of these male friends are young, good looking and appealingly innocent and naive. They make a contrast with the bull-like and street smart hero, a man who has his own strong feelings and sense of honor.

In both cases, the hero wants the approval of a man outside his own class. The hero's urge to be more "upscale" is a constant one throughout the film. He keeps trying to move away from the crime foisted on him by his "gang". The film is a story of a man trying to escape from peer pressure.

Up the River will have related characters: a good guy crook from the streets (Spencer Tracy), and a young man from a refined upscale family (Humphrey Bogart). It too will show a strong bond between the two men.

The hero develops a hopeless crush on Jack's sister. This goes nowhere, as she promptly marries a handsome officer (played by a young Randolph Scott). There are hints of masochistic feelings on the hero's part here, as the officer is clearly what the hero thinks of as an ideal man: upper class, really good-looking, heroic. The officer is kind-hearted and welcoming to the hero. The hero reciprocates by calling him Skipper - a recognition of his authority.

Camera Movement

Towards the end, there will be a track through a swamp. This recalls the track through the swamp in Murnau's Sunrise. It even has the hero going over a fence, just as in Murnau. Murnau's track was often right-to-left, while Ford's here is left-to-right. One can get the feeling that Ford is restaging Murnau's track in reverse.

Musical Parade

And in France, the soldiers ride out of a village singing "The Caissons Go Rolling Along", another huge hit of 1917. It is also played over the start and end credits. The song is sung by male chorus, a common feature of Ford films.

Spirals

Hangman's House contains spiral metal work in the gate, and spirals in the wood of the judge's chair.

Entering Shots

Up the River

Up the River (1930) is a tongue-in-cheek comedy, mainly set in a prison.

Up the River was made only two years after sound came to Hollywood. Sound itself might not have as revolutionary in cinema, as the change of attitude at the studios that went with it. Old silent players were often not considered good enough anymore; instead, vast numbers of actors were imported from the stage. Here, we see stage actor Spencer Tracy in his feature film debut, as well as screen newcomer Humphrey Bogart in his second movie. Movies became virtually a branch of the Broadway stage during this period. Bogart is not playing the tough guy of his later years, however. Instead, he is playing one of Ford's refined young heroes, the sort of role that will be taken by John Agar or Jeffrey Hunter in later Ford. Even here, Bogart has a bit more of an edge than Ford's later heroes, playing a young man who has accidentally killed another man in a fight, and who has been sent to prison for manslaughter.

Ford includes some of the songs that will be a recurring feature of his storytelling. Even in his silent days, the heroes of his films were associated with songs, that would be played as tunes by the instrumentalists that accompanied the films in the theater. Now, with sound technology, the music is sung right on screen.

Ford never tired of poking fun at refined New Englanders; he grew up in Maine. Here he has a lot of fun with both the ladies who visit the prison, and Bogart's ultra-proper mother.

The prisoner who impersonates a refined Englishman, while talking to the woman social worker, recalls the "English" character in Born Reckless.

The young lovers have a courtship, constrained by the narrow opportunities in prison. They anticipate The Quiet Man, and its courtship under the strict eyes of a matchmaker and traditional custom.

Seas Beneath

Seas Beneath (1931) is a World War I drama, about naval conflicts. It's a grim movie, in which the characters on both sides (American and German) rush towards killing each other. Indeed, Seas Beneath anticipates Fort Apache, in its relentless march towards annihilation. It actually seems like a pasted-on happy ending, that any of the characters survive this struggle.

Seas Beneath treats both Germans and Americans with great respect. In this, it recalls Four Sons. Tag Gallagher's book reveals that there was a German version for the German film market. In any case, these are some of the most glamorized Germans anywhere in a Hollywood film. Seas Beneath is also unusual in classical Hollywood, for the huge amount of untranslated German dialogue.

The film has a good deal of that favorite Ford subject, male bonding among sailors. However, Ford's best films on this subject take place in peacetime, and are cheerful comedies. The entertainment value of Seas Beneath is sunk by its wartime setting.

Deception

In Born Reckless and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the hero is hopelessly in love with a woman, who is in love with another man. There are aspects of masochistic fantasy to this. In Seas Beneath this is pushed further. Both the hero and Cabot are attracted to women, who are secretly German spies, and under the command of German Franz Schilling (John Loder). Loder is an upper class, sharply uniformed hunk, like Randolph Scott in Born Reckless. He is clearly far more powerful than Cabot, just as Randolph Scott outclassed the hero of Born Reckless.

There are also masochistic elements, in the commander ordering the sailor to play a woman's role in the panic drill.

Architecture

The men on the ship reach out across a narrow gap, and talk with the men on an American submarine. This perhaps recalls a bit the horsemen jumping gaps between cliffs in Cheyenne Autumn.

The nocturnal cityscapes in the Canary Islands are also part of a long Ford tradition. These moody shots are lit by lantern-shaped street lights, as is common in Ford. These scenes create a strong mood, while everyone is searching for the missing Cabot before returning to the ship.

Cabot deliberately set small fires, as an attack on the German ship. These will return as a tactic the Indians use against the Cavalry in Cheyenne Autumn.

Visionary Experience

The mystery ship as a whole is a visual hoax.

The dance sequences in the cantina also have something of the same effect. They start out as a pure spectacle among the women. The man Cabot can watch in awe - but not take part. Then soon, he gets a chance to participate in the dance spectacle, with the tango. Cabot is astonishingly effective at his dance, much to the amazement of other crew members, who comment on this in the dialogue. This is different from the hero of The Long Gray Line, who is ineffective when he tries to take part in spectacles he has seen, such as the boxing demonstration he was put through by the Captain.

The tango is one of the best on-screen tangos in a Hollywood film. At times, Cabot could give Rudolph Valentino a run for his money. The footwork is surprisingly racy, anticipating the Lambada and Dirty Dancing.

The panic drill deception is linked to theater. The examples of theater given are of humorously old-fashioned Victorian melodramas: East Lynne (1861), from the novel by Mrs. Henry Wood, Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl (1871) from the story by Frances M. Smith.

Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage (1933) is a drama.

Links to Sunrise

Both films also have broad similarities of locale. Both start out with naive, poor farm families isolated in rural areas; both bring them to big glamorous cities in their second halves. Both films have their characters wind up in urban beauty parlors. In both, the visit to the big city is an eye-opening experience. In both, there is comedy about the contrast between the peasant heroes and urban sophistication.

A frightening difference concerns the films' look at sexuality. The hero of Sunrise is having an adulterous affair. The hero of Pilgrimage wants to leave his mother, and get married: a far more innocent dream by any standards. His mother treats this as horribly transgressive.

Sexuality and Suppression

But there are other possible interpretations, just below the surface. It is less common in real life, for parents to try to suppress their children's desires to get married. It is very common for parents to try to suppress and control their children's homosexuality. Even today, many parents would rather see their children die, than have a loving gay relationship. Such a preference for death over sexuality, is exactly what happens in Pilgrimage. Pilgrimage finds its most realistic meaning, if one sees a gay subtext in the film.

Double Lives

• The hero of Born Reckless is concealing his double life as a crook from his parents.
• In Up the River, Bogart is concealing his prison term, and the real nature of his male friends, from his mother.
• The hero of Pilgrimage is concealing his romance with a woman from his mother.

In Born Reckless and Up the River, this concealment is mainly played for comedy. But in Pilgrimage it is tragic - and linked to sexuality.

Ethnography

The festival in the French village, is benignly presided over by the local priest. This anticipates the Irish village in The Quiet Man.

Public Relations

The great character actor Robert Warwick is the Major in Pilgrimage. Usually, Warwick plays sympathetic characters. Here, he has a dark side. All his charm cannot conceal that he is a PR agent for Death.

Warwick's courtesy to the ladies never falters. In this, he is treated more generously than the beautifully mannered prosecutor in Sergeant Rutledge, whose mask eventually slips revealing a contempt for a woman witness. Warwick also passes a major test, when he shows the same courtesy to a Jewish mother, as he does to all the other ladies.

Still, Warwick and the other officials, are clearly trying to get good publicity, for the horrors of war mongering and militarism. It is a creepy look at how governments and the military promote war.

Bridges

Four Men and a Prayer

Four Men and a Prayer (1938) is a mystery film. A strange mix of genres, it has a background of world travel and adventure, and much political commentary.

Anti-War

The opening impresses: it shows equal concern with both the Indians and British who were killed in the senseless battle. This recalls Seas Beneath, and ford's concern with both the German and American sides of World War I. Ford in the 1930's was years ahead of conservative Americans in the 2000's, who are racistly indifferent to Iraqi dead in the Iraq War.

Visionary Experience

Another kind of "vision" in Ford involves elaborate hoaxes, designed to fool people who watch them. In Four Men and a Prayer, the taxicab is such a hoax. There are no taxicabs in the small British village, something previously established. But a most convincing looking one appears at the train station. It astonishes the railway porter (a common character in Ford).

Links to Superman

Early comic books often agreed with Superman, in publishing many stories about how the arms trade was a cause of war and conflict. Details can be found in my list of comic books with social commentary.

Communication

Architecture

Boats

In the finale, the heroes swim to a boat, and board it, like characters in Seas Beneath and The Hurricane.

Stagecoach

Stagecoach (1939) is one of Ford's finest films.

The women wearing the blue ribbons at the start, recall the Gold Star Mothers with their medals in Pilgrimage. Both films have women enforcing puritanical social standards, that harm other women. Babies being born play a role in both films.

Links to Born Reckless

• As in Born Reckless, a family member of the hero is murdered, and the hero has to track down the bad guy.
• Other bad guys in Born Reckless inform to the police, causing people to be sent to prison, just as the Plummers inform on Ringo in Stagecoach.
• A safe is robbed at the start of Born Reckless, a safe is looted by the banker at the beginning of Stagecoach.
• Friendships between a decent cop and a criminal hero are key in both films. (The hero of Born Reckless is a real burglar, the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach is merely falsely accused.)

• The banker's sententious speeches about the Army in Stagecoach, echo earlier bluster about the Army satirized in Born Reckless.
• The stagecoach itself, resembles the band wagon on which people are riding at the start of Born Reckless.
• Parades and mounted processions occur in both films, with the stagecoach followed by the Cavalry in key shots throughout the first half of Stagecoach.
• Both films emphasize the Army bugler. He is given a shot at the start of Stagecoach, and the bugle plays a key role in the attack.
• The scene where the mob discusses the informer in Born Reckless, is profoundly extended in Stagecoach to scenes of actual voting. The Stagecoach vote is a deep tribute to democratic tradition.

Finale: Visual Style, Murnau, Joseph H. Lewis

The shot includes many views of people in the buildings as they pass. This recalls a bit the moving camera shot in the Paris street in Pilgrimage, during the taxi dispute.

Ford's use of street lights and darkness during the scenes in the Lordsburg streets is superb. It recalls the night-and-street-light cityscapes of Ford's Seas Beneath (1931) and The Informer (1935). They anticipate the nocturnal cityscapes in Joseph H. Lewis. As best as I can tell, street lights first show up in Lewis in Arizona Cyclone (1941), two years after Stagecoach. They could well reflect the influence of Ford. They appear in Arizona Cyclone in a final night time shoot-out in the street, a plot event that recalls the finale of Stagecoach. On the other hand, both Ford and Lewis might be echoing an earlier movie tradition.

The Slicks

The opposite of the "slicks" were the "pulps". These were inexpensive magazines, that were printed on cheap wood pulp paper. There were hundreds of pulp magazines, and they printed Western stories in huge quantities. There were vastly more pulp magazines than there were slicks, and they printed a lot more stories. Despite their profusion and cheap price, nothing in the pulps was as widely read or as prestigious as anything that appeared in the slicks. Black Mask, the most famous pulp, rarely had its circulation go above 100, 000, while Collier's had a circulation of 2.5 million.

Ernest Haycox, the author of Stage to Lordsburg, was among the Western writers most succesful at getting his writing into the slicks, as opposed to the low paying "pulp" magazines. The appearance of a Western story like Stage to Lordsburg in the slick Collier's was already a breakthrough in getting this tale before a vastly greater audience than a Western story normally would have had in the pulps. It also probably helped cause folks like John Ford and producer Walter Wanger to view the story with respect. This was not some obscure pulp tale. This was a story that had already had a breakthrough in public acceptance, readership and prestige. Similarly the original story for The Quiet Man appeared in a slick, The Saturday Evening Post, in 1933.

Hollywood filmmakers regularly adapted works from the slicks, such as all the films like Lady for a Day made from Damon Runyon tales, or the slick magazine crime serials that served as the source for films like Secret Beyond the Door (Fritz Lang), The Big Heat (Lang), or The Reckless Moment (Max Ophuls).

Stagecoach is regularly cited as the film that rescued Westerns from their B movie obscurity, and turned them into prestige productions in sound-era Hollywood. One might point out that Stage to Lordsburg was already something of a breakthrough work in terms of getting prestigious publishing for a Western.

Fort Apache

Fort Apache (1948) is the first of Ford's unofficial "cavalry trilogy".

The relationship between Kirby York (John Wayne) and Michael O'Rourke (John Agar) is one of many Ford relationships between a mature man and a young, good looking guy. These relationships are in most ways gay love stories, although Ford never makes this fully explicit. They tend to be the heart of Ford films in which they appear.

As a gay man, York is the main character who tries to resist the huge social machinery that Col. Thursday has put in motion. A machine that will eventually send the whole troop to their deaths. York is also the one who reaches out to the Other: the Native Americans Thursday is determined to attack. York communications with the tribal leaders through Spanish: he is a man who has made a conscious effort to open himself up to other cultures, and develop a practical working relationship with them. Gay people are depicted as a point of openness in society, connecting individuals who allow the society to reach out to other groups outside its borders. Such connections are a source of hope and growth for the society, even its main chance for survival, if the society will allow such a reaching out to take place and flourish.

Just before the final attack, York sends O'Rourke off to carry a message. This is York's attempt to preserve O'Rourke, who he worships. The thought of O'Rourke's beautiful body being harmed by violence is anathema to York. This is the only resistance to sinister course of events that York is now able to achieve. Because of this, O'Rourke is able to survive, get married, and have children, just as York intended. This shows York's commitment to the life force, even in face of the disaster that overtakes the troop.

When Willie Comes Marching Home

When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950) is a comedy with a World War II background.

Visions

The hero's status as an observer is built into the plot. The key aspect of his trip is that he actually saw the new weapon. Because of this, his eye-witness account is invaluable to the Allied High Command. It is the act of seeing which is crucial here.

Seeing is linked by the plot to filming. The French Underground also makes a film of the weapon. This film shows exactly what the hero also saw. The plot equates the hero's act of witnessing, with the making of a documentary film. This is one of the few "film within a film" sequences in Ford. It links Ford's profession of filmmaking, with one of the "visionary" characters in his oeuvre.

What the hero sees goes beyond what the film records. He is asked to authenticate the film. And also to provide a background story for its context and making. He is also asked to identify a character in his story, by looking through an album of photographs.

The hero has to jump to the ship. Such gaps or chasms are a Ford image.

Small Town

One notes that everything about the military is depicted as positive. The young man who becomes a pilot is the only one in town to offer the hero any support. The pilot recognizes realistically that military service is not all grandstanding. His understanding is far beyond what any of the civilian townspeople believe.

The bands urging people to enlist recall Born Reckless. So do the basic training, and the later French locale.

The Hero

Many Ford heroes lie to their families, about their secret lives. The hero of When Willie Comes Marching Home tries to tell his family the truth about his secret experience - but no one will believe him!

The hero's (unintentional) secret adventure relates to the (deliberate) schemes of other Ford heroes. The hero of Born Reckless sneaks off to commit a robbery. The hero of Up the River sneaks in and out of prison. Willie similarly moves in and out of his training job so quickly, that people hardly realize he is gone.

Studio Style

The Quiet Man

The Quiet Man (1952) is a comedy, beautifully filmed in Ireland.

The romantic scenes in the wind and rain, recall the storms in Pilgrimage and The Hurricane.

Permission to Marry

• In Hangman's House, the heroine is forced by her father to marry a monstrous rich man, rather than the man she loves.
• In Born Reckless, a man seeks the hero's approval to marry the hero's sister - and easily gets it.
• In Pilgrimage, the mother prevents a young woman from marrying her son.
• In Judge Priest, the mother does not want her son dating a woman of unknown parentage.
• In Gideon's Day, a young man wants to romance the hero's daughter.

The Long Gray Line

The Long Gray Line (1955) is a drama about West Point, the training academy for US Army officers.

Links to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: An Experimental Film

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance will have John Wayne and Woody Strode watching a scene we have already seen before in the film. They "interfere" in its action, in a complex and almost avant-garde way. The scenes in The Long Gray Line are simpler, and less experimental in terms of film narration. But they produce a similar effect. It is almost an experimental film fantasy, showing a character wandering around, invisibly inspecting action in front of him.

Both films anticipate the House of Fiction episodes in Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974).

Later, in The Long Gray Line, the hero's courting of the heroine will have something of the same effect. He will fix her sink in her kitchen, while she silently goes about her cooking job, completely ignoring him. Once again, the hero seems to be watching a scene where he is invisible to the other people. As in the early shots, the hero talks constantly, without any response from those he is observing.

Discipline and Uniforms

Soon, another sequence will link discipline and uniforms to sexuality. The hero has no interest in either, till he meets and decides to court the heroine. The hero immediately gets himself in a fancy uniform like Corporal Heinz, and takes an exaggerated comic interest in precision walking and saluting. He views these as an advantage in courting.

The hero tries to take on the characteristics of the men who've been in charge of him and disciplined him. He gets a uniform like Heinz, and he tries to re-run the boxing scenario the Captain pulled on him, on a new student. Both of these events can also be seen as the hero trying to "enter" the world of the story, he has previously witnessed. They carry on the "experimental" aspects of the film narrative.

Gideon's Day

Gideon's Day (1958) is a crime drama, showing a day in the life of Scotland Yard Inspector Gideon.

Links to Born Reckless: Ford's Crime Films

• Both are crime dramas - but neither contains any mystery.
• Both have tough urban settings (New York City in Born Reckless, London in Gideon's Day). These get a full ethnographic treatment, in the Ford manner.
• Both give an inside look at both the police as an institution, and criminal gangs.
• Both have English characters (Sir Maurice in Born Reckless, everyone in Gideon's Day).
• Both are episodic tales, made up of numerous disconnected subplots.
• Both films skirt the edge of subgenres, containing gangsters in Born Reckless, a serial killer in Gideon's Day - but avoid making such characters the leads as they would be in typical gangster or serial killer films.
• The heroes are both tough, bull-like men of around 40, handsome and well built. They share a dry sense of humor, are exceptionally macho, and fully understand a tough urban world of crime, without being mean spirited themselves.
• Both heroes are between classes, dealing effectively with characters who range from the poor to the rich.
• Horrendous crimes which attack women's home life are denounced in both films (kidnapping in Born Reckless, the rapist in Gideon's Day).
• Both heroes have to deal with betrayal to their organization (mob informers in Born Reckless, a corrupt policeman on the take in Gideon's Day).
• Widows relate to the heroes in both films (his sister in Born Reckless, the cop's widow in Gideon's Day).
• Both heroes have a warm - and honest - family base, which contrasts with the criminal world outside the door.
• Food is important in the family world - the family actually runs a grocery store in Born Reckless, and the hero has to get food for the family in Gideon's Day. Meals at home are in both films.
• Both heroes deal with, and have to approve, the courtship of a nice, refined-but-staunch, younger man for a female relative (a sister in Born Reckless, a daughter in Gideon's Day).

The Last Hurrah

The Last Hurrah (1958) is a political satire, about contemporary United States politics.

Visions

Links to Born Reckless

The urban parade that opened Born Reckless recurs, as the several political parades in The Last Hurrah. Both emphasize music and marching bands.

The hero of Born Reckless helped people who came to him, especially his widowed sister and his old girlfriend. The Mayor in The Last Hurrah has a steady stream of public petitioners he aids. Most important: the widow at the wake. Many of the other petitioners seem to be women too: they outnumber the men in the last line-up by three-to-one.

A Phony Family

While this is presented as a satire of political image creation, one suspects there are deeper subtexts as well. Both films offer a devastating critique of the "normal, heterosexual family" as an imaginary fake, created by evil people. In both, we see what one suspects is a gay Fordian critique of "family values" as a complete sham.

Both films center on a phony love for children. The fake motherly woman in Just Pals is just miming mother love, so that the family can get the kid away from his "unfit" male friend. The Last Hurrah also has fake caring for kids: the mother's expressions of love for her kids are read off of cue cards. Also: dogs are standard substitutes for children in advertising, and we get a phony affection for a dog, followed later by a look at the mother's real feelings about this dog.

The phony image making, for a television spot, also embodies Ford's theme about the dangers of political lies in the press

Uniforms

This sequence allows feelings that have been implicit in much of Ford to be talked about openly. Once again, this is disguised as political comedy.

The Last Hurrah gets men into leather uniforms. Black leather jacketed motorcycle cops show up twice.

Class Warfare

Ford will soon do a similar scathing look at the rich's class war on working people in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Both are films are unusually trenchant, in showing the schemes of the rich to oppress the average person.

The Writer

Hunter is always dressed in a tasteful suit, often pinstriped. He is first seen wearing sweater a with his suit, a sign of an intellectual man. Vincente Minnelli (a name not often linked with Ford's) used this same convention in costuming intellectual leaders and scientists in The Band Wagon (1954), The Cobweb (1955), and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970). Hunter also smokes a pipe, the other signifier of a writer in old films.

The Son

But the son has some hidden virtues that make him more sympathetic, even while he is being spoofed. He is a gentle sort, who seems to have no malice towards anyone. He is always friendly towards his father, even if he shows no interest in his father's political work. When his father gets sick, his first thought is to take his old man on a cruise. This is frivolous, but is actually a decent idea for a heart patient. It also shows that he likes to spend time with his father: he is definitely not the sort of bad kids seen in Tokyo Story, who try to spend as little time with their folks as possible. Even the young man's hobby, listening to jazz, shows that he is of good will towards black people. He is miles away from the rich racist Repulicans who are the film's villains.

Even the loose woman he is dating shows some mild virtues in this man. She is not the Playboy bunny style ideal of 60's libertines, but an old-fashioned glamour queen of the nightclub era. He is an awe of her, and in her own way, she is a queen, not some disposable bimbo.

The Cavanaughs - and real life politics

This is also the world that produced the Kennedys - Teddy Kennedy is Catholic, Irish, and one of the most liberal members of the US Senate.

My family loved The Cavanaughs, and enjoyed seeing a sympathetic look at liberals on TV. It got great reviews - but poor ratings.

In the real-life 2006 US Election, 55% of Roman Catholics voted Democratic (liberal), 44% voted Republican (conservative). See “The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life”, which does sociological surveys and polls about religion and its impact on US political action. While the Irish-Catholic mileu of The Last Hurrah and The Cavanaughs is mainly liberal, among US Catholics as a whole, there is a wide diversity of political attitudes. Trying to conclude anything about an American’s political beliefs from Catholic religious affiliation is futile.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) is a Western. It has strong elements of crime fiction, like other Ford Westerns such as Stagecoach and Sergeant Rutledge.

An Experimental Film

The staging is also odd. The original action is in a frieze, with the Western set parallel to the frame of the screen. It looks completely artificial, in a deliberate way. It is like a piece of paper, or a projected movie, on which new information is being "written" in the foreground by Wayne and Strode.

The shooting is part of one of Ford's nocturnal cityscapes.

Links to Stagecoach: Democracy

• The classroom. No one votes here - but voting, citizenship and racial equality in a democracy are all discussed. And the meeting serves as a prototype for the democratic scenes to come. The sign on the blackboard states that education is the basis for democracy: a key theme of the film.
• The vote to elect the representative to the Capitol. This is the town's first real taste of democracy.
• The meeting in the Capitol, to send a delegate to Congress.

Stagecoach also contributes actors to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. John Carradine is prominent in both films, as an oratorical representative of politically regressive forces. And Andy Devine is back, doing comedy relief. More sympathetically, here he is a man married to a Hispanic woman, resembling the way-station owner married to the Native American in Stagecoach.

Links to Born Reckless: Relations between men

Also like the hero of Born Reckless, Wayne is a tough guy, a man who can deal with a rough milieu, but who is not mean or malicious himself. And like the working class hero of Born Reckless, he allies himself with men who have middle class connections, who are not as tough as he is. Here, Wayne supports Jimmy Stewart's lawyer. While there are two middle class men the hero befriends in Born Reckless, the army-buddy and the man who marries his sister, in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance these have been boiled down to one man, the Stewart character. Stewart echoes the "weak - but determined" image of the man who marries the sister in Born Reckless, both being petit bourgeois characters who are out of their depth in a tough world - but who are courageous, if ineffectual, in standing up to bullies and tough criminal types.

In both films, these middle class guys have an active heterosexual life - the hero does not. Stewart also resembles the third, upper class guy in Born Reckless, in that he winds up marrying the woman the hero loves. As in Born Reckless, there is a hint of masochism, in a hero who watches and suffers as another man marries the woman he loves.

Both films also contain an important reporter character.

Both films have much satire of oratory.

A restaurant is the family business and home base here, just as a grocery store and family meals were in Born Reckless.

Wayne, Stewart and Society

Wayne's character is the opposite. He is much better at dealing with people, on a personal level. Yet he keeps trying to put the others in politically regressive situations. He prevents Pompey from learning how to read, and calls him his "boy". And he treats Hallie as a woman who needs no education. With all his charm, he is hurting the people around him.

Wayne also keeps refusing to step up to the plate, to use a baseball metaphor. He declines to propose to Hallie, despite the urgings of the reporter - the promptly goes out of town, rather than pursuing his advantage. Wayne does not push to train Stewart with a gun, playing the paint prank, instead. He refuses a nomination to the Capitol - a real mark of a lack of civic involvement. Although his image is a "man of action", the only actions he takes are with a gun.

The White Paint

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