John Ford - S/D

yeah that's one of jones's best essays IMO

quentin, racism in movies is like tap-dancing in movies

it's like anything else, quentin

it's cinema

a lovely paragraph:

The idea of the American West was always more a matter of solitude and space and the balance between individualism and community than a matter of conquest. Along with the city as theater of life in the Thirties or bourgeois existence as genteel prison in the Fifties, the idea belonged to no director or writer, and the culture breathed it long before the movies began. That the idea was built on the backs of indigenous Americans who were, in Ford’s own words, “cheated and robbed, killed, murdered, massacred and everything else,” was not exactly hidden from view, but relegated to the background of the story that the culture was telling itself through paintings and dime novels and traveling shows and, finally, movies—albeit never quite as comfortably as is now imagined. It’s curious that American culture and history are still so commonly viewed through a New Left prism, by means of which 1964 or thereabouts has become a Year Zero of political enlightenment; as a consequence, the preferred stance remains that of the outsider looking in, or in this case back, at a supposedly gullible and delusional pre-Sixties America. It’s certainly preferable to right-wing orthodoxy, but that’s hardly a compliment. The New Left is now very old but its rhetoric lives on, many times removed from its original context, and that rhetoric seems to have found a welcome home in film criticism.

however:

yet another revenge fantasy—that makes five in a row.

dunno if Jackie Brown is a revenge fantasy. It strikes me as a suburban California picture.

suburban California fantasy

seems dlh is volunteering for Jones's "fool's errand"

i am parodying qt on violence; it is not a fair equivalency but on the other hand fuck him

think the general stuff about view-of-history here (as in alfred's graf or the one right after it) is rly important

ok, I admit I avoid the Q's words whenever I can.

caught how green was my valley for like the third time a couple weeks back but for some reason it really hit me on a emotional level this time, also the cinematography was just stunning. kudos, arthur c miller

A well written piece, and this guy is mostly right on in his defence of Ford, but his apologetic stance towards Birth of a Nation bothers me far more than the fact that he obviously hasn't seen Jackie Brown.

yet another revenge fantasy—that makes five in a row.

dunno if Jackie Brown is a revenge fantasy. It strikes me as a suburban California picture.

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, May 3, 2013 8:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

1. kill bill 1
2. kill bill 2
3. death proof
4. inglorious basterds
5. django unchained

caught how green was my valley for like the third time a couple weeks back but for some reason it really hit me on a emotional level this time, also the cinematography was just stunning. kudos, arthur c miller

― buzza, Friday, May 3, 2013 8:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a slept-on ford/miller collab is wee willie winkie. it's an awesome movie, and it is stunningly shot. i've seen a 35mm print twice (one tinted, the other not) and I can't imagine the DVD provides the same effect but it should probably still be pretty impressive.

sarris says it's a better move than the informer and he's right

i have to admit i didn't quite follow some of jones's stuff about BoaN not being "propaganda." not in the strictest sense, no, but it does essentially advocate race war. and i think it's unfair to griffith if we think he was somehow unaware of or indifferent to that. i also think it's important to remember that many people in 1915 felt the film was an abomination (notably the emergent NAACP, which published a pamphlet against it). so it's at as though condemning it is simply holding it to an anachronistic standard, not that jones makes this argument.

anyway i do think he acknowledges the vile racism in BoaN, but it seems like he's distancing that from griffith a little bit. i wouldn't call him an apologist for BoaN, maybe a _slight_ apologist for DWG.

i also think he understates the extent to which indian/white encounters (and violence) were central to the western genre in literature and film. it's right there, in much of its complexity, in last of the mohicans.

but overall his points are well-taken and i think it's a lovely, bracing corrective not just to tarantino but to all the other folks (including henry louis gates, who was interviewing tarantino) who would make stupid assumptions/generalizations about the western in general and john ford in particular.

god I forgot Death Proof

I think what he's saying is we have to reckon with the racism in BoaN, not come to reductive conclusions that lead us to make movies like QT's.

That Kent Jones piece is great and was a long time in coming.

I've seen a lot of westerns in my day. I grew up in the Golden Age of tv westerns. They were on prime time every night, and the old movie western serials from the 30s and 40s still got a lot of play in off hours. Certainly, native americans were often protrayed as sneaky, untrustworthy and bloodthisty savages, although not always. As the presence of living native americans receded to the far margins of the American scene, 'good indians' started to appear in westerns more often.

Casting my mind back, I'd say that nasty evil white men FAR outnumbered the injuns when it came to who were the prominently featured bad guys, by at least 50:1. This makes perfect sense when you realize just how limited your plot possibilities are when your bad guys live entirely outside the culture of your good guys. It's very hard to bring them together into the same scene.

watching The Prisoner of Shark Island tonight.

Dave Kehr on the 5-film Columbia box:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/movies/homevideo/tcm-offers-john-ford-the-columbia-films-collection.html

Two Rode Together is essential, and I like The Last Hurrah and Gideon's Day. Never have caught The Whole Town's Talking.

"when you shoot, kill a man!"

"If they move...kill 'em!"

Sorry, wrong thread

Watched They Were Expendable last week after finishing Mark Harris' new book. A flop on release, and I can see why: it lacks grand flourishes, concentrating on men entering and exiting destroyers and battleships and shit.

Never watched that one. Eager to know how you liked that book, Alfred.

Harris on Pappy and the war (I reserved it at the liberry):

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2014/04/image-of-the-day-41114.html

that book was very enjoyable and prompted me to watch the long voyage home which was good and not just because of john wayne's attempted swedish accent

Ford at Fox megabox for $50 today only (GRAPES code)

http://www.foxconnect.com/ford-at-fox-the-collection.html

"when you shoot, kill a man!"

― espring (amateurist), Tuesday, March 25, 2014 5:09 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is this walter brennan horsewhipping his boys in my darling clementine? Evil Walter Brennan is the best fucking idea in the history of movies.

yup

morbius, i have to thank you for that. wow.

just payin it fwd, saddlebritches

When you do, it will be a magnificent obsession.

Sorry, wrong thread.

I broke into my F@F box last night and started with Up the River, a prison comedy (the "serio" elements are negligible) best known for the debuts of Tracy and Bogart, w/ a few genuine laughs, some knockabout action (Ward Bond surfaces just to take a KO punch from Tracy), and just for Alfred a closeup of inmates at a variety show while "M-O-T-H-E-R" is sung.

Bogart acts nothing like Bogart -- playing a rich New England kid a la his tennis-racket-carrying Broadway roles, apparently -- but Spence is in the wisecracking mode that would carry him through his other early Fox pictures. Also there's the indispensible palooka Warren Hymer as ST's sidekick.

ok, nobody reads my Spencer Tracy thread, but The Last Hurrah is worth it for the lead and its conviction as an old Irish machine-pol wake, in spite of Jeffrey Hunter and any scenes featuring actors born after 1905.

http://p7.storage.canalblog.com/70/45/110219/48200843.png

from TCM.com:

Pat O'Brien recalled that on the set... Ford "would never talk the part you were playing, he'd just tell you what he wanted. 'I hope you can get it,' he'd say, chewing on that handkerchief he always had. When you failed, he'd say, 'That wasn't what I wanted. Try to get what I wanted. We're going to take another whack at it and it better be good.' And after you finally got it he'd come over and put his arms around you. 'Why the hell didn't you get it in the first place?' he'd say. Ford was the genius of them all. He was an artist drawing a portrait in oil."

The only potentially disruptive incident that occurred during the filming was when someone showed up with a case of whiskey in celebration of St. Patrick's Day. Ford, who was a heavy drinker like most of the Irish cast and crew members, exploded in anger, "Jesus Christ, what do you want to do, shut down the picture?" and the booze was carted off.

top ten Fords

http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/57-lfu-24/386-top-ten-john-ford-s-movies

and other stuff

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-the-essential-john-ford

http://www.movingimage.us/films/2015/07/03/detail/the-essential-john-ford/

suspect i will get to The Long Gray Line (hv never seen) and Sgt Rutledge (once) in 35mm this weekend.

Maureen O'Hara gives one of her best performance in The Long Gray Line as Tyrone Power's steadfast wife, and aside from the vaudeville brogue TP is better than usual. It has a much darker view of 50 years at West Point than you might expect from a '55 film made by veterans. Also enough blarney to make Alfred squirm in agony.

Sergeant Rutledge falls well short of masterpiece, thx to courtroom formula bits (esp the Perry Mason-style climax), but Woody Strode is iconically ideal throughout, esp his "I'm a man" outburst on the stand (the scene Ford made sure he was severely hung over for).

Maureen is 95 today

http://time.com/3996875/maureen-ohara-photos/

happy birthday beautiful!

quite a quintet in one of those Havana pics

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/50706606-unidentified-alec-guinness-maureen-ohara-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=OCUJ5gVf7YdJQI2Xhkc2QD0KZ08rggOL8PsqmULUGupnQkYg36wmfsUVIxQjxS7oQRFx181NR%2BGuglhd3Cgmsz0Q%2FuYLF0vcfVLe1a8yzY8%3D

of course, G Greene is in the shadows

RIP M O'H

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_noN7QdT3n8

Mo link roundup

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-maureen-ohara-1920-2015

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/22/john-ford-and-the-politics-of-the-western/

this article isn't very well written but some interesting points here

For example, in SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, Wayne ends the film as a disillusioned and disenchanted officer in the Calvary. He tells lies about a famous battle that featured a Custer-like military blowhard played by Henry Fonda but in his eyes you see how sickened he is by the lie.

this is fort apache, not yellow ribbon, but it's complicated: after wearily telling the ghouls what they want to hear wayne turns to the window and delivers an earnest paean to the Men Of The Cavalry. it plays enough like a good-men-bad-leaders thing to keep the movie patriotically untroubling if you want it that way but it's also easy to see wayne, obscurely, as trying to convince himself of something.

iirc both apache and ribbon have scenes where wayne parleys with a native american chief to avert bloodshed; in the former he's betrayed by henry fonda but in the latter he and the (similarly aging) chief just hang out comfortably a while talking, and we are meant i think to see them as parallel. imo there is a dark sense in this scene that both chiefs could lose control of the young men they command if they push too hard against the inertia of war -- that all the work the movie's done setting wayne up as an exemplary, compassionate, cautious commander is actually setting him up to be an abandoned one -- but then everything works out fine. often in ford there are these sort of dark possibilities that don't happen (let's go home, debbie) -- i used to think these were "pulled punches" or even hayes artifacts (hayes used here really as synecdoche for, like, america) but that's not really it.

oh hey there's quite a bit of good talk upthread about the end of apache.