Ford at Fox: 24 Film Boxset

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tryavna
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#126 Post by tryavna » Sun Jan 13, 2008 3:49 pm

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:I'm also not sure what the low angles and use of short lenses are supposed to be achieving here either. An ominous counterpoint of imminent dissolution to a perceived idyll perhaps but all it manages to evoke in me is irritation at the enhanced perspective of the set design.
I've always thought it had to do with the fact that the story is told from Huw's perspective. Aren't those technical decisions fairly common to other childs-view movies? (I.e., objects, places, and characters appear bigger than they really are because the kid is literally looking up to them.)

I can see how HGWMV could seem weaker after the harder-hitting Grapes, but I view it as change in tone rather than a drop-off in quality. It will be interesting to hear what you think of Drums, since that's a movie that always seems much better to me than the Ford scholars (McBride in particular) would lead you to believe.

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HerrSchreck
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#127 Post by HerrSchreck » Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:40 am

Recd this two days ago and totally blown away by the content (of course.. it truly is the best thing any Big Studio ever did on dvd, and probably the best piece of home entertainment media ever to fall out from under the coat of Rupert Murdochs helm). Truly indispensable for the cinephile. WONDERFUL!

Re the scratches... my retailer was cd-wow and they admitted they had to grab it from another retailer as they were outa stock. Mine was sealed and had the TCM seal of approval on it so I know it wasnt dorked around with (i e a return). A few of my discs had those circular marks, but as it was already open, and since I didn't want to risk Not Having This Thing At All I rolled the dice and started chucking the discs in-- no problems at all.

None of the marks (out of the huge bunch there may be 5 or 6 which have really visible circular marks) really go down into the plastic of the disc... they're more marks than plastic. Sometimes over the years I'd blow some breath or flick some water drops on a disc that had trouble playing (spome grease or food or whatnot snot), and wipe it in semitcircles on my shirt to dry it... and I'd notice little marks which are not scratches per se but just traces of contact. (I dont do the shirt thing anymore). These are the kind of marks the discs seem to have. Nothing play-prohibitive.

I can't believe how fucking 1) enterttaining, and 2) Fordian JUST PALS is.

Trying to work my way thru in order but I confess I jumped ahead to that sublime transfer of SHARK ISL. Wowie ZOwie.

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tryavna
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#128 Post by tryavna » Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:34 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:None of the marks (out of the huge bunch there may be 5 or 6 which have really visible circular marks) really go down into the plastic of the disc... they're more marks than plastic.
This is more or less what I was trying to convey in my earlier post about the marks looking more like "scuffs" than actual "scratches." I've now worked my way through all the discs in the collection, and the only one that was non-playable in any shape or form was the pre-release version of Clementine, and fortunately, I already had that DVD.

And Just Pals is a lot of fun. It and 3 Bad Men have me hankering to see more of Ford's pre-Murnau-influenced silent films.

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domino harvey
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#129 Post by domino harvey » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:37 pm

Just saw Tobacco Road and :shock: If John Ford made a worse movie, it must just be this with an extra reel.

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Tommaso
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#130 Post by Tommaso » Sun Jan 20, 2008 9:11 am

I hadn't seen any Ford silents before, but thanks to Tryavna's recommendation in another thread I recently watched "The Iron Horse" and "3 Bad Men" more or less side by side (though I couldn't resist to throw in "Grapes of Wrath" in between).

"The Iron Horse" for me was quite an experience, not least because it already looks so 'Fordian' (judging from my rather incomplete, to put it mildly, knowledge of Ford's later films). All the myth is already there, also the theme of people from different countries coming together to build that big line of progress (literally) into the future. Of course it's also a rather conservative film: static camera mostly, some of the interior shots even reminded me of Griffith's Biograph films, but that may just be me. The film has its lengths, but I find it as a whole admirable and probably also very genre-defining. As to the two prints: it's curious how different they look, the International version looks as if it wasn't just shot with a second camera, but also on totally different film stock. The difference in contrast and greyscale is almost the same as that between a Japanese and an American black-and-white film. Is this just a result of the different transfers or restos perhaps? In any case, I clearly preferred the look of the US version. And yes, I'd very much have loved to have tintings at least on the International version. I suppose especially those painted intertitle cards would have looked great with them.

I'm not really sure what to make of "3 Bad Men", though, a film that Tryavna finds better than "The Iron Horse". I enjoyed it, too, and this is definitely a much more entertaining film, but it looks like it was made by three or four different directors. One shot where Millie looks out of the window despairingly at her bad guy sheriff lover seems to come straight out of German expressionism, as does the look of that guy, some curious mixture of Alfred Abel in "Mabuse der Spieler" and Veidt in "Student of Prague" visually, with a typical German dandyism that seems irritating in a Western to me. Olivia Borden's yearning melodramatisms reminded me somewhat of Madge Bellamy in "Lorna Doone" (well, not quite as overdone), and the comical scenes and especially the intertitles in them made me think not of Murnau, but of another German director: Lubitsch, before the touch (i.e. "Sumurun" or "The Wild Cat", for instance).
There is also something typically Ford in there, especially near the end, but as a whole, it's a very curious mixture of different styles that don't really gel together for me. In a way, I think every single sequence of the film is great, but the sum is not (I have a similar problem with Pabst's "Der Schatz" for similar reasons).

Just my five cents, and I guess I have a lot to discover with that "Ford Silents" set (didn't want to go for the whole massive box set, but started with the Silents and the Essential sets for the moment). Looking forward to the later silents now where I expect to see the real 'Ford goes Murnau' stuff...

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tryavna
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#131 Post by tryavna » Sun Jan 20, 2008 4:37 pm

Tommaso, I must say I'm a little surprised by your particular reactions to those two films, as I'd have to say that mine were reversed. I.e., Iron Horse, while enormously entertaining, is one of those movies where the director is throwing in everything he can think of, including the kitchen sink, and the end-result is a little over-the-top -- whereas 3 Bad Men strikes me a mature work by a director who knows exactly what effects he wants and how to achieve them.

And I really do find 3 Bad Men more Fordian than Iron Horse. Take, for instance, the funeral scenes in each movie. The burial of the father early on in 3 Bad Men is handled exactly as Ford would handle virtually all of his later film funerals: the funeral takes place in the foreground, with an emphasis on the landscape and the "rolling on of history" in the background, and it's treated somberly but with a great deal of honest sentiment. In The Iron Horse, on the other hand, the two or three burials that we see are shot in a much less visually interesting manner, with the railroad immediately behind the graves rather than in the background (which in turn limits our sense of the surrounding landscape, if that makes sense). Plus, all the burials in Iron Horse are treated in a very off-hand, almost ironic way -- which struck me as almost un-Fordian. (By the way, why on earth did both composers pass up the chance to include "Shall We Gather at the River" on the soundtrack for these scenes? Ford buffs would have really appreciated that sort of touch, I suspect.)

That's just one example. And of course, T. also picks up on the other really striking one at the end: where we get a typically Fordian sense of the dead continuing to exist alongside the living.

So while I wouldn't say that Ford is quite the John Ford yet at the point he made 3 Bad Men, it really does strike me as the more artistically coherent -- and recognizable -- movie. That's what I found particularly surprsing about it, since it comes at a crucial point in Ford's career: over a year after his huge success with Iron Horse and about a year before the direct Murnau influence begins.

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Tommaso
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#132 Post by Tommaso » Sun Jan 20, 2008 7:50 pm

Tryavna, our different perceptions are interesting indeed! For instance, while I found "The Iron Horse" awe-inspiring in many ways, I wouldn't necessarily describe it as 'entertaining' generally, perhaps because that whole myth of the Frontier and the way of necessary progress is somewhat alien to me as a non-American. You're right that Ford throws in everything he could think of, but that particularly struck me as a part of the mythmaking. It's probably totally unrelated, but the way the railway made its line visually through the hitherto 'uncharted' land reminded me a lot of the descriptions of a different line in Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon", a similarly all-encompassing work, but with a totally different point of view of course. Like that book, the railroad line in the film left me with a sort of unease. So I saw "The Iron Horse" as something that for me as an 'outsider' was very typical of the American myth, almost a quintessence of all that goes with it. And that's why I thought it was already 'typical' Ford, in its celebration of the spirit of 'America'. In this film, though, there is still an emphasis on progress, whereas in the (very) late films (I think of "Cheyenne Autumn" in particular) there is an increasing doubt about this.
tryavna wrote: The burial of the father early on in 3 Bad Men is handled exactly as Ford would handle virtually all of his later film funerals: the funeral takes place in the foreground, with an emphasis on the landscape and the "rolling on of history" in the background, and it's treated somberly but with a great deal of honest sentiment. In The Iron Horse, on the other hand, the two or three burials that we see are shot in a much less visually interesting manner, with the railroad immediately behind the graves rather than in the background (which in turn limits our sense of the surrounding landscape, if that makes sense).
You're right about this, though I didn't think of the burials in "The Iron Horse" as almost ironic, they are just, well... insignificant, compared to the grand project of bringing 'civilization' to the West. That's why the railroad is behind the graves: they died for it, but the road/progress goes on. I think Ford embraces a positive 'hero' myth here very much, which might be not much like him with his late films (with their emphasis on private values, especially of the traditional family), but with the point of view the film takes, it made complete sense.
tryavna wrote: where we get a typically Fordian sense of the dead continuing to exist alongside the living.
I take this to refer to the end of " 3 Bad Men" with the 'ghosts/spirits' of the three men appearing at the horizon , and here I agree completely. Just as I said in my initial post, I find the end of the film (let's say, from the moment on where the three men start to meet their fate) very typical already, and possibly these were the strongest bits of the film for me. My 'cricticism' was more directed at what I found to be a certain incoherence of styles in the earlier parts of the film, with too many reminiscences of what seemed familiar to me from totally unrelated films. But I don't even know whether Ford was familiar with early Lubitsch, for instance. So, while I don't find it as coherent as you, I still enjoyed it very much, but I can understand why "The Iron Horse" has gotten much more attention apparently. Perhaps just because it could be used better to foster the great Frontier myth. And I would always say that "3 bad men" is cinematically more interesting and more daring, as I said, I was reminded of early Griffith a little too often in "The Iron Horse". The cinematography in "3 bad men" is much smoother and varied.

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zedz
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#133 Post by zedz » Sun Jan 20, 2008 8:08 pm

Until this set came out, The Iron Horse and Bucking Broadway (which is hardly representative) were the only silent Fords I'd seen, and I could see a clear continuity between the former and his later westerns in his treatment of landscape and history, even though the characterisation was somewhat rudimentary (3 Bad Men is stronger in this respect).

It's great to finally see more from this period of his career, though in most cases his visual sophistication is far in advance of the scripts. I think that Iron Horse and 3 Bad Men anticipate different aspects of his later work, but they're both much more 'Fordian' than the fascinating Murnau tributes of Four Sons and Hangman's House.

Working through the set chronologically, I've just come to Pilgrimage, and it's a great leap into maturity that takes the visual dexterity of the late silents and finally marries it to complex, layered content. The rich ambiguity of identification and register you get in The Searchers is here as well (as odd as that comparison may sound), and Crosman is fantastic. It's a masterpiece.

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tryavna
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#134 Post by tryavna » Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:57 pm

Tommaso wrote:In this film, though, there is still an emphasis on progress, whereas in the (very) late films (I think of "Cheyenne Autumn" in particular) there is an increasing doubt about this.
As an American who buys into Ford's myth-making even though he knows he shouldn't, I suppose part of our divergent opinions is going to come down to our different national perspectives. And it is indeed interesting to hear a thoughtful non-American opinion. (I've all too often heard some of my European friends dismiss the Western genre -- and Ford in particular -- as too conservative/reactionary, which of course is an obvious misreading if you study Ford's career chronologically.) This last point that you've made about "progress" is something I hadn't thought of, and perhaps it is Ford's lack of his typically subtler shades of ambiguity about "progress" that makes Iron Horse seem un-Fordian to me.
I didn't think of the burials in "The Iron Horse" as almost ironic, they are just, well... insignificant, compared to the grand project of bringing 'civilization' to the West.
Well, the longest burial scene that we get in the movie takes place literally as the train is moving on to the next end-of-the-line boom-town, and so the "funeral" (such as it is) gets cut off as the two guys doing the burying have to jump on-board the train. I guess "ironic" isn't the most appropriate word, but it does seem so in terms of Ford's later treatment of graveyard scenes, where they're allowed to play out as respected and sentimentalized ritaul -- to the point of frustrating Ethan Edwards, who wants to get a move on so he can catch up with the raiding party in The Searchers. That rush -- or lack of respect for the ritual -- in Iron Horse is what struck me as "ironic."

Ultimately, I do agree with you that there's a mish-mash in styles in Ford's work up to about 1933-36, when he begins producing several films that are recognizably Fordian in every sense: Judge Priest, Prisoner of Shark Island, and to a slightly lesser degree (because the Murnau influence is still present in the first half of the movie, even though the film is a masterpiece) Pilgrimage. But 3 Bad Men seems to indicate a surprisingly self-assured director with a style that points in a direction that Ford would not really pursue fully until the late 1940s.
zedz wrote:I've just come to Pilgrimage, and it's a great leap into maturity that takes the visual dexterity of the late silents and finally marries it to complex, layered content. The rich ambiguity of identification and register you get in The Searchers is here as well (as odd as that comparison may sound), and Crosman is fantastic. It's a masterpiece.
I'm glad more people are beginning to discover this one. It is a masterpiece, as I indicated above. In retrospect, what remains with me about Ford's style is that you almost get the sense that it is his declaration of indepedence: the first half of the film is still heavily indebted to Murnau, but mid-way through it goes off into a totally different direction, tonally as well as stylistically. It's not much of a surprise that the next three years of Ford's career at Fox immediately following Pilgrimage were dominated by his work with Will Rogers. The second half of Pilgrimage really sets the stage for what I consider to be the first true "John Ford" masterpiece: Judge Priest.

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#135 Post by denti alligator » Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:16 am

I'm also working my way chronologically through this set and so far--only three films in--am very impressed by the early films. I had seen The Iron Horse before, but 3 Bad Men rivals that film, I think, in its creative visuals, although the plot is slightly less coherent.

Just Pals, which looks the best of these three, is so much fun and has so many plot twists, it's hard to believe it's under 50 minutes.

Next up, the Murnau-influenced silents.

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Tommaso
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#136 Post by Tommaso » Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:17 am

tryavna wrote:(I've all too often heard some of my European friends dismiss the Western genre -- and Ford in particular -- as too conservative/reactionary, which of course is an obvious misreading if you study Ford's career chronologically.)
Good to hear that, as indeed many Europeans (and especially German academics dabbling in American Studies) consider the genre as conservative, with admittedly differing opinions on Ford. The problem here is - as always - the look from today's 'informed' perspective considering racial, gender and all sorts of other relations. The more I see of Ford, the more surprised I am how 'liberal' some of his films were for the time. "Grapes of Wrath" (not a Western) is a perfect example, though this may be due partly to the Steinbeck novel. But I was awestruck by those completely Kafkaesque scenes in the fruitpickers' camp, with the workers going to their job like they were military slaves (couldn't help thinking of "Metropolis" here). And don't get me started on "The Searchers" of course, I still wonder how Ford managed to get an ultra-reactionary like Wayne to play that role.
tryavna wrote: This last point that you've made about "progress" is something I hadn't thought of, and perhaps it is Ford's lack of his typically subtler shades of ambiguity about "progress" that makes Iron Horse seem un-Fordian to me.
Yes, that's a convincing point. Somehow the lack of ambiguity is indeed un-Fordian, and also the totally generic depictions of foreign workers. But that's a part of the mythmaking, too. No real individuals, but just representives of the 'bigger whole'.
tryavna wrote: Well, the longest burial scene that we get in the movie takes place literally as the train is moving on to the next end-of-the-line boom-town, and so the "funeral" (such as it is) gets cut off as the two guys doing the burying have to jump on-board the train.
Yes, and that is the perfect illustration for what I meant when I said the burials are 'insignificant' compared to the big work of progress which must go on although it might take individual casualties here and there. Forget about the victims, and jump on that train.The exact opposite to the stance of "Grapes of wrath", where the individual fates caused by 'progress' are lamented.There's indeed a lack of respect for the ritual in "The Iron Horse", but that's just a part of the certain disregard for individual fates in the whole approach of the film. Perhaps that's not phrased very well: what I mean is that everything individual in the film is bound up or is dependent on the success of the great 'project'. The lovers in the end are only allowed to kiss when the Union and South Pacific railways also 'kiss' and come together. There's also this shot when Madge Bellamy comes to her lost lover ON the railway line. I found that somewhat unsubtle, but it hammers the point in.

I can't say much about your statement that "3 Bad Men" shows signs of a direction Ford would only take up until the 40s, because, as you know, I have seen almost nothing of 30s Ford yet. I'll right that situation as soon as I can, as I was blown away by those excerpts from "Pilgrimage", "Shark island" and especially "Young Mr. Lincoln" in the "Becoming John Ford" documentary.

In the meantime, let me briefly chime in with the praise for "Just Pals". Though on a totally small scale, I found it probably the most convincing of the three films in question. It's very concentrated, beautifully filmed and wonderfully characterized. Close to perfect.

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#137 Post by tryavna » Wed Jan 23, 2008 11:43 am

Tommaso wrote:The more I see of Ford, the more surprised I am how 'liberal' some of his films were for the time.
I'm going to off-line for a couple of days, but in light of this comment, I wanted to urge you to seek out Ford's 1938 film Four Men and a Prayer because I think it will be similarly revelatory. It's basically a boys' own adventure tale -- part of the tradition that links the pulp action-adventure sagas of Fritz Lang to the era of James Bond. However, in the sections set in a fictional South American nation undergoing a revolution, this movie becomes just about as angry as any John Ford ever got. It's quite a wonder to behold Ford taking on multinational corporations and arms dealers thirty years before it became fashionable. The only other person I can think of who did it with more intelligence at the time was the novelist Eric Ambler in his pre-WWII spy thrillers.

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Tommaso
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#138 Post by Tommaso » Wed Jan 23, 2008 12:32 pm

This sounds truly interesting, it just seems as if that film is one of those which are only available in the big box set (which is out of the question for me now that I already have two of the smaller sets and will certainly go for "Ford Comedies" as well soon). I will check whether it's released in any other country on its own, though.

Meanwhile, I was looking for a good book on Ford's films (especially the non-Westerns and his early works), but our local library didn't have a single book on him apart from some specific study of "Young Mr.Lincoln". Pretty unbelievable, I'd say, and not much to be found in print at the usual online sources as well. I'd be most interested in a book that analyses his films and talks less about his life, something like Stephen Prince's book on Kurosawa. Any recommendations?

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#139 Post by Via_Chicago » Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:47 pm

Tommaso wrote:I'd be most interested in a book that analyses his films and talks less about his life, something like Stephen Prince's book on Kurosawa. Any recommendations?
Tag Gallagher's John Ford book.

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#140 Post by kinjitsu » Wed Jan 23, 2008 4:53 pm

Filmmaker subforum reminder: John Ford

Scroll down to Web Resources and Books section.

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Tommaso
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#141 Post by Tommaso » Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:01 pm

Thanks to both of you! I didn't think of the Filmmakers section - but have just downloaded the Gallagher book. Will print out some pages for bedtime reading now.

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#142 Post by starmanof51 » Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:29 pm

tryavna wrote:
Tommaso wrote:The more I see of Ford, the more surprised I am how 'liberal' some of his films were for the time.
in light of this comment, I wanted to urge you to seek out Ford's 1938 film Four Men and a Prayer because I think it will be similarly revelatory. It's basically a boys' own adventure tale -- part of the tradition that links the pulp action-adventure sagas of Fritz Lang to the era of James Bond. However, in the sections set in a fictional South American nation undergoing a revolution, this movie becomes just about as angry as any John Ford ever got. It's quite a wonder to behold Ford taking on multinational corporations and arms dealers thirty years before it became fashionable. The only other person I can think of who did it with more intelligence at the time was the novelist Eric Ambler in his pre-WWII spy thrillers.
I'm not sure how much credit I'd give Ford for that - it's not as if he wrote the thing (even Faulkner had a hand in it apparently!), and I have to wonder how enthused he was to be on the project in the first place. I enjoyed it, but definitely for the "Boys Own/Four Feathers" vibe inherent in the script/source material rather than any obvious Fordian interests or directorial flourishes. He must have been either smirking or cursing a blue streak when staging the "English Monarch" scene at the end, however. I love me some George Sanders movies but it's certainly atypical for him - sort of early in his film career, he's not stealing scenes yet and it's a giggle to see him playing such an upright goody-goody. David Niven is the one that really struck me - doing silly voices, bouncing rubber balls in the hall. This seems to catch some truth about him - a harmless goof at heart, who somehow found himself a leading man. A fun flick, filled with interesting people who mostly had little or nothing to do with Ford again.

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#143 Post by GringoTex » Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:31 am

Image
I've always purposefully stayed away from Ford's Will Rogers "comedies" and I feel very stupid about it now that I've seen my first one. I guess I expected an overt expression of the barracks hucksterism that can make even the most loyal Fordophile cringe. But this film is in no way a comedy, damned be the marketing. It's a remarkably dense and multi-layered evocation of small town melodrama that silmutaneously glorifies and undermines all of its conceits. And it says more about the Southern Reconstruction than a hundred Gone With the Winds.

Murnau's influence on Ford during this period has been suitably stressed, but I want to bring up Sternberg in relation to this film. Most shots have multiple plains of focus in which trees, leaves, buildings, tools--hell, even out of focus chickens in the background---form an almost abstract collage of visual points that always stress place and context. The difference is that Sternberg always situated his characters in Great Moments of History, while here Ford stresses that the contextual greatness of the South is already in the past (if it ever really was) and only exists in the minds of his characters. Nothing happens here--the first action event doesn't occur until halfway through the film--and even then, Ford doesn't show us the stabbing. The last 30 minutes is a courtroom drama and Ford doesn't even show us the guilty verdict. It lends a disquieting melancholia to the proceedings. As such, it's the most Faulknerian movie I've ever seen (and I don't think it's a coincidence that it was made during Faulkner's great period). A magnificent masterpiece.

*Rogers was born to a prominent Indian Territory family and learned to ride horses and use a lariat so well that he was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for throwing three ropes at once—one around the neck of a horse, another around the horse's rider, and a third around all four legs of the horse. (wikipedia)
Tommaso wrote:Thanks to both of you! I didn't think of the Filmmakers section - but have just downloaded the Gallagher book. Will print out some pages for bedtime reading now.
I just want to second the Gallagher book - it's the best thing on Ford and his films I've ever read.
Last edited by GringoTex on Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

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#144 Post by HerrSchreck » Thu Jan 24, 2008 8:43 pm

Working my way thru this set, and combining it with the Ford encountered beyond it, I just wanted to register something that's come clear about the man, and the difficulties I'm registering here in pegging certain elements of the text as "Fordian" vs "non-Fordian".

I'm a bit of a latecomer in terms of closely examining Ford and really making the space in the life of my brain to seriously contemplate and admire him as a director.. at least to the level of say Murnau or Lang or Dreyer or Epstein.

And I think the reason for that is the reason that it's difficult for me to peg Fordian elements in certain texts. The greatness of Ford to me seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Gringo mentions Sternberg, and in a sense I know what he's getting at... but I can't imagine two more divergent directors in terms of style... beyond the fact that the end result is inimitable magic, much of which has little to do with the spoken word. They can convey more between gesture and movement between characters employed as items of color and nuance, when integrated into their individual modes of mise en scene, than other directors can convey with four pages of dialog text in a kitchen sink drama. But with JvS it is easier to locate onscreen what it is precisely he is "doing", the grandiosity and extremity of his artifice, the exuberance of his direction are so divergent with the rest of the membership of Hollywood Directors fore & aft, that his means call attention to themselves with such hi art self-reflexivity, with such huge contrasts... you can "locate" von Sternberg in his films quite easily.

The thing about Ford seems more restrained, feels "simpler", seems so effortless like a haiku. But it's so magical. I think there may be a danger in trying to pick out Fordian elements in the script text, say in the conveyance of funerals, or portrayals of political stance (though we know he did convey his personal politics at times or at least when he could, which seemed pretty liberal, in Grapes... yet he could celebrate southerners against a civil war text, play Dixie while providing particularly humiliating images of blacks while essentially remaking The Birth of a Nation in Shark Island, which is a masterpiece, don't get me wrong, and degrade the same workers he celebrated in HGWMV and Grapes in Tobacco Road).

What I mean is he's a journeyman director, not an auteur... so there may be a problem in looking for "Fordian statements" in the text that derive from the script itself. Certainly as a director he earned a certain respect and prestige with heads whereby he could to varying degrees negotiate certain elements that may or mat not be repellent to his own politics. But he was a journeyman always taking the scripts of other men. As a "commentary" so to speak, his statements about life in the world etc, in other words-- I have difficulty "trusting" the script of the Iron Horse, the events portrayed on screen, as Fordian or not. Yet the way he delpoys his camera, moves his actors, moves his pieces around the board.. that film feels very Fordian to me. And of course that it is All-American, the macro level of the subject matter...

SO my point I guess (if there is one) is what I find particularly appealing is trying to get at What Ford Is Doing With His Mise En Scene, rather than in the bedrock facts of the events themselves. It's so fascinating.. the way the guy can plant this mysterious quiet exuberance into you where you just Completely Disappear as a human being over the period that you're watching one of his better films, the absorption is just so complete.

That's the hugest mystery to me, and I have a hard time explaining his mise en scene even to myself... or more accurately, why his mise en scene is so incredibly effective, even with material like Wee Willie Winkie that he growled at, yet becomes totally engrossing in his hands. The same way it's impossible to put The Color Green into words so that a blind man would see it in his head, or describe the taste of a banana to someone with no taste buds... or how it's impossible to explain the laws of romantic attraction in a way that really gets at that mysterious Something that goes on in the heart... it's really impossible to get at what this man had, and why it makes you feel so fully alive (or dead, since you're completely out of the physical world and in the screen while watching) when engrossed. Sure there were moments of pictorial beauty thrown in here and there for a bit of flourish or punctuation, but he's not a visually extravagant director who pushes towards self reflexivity and calls attention to himself.

My two cents would be that Ford mischaractarized himself: he said he had an eye for composition, that he was "a picture man", i e that he understood the visual vocabulary of moving photography etc. But he shares a quality of Kurosawa (who of course idolized Ford) in that most of his visually poetic images are almost thrown away. You rarely get the chance to sit there and soak them in, at least not in the symphonic hi art sense of the German silents or say Sternberg. His films keep moving and rarely linger on their own beauty for their own sake.

This troubled, gruff and outwardly nasty, terrible alcoholic was inside a deeeeeeeply sensitive man who probably posessed the qualities of a great psychologist. He seems to have had a great innate understanding of what makes people tick. This total non-auteur nonetheless knew how to take virtually any piece of material, no matter how far from his own personality, study it, come to some conclusions about it, make some inner decisions about it, and then deploy a team of technicians to construct a backdrop for him to go out Move SOme People Around while photographing them in a way that will just give you the Most Delightful 90 Minute Vacation From Life, cause you to swell up with authentic sentiment.. far beyond so many other directors working with Monumentally Significant Material on Serious Matters, using hugely grandiose and self important means. And you will walk away from Fords picture-- about some comicbooky characters-- contemplating the Serious Matters Of LIfe, deeply affected, more so than the Very Serious Film Coming To The Heart of the Matter.

I'm reallllly interested in hearing a good description what is Fordian Mise En Scene... beyond the love of the harmless ne'er do well, the wistful gruff alkie, the grizzled old corncobby americana, the cheek pinching broad shouldered matrons... there's a mysterious life force of an elusive technique that I have a hard time pinpointing, how he translates storytelling into setups and character placement. I'd hesitate to say "each film is different" because there is a solid and thoroughly developed technique there. It's just so magnificently effortless that it almost eludes description beyond "put the camera in the right place for that moment, and roll, and cut that into footage of the camera being in the right place for the next scene, etc".

As a means of this kind of study, Ford At Fox is as good as it gets.

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denti alligator
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#145 Post by denti alligator » Thu Jan 24, 2008 8:53 pm

Great post, Schreck. I'm not sure I can help expressing the ineffable SomeThing you're pointing towards... maybe, maybe when I'm through with the box I'll take a stab at it (and fall flat on my face in the process).
play Dixie while providing particularly humiliating images of blacks while essentially remaking The Birth of a Nation in Shark Island
Can you elaborate on this comment?
Last edited by denti alligator on Thu Jan 24, 2008 11:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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zedz
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#146 Post by zedz » Thu Jan 24, 2008 10:26 pm

I've long had largely the same 'problem' with Ford as you, Schreck. In enumerating an 'auteur checklist' I always seem to end up back at matters of content / theme rather than style. Focussing on style, things tend to fizzle out into hopelessly vague generalities: that ineffable 'perfect composition' that doesn't really explain anything, 'painterliness' (urgh).

The Fox Box is a great opportunity to test ideas on Ford, and the Murnau-inflected films are particularly revealing, since we're seeing Ford do things that fit the generalised description of Things Fordian but which don't strike me as Actually Fordian. Rather, they're Murnauesque. And in Pilgrimage, you've got the fascinating spectacle of Fordian visuals that, when they're pushed ever so slightly, turn into momentary Murnau.

Another aspect of Ford's style is that, for me, it seems to be unable to transform bad material. He can make great material once-in-a-lifetime-miraculous, and average material great, but bad stays bad. Maybe he was aware enough not to put much effort into weak material. I haven't got to Tobacco Road yet, but Born Reckless and The World Moves On seemed pretty anonymous and sparkless to me, while the middling Up the River and Seas Beneath were frequently elevated by Ford's visual efficiency (there's another meaningless circumlocution for you).

I'm looking forward to further investigation. As noted, the very fact of the Fox Box puts Ford's entire available career into a new perspective, allowing for a very solid exploration of the crucial 1930s period and at least a smattering of silents.

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Tommaso
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#147 Post by Tommaso » Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:17 am

Yep, great post, Schreck. I think I have the same difficulties as you have in terms of defining Ford's visual language as something 'typically' Fordian (or finding those elements in it that are 'typical'), though at least with those of his later films I've seen I didn't have the feeling that there is a direct stylistic influence by other directors that I felt there was with regard to the silents. Perhaps it's this 'shedding of skins' that allows us to see Ford's visuals as typical Ford, an absence of something rather than a presence of something, in contrast for example to even mature Bergman or mature Rivette, where I still see the (however much changed and personalized) influence of Dreyer and Renoir, respectively.
There's just one thing I don't quite clearly see:
HerrSchreck wrote: he said he had an eye for composition, that he was "a picture man", i e that he understood the visual vocabulary of moving photography etc. But he shares a quality of Kurosawa (who of course idolized Ford) in that most of his visually poetic images are almost thrown away. You rarely get the chance to sit there and soak them in, at least not in the symphonic hi art sense of the German silents or say Sternberg.
That's absolutely true for Ford, but with Kurosawa I'd say that there are many instances where this 'soaking in' is possible. It's totally obvious with very late Kurosawa (think of the very long takes in "Ran" and in "Dreams", for instance), but I have the same feeling in many instances with his 50s films. The long dwelling on the Rashomon gate, the extended look we get at the spinning woman in "Throne of Blood" or at Watanabe on the swing in "Ikiru". I rather feel that Kuro's admiration for Ford, apart from their generally 'moving on' quality, came from the familiar 'individual vs society' setting, a certain poisitive 'heroism' and toughness of the characters.

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GringoTex
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#148 Post by GringoTex » Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:41 am

HerrSchreck wrote: I'd hesitate to say "each film is different" because there is a solid and thoroughly developed technique there. It's just so magnificently effortless that it almost eludes description beyond "put the camera in the right place for that moment, and roll, and cut that into footage of the camera being in the right place for the next scene, etc".
You're probably aware that this is exactly how Ford his films, and as such there was only one way to edit them (explaining why he rarely concerned himself with the post production process).

As for a concise summation of his mise-en-scene technique, I haven't read a satisfactory one either. I suspect it's because his mis-en-scene is so rich and varied that it's impossible to decribe it succinctly. However, Tag Gallagher does an amazing job of breaking down Ford's mise-en-scene film by film, scene by scene. After finishing his book, I was dumbfounded by the sheer scope of Ford's technique. He could seemingly apply any variety of solution to a narrative problem with total effortlessness.

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#149 Post by davebert » Fri Jan 25, 2008 12:31 pm

The more discussion I read, the more it's a crying shame I finally get the real jones for the set in the most expensive months of the year. I used my Barnes and Noble swindle on an unbeatable deal for Berlin Alexanderplatz... now I'm eying my shelves for any and all Ebay-able fat. Tough choices all around.

You'd all recommend the biggie set over the more commonly available microsets? The coffee table book doesn't much interest me, it's mostly just Tobacco Road and other movie exclusives. And I already have the Studio Classics Grapes, Clementine, How Green, Moc Shark Island, etc...

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GringoTex
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#150 Post by GringoTex » Fri Jan 25, 2008 12:51 pm

davebert wrote:You'd all recommend the biggie set over the more commonly available microsets? The coffee table book doesn't much interest me, it's mostly just Tobacco Road and other movie exclusives. And I already have the Studio Classics Grapes, Clementine, How Green, Moc Shark Island, etc...
Buy the microsets of what you don't have, buy the individual titles you don't have and then find Tobacco Road on ebay. I believe you can get it all for about $100.

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