#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.