criterionforum.org

Catching up recently on various Ford blu ray upgrades of the past years.

It's so depressing that Disney now owns the Fox catalog. What are the realistic chances of seeing any of these films released on blu ray: The Iron Horse (I know it got a French release on Sidonis but I don't trust that label), Pilgrimage, the Will Rogers films especially Steamboat Round the Bend, The Informer, The Prisoner of Shark Island? That's a significant part of his filmography.

I genuinely wonder if Kino or MOC (the two most likely labels to take it on) made inquiries about The Iron Horse, a film certainly most fitting for both of their catalogs

Criterion would earn my goodwill forever if they used their Disney-dealing-exclusitivity to bring Ford at Fox to Bluray, along the lines of Bergman or Varda. but that's just not realistic, the best they can do is free those for Channel screenings here and there

Before re-checking my memory assumed The Fugitive was Fox, so I'm glad I was wrong and that it could eventually get a release through WAC. That's a movie whose filmic qualities (like The Informer) really depend on good resolution.

Tomorrow (Monday) at 4 p.m., MoMA will hold the world premiere of a new 4K restoration of John Ford’s Arrowsmith in its original theatrical release, newly restored by The Library of Congress from a nitrate print owned by the film’s star, Ronald Colman, that’s 10 minutes longer than subsequent versions.

David Bordwell suggests it's even possible this was a great influence on Orson Welles as it looks much more like Citizen Kane than Stagecoach.

I didn't know Bordwell and Thompson were still doing that "best films of ninety years ago" series! Reading the first few entries as a young cinephile was great. So many exotic and intriguing films I never thought I'd see. Sure enough, they covered 1933 last month. Not quite as thread-appropriate, though, as they didn't see fit to include...er, Pilgrimage or Doctor Bull

Warner Archive put out Arrowsmith on DVD-R in 2014 apparently, wonder if we'll see a Bluray for it

I should add, if you can't make that screening, MoMA will show it again next week on Tuesday, Jan 30 at 7:00 p.m.

ryannichols7 wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 5:06 am Warner Archive put out Arrowsmith on DVD-R in 2014 apparently, wonder if we'll see a Bluray for it

It was originally a pressed DVD from MGM, my guess is it’s part of the Samuel Goldwyn collection

FWIW, according to the opening credit, the original materials for Arrowsmith are considered lost, which explains why they used Ronald Colman's print. He donated it to the Academy a year or two after WWII ended and apparently it was this print that was eventually transferred to the Library of Congress.

It's interesting because I mentioned back in 2016 that Mike Mashon of the Library of Congress presented a new digital scan of the "original" 130-minute cut of Good Sam (very different than the theatrical version which McCarey reshot in addition to re-editing) and he warned us the scan was done on a 16mm dupe because that's all they had - the studio originally deposited a 35mm nitrate print (I think for copyright registration), but it was copied down to 16mm and turned into fertilizer as a part of federal program to destroy nitrate prints for safety reasons while producing fertilizer to be distributed by the Department of Agriculture. I guess Colman's print was given to the LoC after the program ended or simply evaded destruction some other way?

Anyway, it looks good - obviously not clean and detailed like a scan of an OCN, but the diffuse gauziness looks right with the grain texture pretty much intact. I can't say it's one of Ford's best, but it definitely looks and plays like his work. It's amusing how in the first two scenes, we even get moments that feel like references to his later films:

Spoiler

an opening shot of pioneers traveling into the Old West, and then listing the three necessary texts for any doctor as Gray's Anatomy, the Bible, and Shakespeare (see Victor Mature's "Doc" Holliday)

His visual style almost seems fully developed, but it doesn't reach the same heights here. Even a key death scene feels strangely lacking in the emotional heft he surely would've given it years later, even though it's staged with a distinctive look.

In terms of adapting the book, it's a bit eye-rolling how they dumb down the dialogue - no doctor or scientist refrains from using the word "bacteria" in all of its forms, much less replace it with "bugs." And it's amusing (but not surprising) how they replace his ridiculous womanizing with chaste fidelity. (Well, almost.)

I'd say the really astonishing look of Arrowsmith owes at least as much to cinematographer Ray June and the Goldwyn 1930s "house style" as Ford -- it doesn't look much like Ford's previous pictures, but looks a fair bit like other of Goldwyn's "A" pictures of the time.

Indeed I think Ford picked up a lot of ideas from his various cameramen in this period, many of which went into the more fixed "Ford style" that became evident by 1939–41 or so. But the visual styles of his '30s films are a bit all over the place in interesting ways.

Just rewatched the cavalry trilogy since, I don't know, I was a teenager? A long time anyway. It was enjoyable--I've never been a huge Ford fan, but he's a masterful filmmaker even when his sensibility is a few steps out from my own (I tend to respond to Howard Hawks westerns more).

Anyway, despite being a tad long, Fort Apache is probably my favourite. If not as purely enjoyable as the other two, it says something incisive and troubling that stays with me. The Henry Fonda character (a brilliant portrayal) is a vain, controlling prig whose sense of injured merit leads him to devious, underhanded, and sometimes outright dishonourable behaviour. The natives, rather than monsters on the warpath as in the next two films, are the injured party, merely people driven to break their treaty by the abuses and neglect of the state. When John Wayne honourably negotiates their return with promises of safety, Fonda (as he had done earlier) reveals he had been using lies and trickery, having no intention of honouring this agreement, and then further injures the native Chief out of pride and condescension, provoking a war he can't win. After Fonda is killed in a brilliant scene I have never forgotten, a river of horses and men charging past the camera and obscuring the small party of cavalry soldiers, only as they pass to reveal the same soldiers lying still on the ground, the scene an eerie quiet--after that, there's an amazing scene where Wayne is forced to lie to reporters and help them construct a legend of another great man who died in heroic sacrifice to his duty and country, when the whole movie had shown him to be anything but. His flaws are whitewashed, his role in provoking he and his men's needless slaughter is hidden, and his pride, ignorance, and poor tactical decisions are remade into heroism and self-sacrifice. Wayne delivers this story with a controlled demeanour, but one undeniably ambivalent, a sense of duty mixed with bitterness. He's the hero of the movie, yet that sense of honour and duty that made him the hero in fact dooms him to compromise and complicity. Out of duty to the cavalry he must now protect the cavalry from itself by lying, by turning its abuses, deceit, and warmongering into a story of gallantry, duty, etc, while at the same time helping paint the actual victims of the whole scenario, the natives, as the deceitful, abusive warmongers. This is a rather dark story of the institutionalization of abuse through co-option, propaganda, and protective mythmaking that seems to be making the same criticisms of General Custer as Little Big Man would later do more explicitly. And it's exactly that darker and more troubled subtext that I most appreciate in Ford's best films, like The Searchers and Liberty Valance, and why I've always appreciated Fort Apache over the less troubling (or at least, less deliberately troubling) pleasures of the other two entries. A rotten man becomes a great man, while a good man is forced to spit on his own goodness--hell of a story.

Fort Apache was the picture which made me finally get John Ford. Before this I felt his work incredibly overrated and simplistic. Fort Apache, Two Rode Together and Liberty Valance are more plainly dark and pessimistic than most of his other films but their mature explorations of mythmaking and the Wild West made me see the lighter films in a different way. He’s a master of subtext, his films almost operate on two completely different levels. I highly recommend reading Tag’s writing on Fort Apache, Sausage!

I was watching Peter Bogdanovich's documentary on Ford and there's a part where Wayne discusses "the look" and how those are the most important parts filmed by Ford, where an actor has to learn to simply look quietly and the audience will fill in the details mentally. As he's explaining this concept, specifically what it's like to be the actor doing these scenes, he mentions quickly in passing that there's music on the set, pausing to reiterate "he always had music on the set, they never use the track..."

Does this ever get discussed a lot? If by some chance they had sound footage of this, I guarantee you it would get more attention, but I feel like that's a crucial detail as to why Ford manages to get great performances, especially from an actors who tend to do their best work in his films. For an untrained but naturally instinctive actor, I imagine just having the right "mood" music playing as you're doing the scene works abstractly like a director in the silent era directing an actor as the camera rolled, perhaps even more effectively.

Isn't Sergio Leone famous for that? He even had the actors perform not to generalized music but Morricone's (pre-recorded) score. Leone called Morricone his greatest screenwriter.

Walter Kurtz wrote: Thu Aug 08, 2024 4:23 pm Isn't Sergio Leone famous for that? He even had the actors perform not to generalized music but Morricone's (pre-recorded) score. Leone called Morricone his greatest screenwriter.

I remember Frayling writing that having the score completed prior to filming and then playing it on set was something Leone always wanted to do, but only got to achieve with Once Upon a Time in the West. Hence how the score and the images are so wonderfully in sync even for a Leone film. Not sure if he was able to do it with any subsequent film.

A lot of Duck You Sucker’s score was at the very least completed while filming was going on as evidenced by the wrong name being sung.

The Scarlet Drop re-found in Chile:
https://www.avclub.com/lost-john-ford-m ... ered-chile
https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-cu ... rop-chile/
https://cinentransit-com.translate.goog ... r_pto=wapp
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36621

Catching up on my more holes in the filmography:

Seas Beneath: Enjoyable proto-hangout war film that turns into a better than average combat movie. Feels more Hawksian than Fordian, but even without as much auteur-related pleasures to grab onto, I liked this more than I expected

the World Moves On: Awful generational saga that smells unmistakably of failed prestige. You do get to see Stepin Fetchit in a WWI foxhole though, so there’s that. The final montage famously anticipates WWII with such accuracy that even while watching it, I was certain I got the date of production wrong because this really does give the audience clear and unambiguous anti-Nazi and Japan warnings in 1934. Watch that part on YouTube and skip the rest

R. Emmet Sweeney posted an interview with Joseph McBride about 7 Women on his Substack. Near the end McBride goes into some more detail about his contact with Warner Brothers concerning the restoration.

Thanks, that's McBride at his best, though I did chuckle when I saw the length of his answers. Definitely was never one who had trouble filling out a commentary track.

There’s a listing on Letterboxd for a 62 minute essay by Tag Gallagher called John Ford: An Introduction. Does anyone know what this is / what it’s from?

domino harvey wrote: Sun Sep 14, 2025 2:55 pm There’s a listing on Letterboxd for a 62 minute essay by Tag Gallagher called John Ford: An Introduction. Does anyone know what this is / what it’s from?

Ooh, nice find! It’s available to download for free on Tag’s website.

This is very interesting!
The prospect of one of Ford's most prominent misfires seeing a reappraisal through a director's cut intrigues me so much. Correct me if I'm wrong, but The Plough and the Stars must be with WB as it's an RKO title from the 30s, yet they haven't even issued a DVD in all these years. The only available copies are a 65-minutes TV rip and the version on Criterion Channel running 2 minutes longer. Does anyone know if either of these are Ford's cut? The runtime listed everywhere is 72 minutes which I assume is the US cut with all the unnecessary additions.
The future of WAC seems uncertain now more than ever, but if they manage to survive, I hope one day they can track down the materials to Ford's preferred version and present both cuts on home video. Would certainly prefer Criterion as they are more willing to include alternate cuts on their releases while Feltenstein seems more focused on how the films were originally shown in America (Horror of Dracula, Journey into Fear, Ford's own 7 Women come to mind), but unfortunately I don't really see Criterion having any interest in this.

I'd be interested in a restored Plough and the Stars, I watched it a while back on the channel and liked it quite a bit. It has a good balance of Ford's usual story measures (Barry Fitzgerald's 'Fluter' is up there with the best Mose Harpers) and I thought it nailed the atmosphere of that era of Dublin (my home town).
But I'd be more interested in a Criterion edition of Drums Along the Mohawk, which, visually, is a really rare diamond.

I still can"t believe The Informer, a four time Oscar winner is still buried from a bluray release. It's another title that Feltenstein never discusses. He talks about titles that are the most popularly requested. This is not one of them?! ](*,) Who are these people? I wonder if Criterion has this and as usual are sitting on it. Does anyone have the WAC DVD? How does it look?

Over the summer I emailed Criterion and asked if A Long Voyage Home will be getting a release. Usually Criterion plays coy with titles when asked. Not this time. It was a "NO". I asked if the rights still fall with Janus and the answer was yes (but doesn't show up on their site).