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Personally, I found How Green Was My Valley to be a bit slower than the other films mentioned. It's an absolutely beautiful film, but doesn't have quite the straight-forward, sometimes suspenseful plots of the other films, is all I meant. I'm not trying to imply any of these masterpieces are "better" than others. But for someone who has only seen two films, I recommended the ones that are faster-paced and a bit more straight-forward in my eyes.

knives wrote:As to Black Hat's question fortunately Ford's a fairly straightforward director so as long as you don't watch one of the eggs *cough*Tobacco Road*cough* you should be fine.

Whereas I primarily bought this set during the recent deal because it's the only way to get Tobacco Road, which, as something of a backwoods screwball comedy, sees Ford at his most fun and lively. Otherwise, I already owned most of these films, a couple of them on Blu-ray.

Young Mister Lincoln is my favorite of the included titles, it or Grapes of Wrath are easy recs

Are we talking about this book?

I've checked and Tag Gallagher did post the PDF here openly several years ago via a currently non-working Rapidshare link, so here is a working link: http://www68.zippyshare.com/v/16290955/file.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Is Judge Priest the best of the Will Rogers films? (It's the only oneI've seen so far).

Judge Priest is my least favorite of the three he made with Ford, with Steamboat Round the Bend being my favorite and Doctor Bull a strong second.

domino harvey wrote:Judge Priest is my least favorite of the three he made with Ford, with Steamboat Round the Bend being my favorite and Doctor Bull a strong second.

Glad to hear this -- as I did l(mostly) ike Judge Priest.

domino harvey wrote:Young Mister Lincoln is my favorite of the included titles, it or Grapes of Wrath are easy recs

Really all of the Fonda films go down smoothly. Even some of the weaker ones have a lot to recommend.

Well, I wouldn't extend it out of this set to something like the Fugitive though!

And naturally that's one I haven't seen yet and precisely why I picked up this set.

I've got bad news for you... (It's not in it) (though maybe that's good news, really)

I was clearly vague. I picked up the set because I haven't seen a good twenty films contained inside.

Happy to report that this beast arrived in excellent condition. It's an absolutely gorgeous package all around. Can't wait to dive into these films (shamefully, I've only seen one of the films in this set before, Young Mr. Lincoln, which is phenomenal).

What are the best "obscure" films in this set? (I know I want to see "Three Bad Men" in order to see how much Kon borrowed for his "3 Godfathers").

I'd say the best of the obscure films are:

Three Bad Men
Four Sons
Pilgrimage
Tobacco Road (though it seems a lot of people here don't like this one)
When Willie Comes Marching Home

And I agree with Domino, The Fugitive is abysmal.

How Green Was my Valley was my third or fourth Ford film and is what made him one of my favorite directors. It's definitely one of his finest films (I'd say it is his best).

I was going through the set chronologically, and got through the silents before being semi-permanently distracted from finishing the set. I found watching the silents chronologically pretty interesting, though, you see Ford develop as an artist, and you see his tendencies in directing actors taking shape. Hangman's House was notable for that, imo, with Victor Mclaglen giving a performance eerily prescient of John Wayne's later work with Ford. I watched Bucking Broadway on the Stagecoach bluray before starting, the leap from that film to the impeccable Just Pals was impressive.

"Just Pals" was fun, even if the content was pretty thin.

Do a Lincoln double feature with "Young Mr. Lincoln" / "Prisoner Of Shark Island".

You could also just go chronologically.

My set came fine, too, a few days ago. Only weird thing is the pages of the binder are curiously curved. Started with Wee Willie Winkie and was pleasantly surprised to see that it plays out just like the cavalry films only told from the perspective of an annoyingly cute little girl! Teaming her up with Victor McLaglen works like crazy although

Spoiler

the movie kind of died with him.

Good entertainment, "just a job of work." indeed.

Just Pals was really fun; crazy energetic melodrama. The plot just whizzes by with major twists passing almost before you have a chance to register them! Even the intertitles went by really fast! It is very interesting how this movie is so similar to Borzage's marvelous Lazybones also with Buck Jones. Was his star persona basically the small town layabout that adopts kids?

I'm definitely torn on whether I should continue cherry picking the best obscure movies, as per the list above, or if I should go in order from here on out. No one earlier in this thread seems to have much enthusiasm for the early sound films, excepting Pilgrimage, which is kind of distressing!

I watched Born Reckless a few weeks ago and it was just...fine. Though the sound in the film was terrible, it has a lot of good humored, Ford-esque moments. Nothing outstanding, but an enjoyable film nonetheless.

I think Pilgrimage is awful and have always been confused at the praise it garners here-- if you like grating performance stylings of Tobacco Road maybe the central perf works, but not on my end. There are plenty of overlooked masterpieces in Ford's ouevre but this ain't one of 'em. If you're looking for more discussion of early Ford and rarities, be sure to check the dedicated thread on John Ford for thoughts on lots of the films in this set and out of it

The set is dramatic looking, but --- Has anyone "re-packaged" the DVDs to make the DVDs easier to actually use.

It is my intention to do so. I will put each of the discs in individual paper sleeves. The box and all the paraphernalia will get stored away.

liam fennell wrote:No one earlier in this thread seems to have much enthusiasm for the early sound films, excepting Pilgrimage, which is kind of distressing!

The late silent/early sound era is a really weird period in Ford's career. From my vantage point, it seems like he was just emerging as fully formed artistic personality around 1926 or so. The director of 3 Bad Men and Upstream is clearly the Ford we know from his later sound films. Then he discovers Murnau and goes off on a wild (but really good) expressionist tangent with Four Sons and Hangman's House. Right when he seems to be falling in love with camera movement, sound arrives and the heavy equipment throws all of that out the window. Between the dawn of sound and 1933 (with Pilgrimage and Doctor Bull), he seems to be feeling his way back to the stylistic confidence he'd had before.