John Ford's America - A Shared Humanity

[charliechaplinfan]

It's always hard to explain what you don't like about someone's favorite film. How Green is my Valley is one of my Dad's favorite movies. So he obviously doesn't feel any of the things that I do or if he does it doesn't bother him.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've rented 3 John Ford films, not what I'd call his more famous movies, I've done a quick scan of the thread and I didn't see them mentioned.

Mary Queen of Scotland, I struggled a bit here, possibly because Katharine Hepburn is not portraying Mary as I see her, the events seem sugar coated. If Mary had been like Katharine Hepburn I feel she would have been a more successfu lmonarch. I digress, I found it difficult to find anything distinguishing about the direction and as a history film it stands well with the others of it's day. Even Frederic March seemed a little lacklustre and I always enjoy his performances.

The Fugitive a much better film, this is more the Ford I expected, the landscape, the setting, Henry Fonda. I liked the movie, felt that it was probably censored a little or perhaps I'd missed something along the way, very enjoyable and it had the lovely Dolores Del Rio who looked as great 20 years after her silent features.

My favorite out of the bunch, in fact a great find for me was The Informer. My initial thought was that I felt it was Hitchcockian, I don't know why apart from the use of shadows. Victor McLaglen was quite a revelation too, in fact even now I'm not sure if he was a little short on intelligence or if he was simple and not at all responsible for his actions, after all he didn't use the money to start a new life, he spent it recklessly and mostly at making other people happy. He was forgiven by the family, I liked the openess of the ending, perhaps we are intended to put our interpretation on why he did it. By the time he was rounded up and brought to 'military trial' by the members of (I presume) the IRA I was on the edge of my seat. a Really good movie.

[JackFavell]

I have always loved The Informer, from the minute I first saw it. Aged 12, I think, at 2 o'clock in the morning, I stayed up to see it because it was in my sister's "50 Greatest Motion Pictures of All Time" book. I was overwhelmed. The grief and guilt Gypo feels, I felt. I thought it was a wonderful movie. It impacted me greatly, putting me in someone else's shoes.... I always try to do this when confronted with situations in my life. I cannot see the world in black and white anymore, thanks to John Ford.

I watched it again about a year ago, a bit nervous because I thought it might not be as good as I remembered it. After all, this movie has somehow dropped off the list of "greatest movies". Now critics talk about it as "flawed" or "too catholic". At best, it "holds up well" according to those who supposedly know.

Well, I shouldn't have worried. I thought it was great. One of the greatest.... Gypo is heartbreaking. If you can't understand Gypo, or if you just see this as an "Irish" story, then maybe you can't understand the greatness of John Ford. Ford can take almost any story and give it meaning well beyond the individual characters, and yet, in the end, it is individual characters and their emotional makeup that make his movies so great.

[charliechaplinfan]

It's a really good film, I'm glad there is a book somewhere that rates it as one of the best 50 films. I thought it used Victor Maclaglen's talents really well too.

Tonight I watched Tobacco Road. It is like the reverse side of The Grapes of Wrath. It has the poverty and the hard ship but it has great humour and warmth to it and that makes it no less meaningful. It's to John Ford's credit that he could tell a similar story but two different ways adapting first a famous novel and then a famous stage play.