David Vining's Blog, page 137

The Searchers

Oh. My. God.

That was what was running through my head when John Ford’s The Searchers opened. From the first seconds of the film after the titles, Ford was in complete command of the images he presents to the audience, utilizing the scope of the image to its fullest extent across all three dimensions, vertically, horizontally, and in terms of depth. He was framing things with such purpose in a way that I haven’t felt since The Fugitive, that I was instantly floored. I own this movie and h...

Mister Roberts

A comedy based on a play with Jack Lemmon? Did I stumble into a long-lost Billy Wilder movie by mistake? This is the movie where John Ford punched Henry Fonda in the face, drank himself stupid, and then needed emergency surgery that took him off the film, forcing the studio to replace him with Mervyn LeRoy. Is it a Ford movie anymore after that? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Based on the play of the same name (which was based on a novel by Thomas Heggen) Mister Roberts is a surprisingly sweet co...

The Long Gray Line

This is bread and butter John Ford. A biographic film about a lifelong military man at West Point who never got to participate in any conflict despite living through both World Wars and dealing with the losses of war through his own personal contacts at the same time, The Long Gray Line is a sort of follow up to his early sound feature Salute, which is amusing since both have Ward Bond, first as a student and then as a teacher. It’s a nice film, painting a portrait of a very good man across ...

Mogambo

Reminding me of Howard Hawks’ far superior Hatari! from a decade later, John Ford’s Mogambo is a story in Africa of a game hunter dealing with women. However, the central story is muddled (possibly because one particular role was cast with too large of a star and another too small) and there’s an artificiality in some key moments with animals that Hawks would later do so much better by actually having John Wayne and cast capture live animals. It’s easy to see how the idea of the film appeale...

The Sun Shines Bright

A sort of remake of Judge Priest, taking on a slightly different selection of short stories by Irvin S. Cobb about his character of Billy Priest, The Sun Shines Bright is a more refined telling of a very similar set of stories than the earlier version. Still steeped in nostalgia for an idealized Kentucky post-Civil War and missing the presence of Will Rogers, replaced capably by Charles Winninger, the movie is a sweet look at one man making his little town better by simply being good and dec...

What Price Glory

Built around cynicism and a love triangle that reminds me more of lesser Wilder or maybe even lesser Hawks than lesser John Ford, What Price Glory is a bit of a mess of a film about two romantic rivals competing over the affections of one woman with the backdrop of the First World War. A remake of a 1926 silent film starring long-time Ford stalwart Victor McLaglan (who does not appear in this film), it feels like Ford tried to twist a screenplay that didn’t fit his sensibilities and only got...

The Quiet Man

This is one of the most delightful and effortlessly entertaining film romances. It also might be the ultimate John Ford film, bringing together almost everything that made his films his own in one package. There’s Ireland, male bonding, horse racing, and John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, along with most of his regular supporting cast like Ward Bond and Victor McLaglen. The production was apparently very hard on Ford, to the point where he was bedridden for several days during which Wayne direct...

Rio Grande

Is this a sequel to Fort Apache? Probably not, but it’s amusing to think of it as one. The third of John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy, Rio Grande was the movie he agreed to make for Republic Pictures in order for them to fund The Quiet Man, a film no one thought had any chance of being a financial success. Rio Grande was the insurance film to guarantee profit on the overall deal with Ford, and for such an arrangement, it ends up surprisingly good. Even when Ford’s heart really wasn’t in it, his in...

Wagon Master

“One for them, one for me.” I had no idea that Ford did this, but here is Wagon Master after a pair of crowd pleasers. It’s a character driven Western about Mormons on the trail to San Juan Valley, their promised land that they must set up for the rest of their flock who will be coming later. No John Wayne or Henry Fonda, John Ford offered the leads to minor stars Harry Carey Jr. and Ben Johnson instead. He knew the movie had lower box office potential, and he made it cheaper, using his pref...

When Willie Comes Marching Home

There’s an interesting drama developing about halfway through this movie until it suddenly becomes a little comedic war movie. Well, I think Ford was at a period in his career where he had really tried to do something different with The Fugitive, got slapped down hard by critics and the movie going audiences, and just retreated into crowd pleasers. When Willie Came Marching Home isn’t a bad movie by any means, but it’s so light, frothy, and ultimately unfocused that it’s not really good eith...