1943
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28 de may. de 2008 · La desconocida Cathy Downs, preciosa como la Clementine de su título original, y Fonda como siempre, inmenso. 'El Hombre Tranquilo'. Cuarto y último Oscar para Ford por uno de sus títulos más famosos entre el público de todas las generaciones. Mil veces imitado y homenajeado (el homenaje más famoso, el de Spielberg en 'E.T.').
- Alberto Abuín
- Overview
- Early life and silent-film career
- 1930s to World War II
- Postwar career
John Ford (born February 1, 1894, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, U.S.—died August 31, 1973, Palm Desert, California) iconic American film director, best known today for his westerns, though none of the films that won him the Academy Award for best direction—The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (...
Ford was an Irish American and a New Englander, born to immigrant parents. He began his movie work in the silent era, serving as a jack-of-all-trades apprentice on many early pictures made by his actor-director brother Francis. By the end of the silents, Ford had directed more than 60 films (many “two-reelers” and a handful of films approaching what is now considered feature length), including dozens of westerns, often starring Harry Carey in the persona of “Cheyenne Harry,” a hard-drinking, often down-at-the-heels outlaw with a weakness for helping the defenseless. Ford proved able to satisfy the expectations of producers and audiences alike while adding small touches, whether gritty or sentimental, that gave his films an extra human dimension often lacking in the generic programmers of the day. He gambled with his reputation as an efficient, no-nonsense helmer-for-hire in the production of The Iron Horse (1924), his over-budget schedule-busting epic about the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. Ford was pressured by the studio but allowed to finish, and the film became a huge financial and critical success, placing Ford in the Olympian company of predecessors D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille.
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And then came the talkies. Ford made another 60-plus sound-era features, a format that introduced a tension between the visual storyteller and the loquacious, poetically sentimental Irish yarn-spinner. Acting styles age more rapidly than visual mechanics, and works highly regarded at the time—such as The Informer (1935) and The Long Voyage Home (1940)—are less valued today than Ford’s generically terse westerns. Although Ford was often only a contract director who did his best with the material at hand, he recognized and valued a good story and, when possible, bought literary material and developed it with able screenwriters. When the budget allowed, he was able to work on a large canvas, placing his characters—singly or in groups—as elements in huge indifferent, if not hostile, natural settings. This approach is as effective in The Lost Patrol (1934) or The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) as it is in the westerns that he shot in Utah and Arizona’s Monument Valley. Ford’s stately, carefully staged and composed medium and long shots of groups of characters interacting (with a relatively spare use of “star” close-ups) are deceptively simple. Famous for shooting few takes and no extraneous angles, Ford was notoriously stingy with information for the cast or crew regarding what would be happening next or why, and he was quick to publicly chastise those who dared to ask for it. His contrariness became a personal trademark. Ford was likely to play either the erudite student of history and culture or the blunt, no-frills working stiff whenever insulted that the opposite was supposed of him.
World War II was a watershed for Ford: he finally had the opportunity (or perhaps the inescapable duty) to live up to the masculine code he had helped define in his many films. Already in the Naval Reserve, he made films for the Navy Department’s photographic unit—two of which, The Battle of Midway (1942) and December 7th (1943), won Academy Awards for best documentary—and, working for the Office of Strategic Services, he was present at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Having been personally under fire and a witness to slaughter, he was so proud of his military service and status that his gravestone memorializes him as Admiral John Ford (he had left active service with the rank of captain and was later made honorary rear admiral). His one true World War II movie, They Were Expendable (1945), is a remarkable film, though he sometimes derided it. It chronicles an American defeat (the rout of U.S. troops by the Japanese in the Philippines) and contains the quintessential Ford character scene. A group of officers considered “vital” to the war effort sit on a transport plane, waiting to be flown out of the debacle to relative safety. At the very last moment, a pair of more valued men arrive, and two of the junior officers are asked to step out of the plane (and most likely into what became known as the Bataan Death March). They do so quietly, uncomplaining, willing to sacrifice personal survival for the common good. Ford, acutely aware of the sham aspect of Hollywood mythmaking, underplays the moment that provides the backbone of the film.
The postwar Ford took care of some debts and omissions. Cheyenne Autumn (1964) recognizes the brutal treatment he believed the various American Indian nations had suffered at the hands of white men, Sergeant Rutledge (1960) involves buffalo soldiers, the African American troops who fought in the West, and Ford overtly challenged his own legacy in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Without a lavish budget and shot in black and white, this film is somewhat visually claustrophobic but notable in how the persona developed by John Wayne in the many films he starred in for Ford hardened over the years. Gone is grinning Ringo Kid from Stagecoach (1939), who marches down the street to face the three Plummer brothers in a “fair fight.” In his place, at the end of Liberty Valance, Wayne’s Tom Doniphon bushwhacks Lee Marvin’s Liberty from a side street, shot-gunning him like a rabid dog, and then allows the book-toting Easterner played by James Stewart, who has stolen the love of Doniphon’s life, to take credit for killing the outlaw in a face-to-face gunfight. Doniphon sinks into alcohol and misery while Stewart’s character launches a successful political career. There is no cynicism here—both characters are presented as brave, honourable men—but the idea of silent sacrifice to a notion of “what’s right” receives here its most extreme celebration in all of Ford’s work, and the film’s famous tagline (“This is the West, sir—when the legend becomes fact, print the legend”) does not seem ironic. The master storyteller was comfortable with the public’s hunger for defining myths.
Though a maker of stars, Ford was never—if his one directorial dance with Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie (1937) is discounted—a maker of star vehicles. This is no more apparent than in his Wagon Master (1950). Its protagonists are a pair of cowpokes played by the familiar character actors Ben Johnson and Harry Carey, Jr., amiable and uncomplicated. Their heroic moment is both reluctant and over in a flash, leaving viewers to assume that they go back to being simple cowpokes. Frontier values found in common men, in a situation that is morally clear-cut—this was the attraction of the western in the first half of the 20th century. As that simple comforting vision grew less viable in the years of McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War, a more nihilistic western evolved, finding its iconic figure in Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name.” Although Ford drifted from being a Franklin D. Roosevelt Democrat to a Richard M. Nixon Republican, his films were neither reactionary nor even basically conservative, and never, ever, amoral. More attracted to questions of individual character than collective politics or cultural shifts, Ford helped create an archetypical code of masculine ethics and behaviour that has profoundly affected the American psyche.
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- John Ford. En toda lista de los mejores directores de la historia del cine, el nombre de John Ford resulta ineludible. Retrató como nadie el Lejano Oeste de leyenda, pero su talento fue más allá, con una filmografía repleta de títulos imperecederos.
- 'El Caballo de Hierro' (1924). John Ford fuma en pipa y prepara una toma de 'El Caballo de Hierro' (1924). Publicidad - Sigue leyendo debajo.
- '3 Bad Men' (1926) Con el equipo de rodaje de '3 Bad Men' (1926), film que después reversionaría, en 'Tres padrinos' (1949). Publicidad - Sigue leyendo debajo.
- 'La Patrulla Perdida' (1934) Junto a uno de sus actores habituales, Victor McGlaglen, en una pausa del rodaje de 'La Patrulla Perdida' (1934). Publicidad - Sigue leyendo debajo.
- Las viñas de la ira. (1940-03-15T12:00:00+00:00) 100% (The Grapes of Wrath) Drama. Una familia pobre del Medio Oeste de Estados Unidos es forzada fuera de sus tierras.
- Más Corazón que Odio. (1956-03-13T12:00:00+00:00) 100% (The Searchers) Acción y Aventura, Drama, Western. Un veterano de la Guerra Civil se embarca en un viaje para rescatar a su sobrina de una tribu indígena.
- La Conquista del Oeste. (1963-02-20T12:00:00+00:00) 100% (How the West Was Won) Western. George Marshall, Henry Hathaway y John Ford dirigen este épico western que narra la historia de una familia a lo largo de tres generaciones mientras ésta viaja de Nueva York hasta las planicies...
- La Diligencia. (1939-03-03T12:00:00+00:00) 100% (Stagecoach) Acción y Aventura, Western. John Ford dirige el legedario Western La Diligencia. La trama de esta película gira en torno a un grupo de personas que debe viajar en la misma dilegencia y que durante el camino deberá...
One of the greatest directors of American cinema. A master directing westerns and dramas. Refine See titles to watch instantly, titles you haven't rated, etc. Sort by: View: 30 titles. 1. The Grapes of Wrath (1940) Passed | 129 min | Drama. 8.1. Rate. 96 Metascore.
1 de feb. de 2022 · Definitivamente uno de los grandes maestros, pioneros y artífices del séptimo arte, recordemos al gran John Ford con sus 10 Mejores Películas
18 de sept. de 2018 · John Ford, el director de cine que derribó los mitos de la historia de EE.UU. Fue uno de los cineastas más notables del cine clásico. Si bien su filmografía está asociada al western, sus filmes...
