John Ford | The Shamrock Handicap | 3 Bad Men | The Blue Eagle | Four Sons | Up the River | Fort Apache
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John Ford's films are noted for their pictorial beauty. Ford became a director long before that other great creator of visual beauty on the screen, Josef von Sternberg, and his films constitute a parallel tradition to those of Sternberg and his followers.
The Shamrock Handicap (1926) is a horse racing picture, set in both Ireland and the United States. Even at this early date, Ford is oriented to an ethnographic reconstruction of folk life styles and customs. I have no idea if other silent film makers also liked this approach. I have never seen anything else like it, but my knowledge of silent film is still woefully fragmentary and incomplete. Here, Ford is recreating Ireland. Two years later, in Four Sons (1928), Ford is showing us Bavaria. Ford will follow this throughout his entire career. The Irish scenes at the beginning are the best part of The Shamrock Handicap (1926). There is a similar approach in such later works as How Green Was My Valley (1941). Ford uses the same techniques in 1928 and 1941. There are plot elements in common, as well. All of these films put heavy emphasis on parent-child interactions. All have emigration to America as a major theme.
3 Bad Men (1926) is a Western. Its first half is mainly comedy and romance; its second half is full of drama and action. The men of the title are three outlaws, who look after the heroine of the movie. The three outlaws are treated both comically and sympathetically. Their rich characterizations are terrific. They anticipate the comic, good natured crooks that will show up in Ford's prison comedy, Up the River (1930). Both films have a complete lack of realism in dealing with crooks: real life criminals are a pretty sorry lot. But both films' crooks are a swell bunch of ordinary guys, whose villainy takes place off screen, prior to the films' beginnings. Both get involved in much irresistible comic and sentimental business. In both films, the rowdy crooks protect and look after a young, refined romantic couple.
Later, in Stagecoach (1939), Ford will make an outlaw himself, the Ringo Kid, be the romantic lead in the picture. In 3 Bad Men, the hero played by George O'Brien is a complete good guy, and the outlaws are his girl friend's protectors. In Stagecoach, the young hero once again has older men protectors, but here they are honest characters: the sheriff and the doctor. This is a role reversal between the two films. A bunch of older male characters also look after the young romantic hero (John Agar) in Fort Apache (1948), although neither Agar nor his protectors are crooks in that film.
Although George O'Brien is the romantic lead, in many ways the actual lead is one of the three bad men, Bull, played by Thomas Santschi. Although Thomas Santschi made nearly 150 films, mainly silents, thus is the only film of his I've ever had a chance to see. This is an index of how poorly silent films are preserved and distributed today. Santschi gives a fine performance as Bull, the leader of the three outlaws.
The year before, silent movie cowboy William S. Hart had made his farewell appearance on the screen in a classic Western, King Baggott's Tumbleweeds (1925). Tumbleweeds had shown the Oklahoma land rush, with thousands of settlers dashing across a line to claim newly opened lands. 3 Bad Men contains a straightforward imitation of this, depicting the Dakota land rush of 1877 in a similar fashion. Both rushes are the spectacular set pieces of their pictures, huge spectacles. Both films have their complete plots built around these land rushes. In Tumbleweeds, the rush occurs at the climax of the picture; in 3 Bad Men, two thirds of the way through.
The photography of 3 Bad Men consistently uses masking: the blocking off of the edges of the screen in black, to create a differently shaped frame around the action. Masking was a widely used device in the silent era, but has rarely been employed in the United States since sound came in around 1929. Today, masking looks like an anti-illusionist device. It makes the viewer conscious that what they are seeing on the screen is a photograph of reality, not reality itself. That other silent movie device, cross-cutting, also has a similar effect. (Cross-cutting is not much employed in 3 Bad Men.) In general, silent films often seem more like a "collection of photographs about a subject", and less like an illusionistic "you are really there watching the action of the film" medium. I suspect that such anti-illusionism is only a side effect of masking, however. Its real purpose seems to be to add to the beauty of the compositions shown on screen, by adding a differently shaped screen border surrounding the composition. It is consistently employed in this way by Ford throughout 3 Bad Men. Masking is rarely used to highlight a piece of action, or to make a story point. Instead, its main use seems to be to add to the beauty and complexity of the compositions. Masking often appears in long shots, when Ford is creating beautiful panoramas of Western spectacle, such as horse riders, wagon trains, or the settlers organizing for the land rush.
Ford likes to shoot his characters, so that they are seen as small but important figures on the horizon. This gives a tremendous sense of atmosphere. It is if they were the harbingers of change, a new force that is about to enter the life of the world. We frequently see groups people on horseback at long distance, including the three outlaws of the title. And the long panning shot, showing the settlers as a thin line on the horizon, awaiting the start of the land rush, is one of the great spectacles of the film. This shot pleasantly seems to go on forever. One keeps expecting Ford to run out of image. Instead, the shot keeps turning and turning, revealing more and more settlers lined up on the horizon. Meanwhile, beautiful hills tower above them, seeming to convey a message about the West, or maybe about life.
The Blue Eagle (1926) is a male bonding picture about two brawling sailors. It is hugely entertaining. It is set in modern times, and is much less ethnographic than are many Ford pictures. It reminds one a little bit of The Lost Patrol (1934), another Ford picture whose main subject is a bunch of soldiers. In both films, the focus is relentlessly on the characters. Ford clearly finds them fascinating people (I agree). Just shooting the characters, watching their reactions, faces and bodies, is good enough to justify most shots. The Blue Eagle is as comic as The Lost Patrol is tragic, however. Nothing really bad is going to happen to these guys, and we know that everything will be great for a happy ending. Much later in Ford's career, Donovan's Reef (1963) will also be a contemporary set comedy about brawling retired sailors.
The Blue Eagle has an unusual compositional style. Most shots are fully frontal. The plane of the shot is parallel to the wall behind the characters. We see a pure geometric grid, with doors, windows and other wall markings, shot dead on, forming the compositional geometry of the shot. The characters are also often shot straight on. They are often directly facing the camera. This unites the characters and the backgrounds into one unified series of design principles. Ford gets an astonishing amount of mileage out of this stylistic approach. The compositions, while they often have a primitive look, are often forceful and beautiful.
George Schneiderman's photography has a startling, "you are there" quality. It seems as immediate as modern day video filming, used for soap operas and news broadcasts. One often feels that one is in a room with George O'Brien, and that he is standing right in front of you. There is none of the filtered, shadowed silent art photography that one sees in many great silent films.
Four Sons (1928) is a pacifist picture, looking at how a Bavarian mother's children get caught up in the horrific war machine of World War I Germany. Ford would return to pacifist themes later in his career, notably in Pilgrimage (1933) and The Long Gray Line (1955). Both Four Sons and Pilgrimage are based on stories by I. A. R. Wylie.
Ford had consistent liberal messages throughout his career, from such pacifist attacks on World War I as Four Sons (1928), to his pro-black Western Sergeant Rutledge (1960). He depicted himself as a Democrat, and supported Roosevelt and the New Deal in the 1930's, and JFK and Civil Rights in the 1960's. Such a politics in his personal life was consistent with what appeared on screen. Ford was clearly neither a conservative nor a Communist. Attempts to herd him into either of these two categories are clearly counter to much evidence.
Up the River (1930) is a tongue-in-cheek comedy, mainly set in a prison.
Up the River was made only two years after sound came to Hollywood. Sound itself might not have as revolutionary in cinema, as the change of attitude at the studios that went with it. Old silent players were often not considered good enough anymore; instead, vast numbers of actors were imported from the stage. Here, we see stage actor Spencer Tracy in his film debut, as well as screen newcomer Humphrey Bogart in his second movie. Movies became virtually a branch of the Broadway stage during this period. Bogart is not playing the tough guy of his later years, however. Instead, he is playing one of Ford's refined young heroes, the sort of role that will be taken by John Agar or Jeffrey Hunter in later Ford. Even here, Bogart has a bit more of an edge than Ford's later heroes, playing a young man who has accidentally killed another man in a fight, and who has been sent to prison for manslaughter.
Ford includes some of the songs that will be a recurring feature of his storytelling. Even in his silent days, the heroes of his films were associated with songs, that would be played as tunes by the instrumentalists that accompanied the films in the theater. Now, with sound technology, the music is sung right on screen.
Ford never tired of poking fun at refined New Englanders; he grew up in Maine. Here he has a lot of fun with both the ladies who visit the prison, and Bogart's ultra-proper mother.
Fort Apache (1948) is the first of Ford's unofficial "cavalry trilogy".
The relationship between Kirby York (John Wayne) and Michael O'Rourke (John Agar) is one of many Ford relationships between a mature man and a young, good looking guy. These relationships are in most ways gay love stories, although Ford never makes this fully explicit. They tend to be the heart of Ford films in which they appear.
As a gay man, York is the main character who tries to resist the huge social machinery that Col. Thursday has put in motion. A machine that will eventually send the whole troop to their deaths. York is also the one who reaches out to the Other: the Native Americans Thursday is determined to attack. York communications with the tribal leaders through Spanish: he is a man who has made a conscious effort to open himself up to other cultures, and develop a practical working relationship with them. Gay people are depicted as a point of openness in society, connecting individuals who allow the society to reach out to other groups outside its borders. Such connections are a source of hope and growth for the society, even its main chance for survival, if the society will allow such a reaching out to take place and flourish.
Just before the final attack, York sends O'Rourke off to carry a message. This is York's attempt to preserve O'Rourke, who he worships. The thought of O'Rourke's beautiful body being harmed by violence is anathema to York. This is the only resistance to sinister course of events that York is now able to achieve. Because of this, O'Rourke is able to survive, get married, and have children, just as York intended. This shows York's commitment to the life force, even in face of the disaster that overtakes the troop.