The Grapes of Wrath - John Ford's memorable screen version of
John Steinbeck's epic novel of the Great Depression--often
regarded as the director's best film--stars Henry Fonda as Tom
Joad. After having served a brief prison sentence for
manslaughter, Joad arrives at his family's Oklahoma farm only to
find it abandoned. Muley (John Qualen), a neighbour now nearly
mad with grief, tells Tom of the drought that has transformed the
farmland of Oklahoma into a desert and of the preying land agents
who have ploughed under the shacks of the sharecroppers. Joined
by former hellfire preacher Casy (John Carradine), Tom finds his
extended family packing their ramshackle truck to seek work in
the fields of California. Among the talented cast, Fonda does
perhaps the best work of his career, as does Qualen in the film's
most haunting sequence. In a stirring film that stands as a
microcosm of the depression experience of millions, Ford gives
poverty a human face in a way that was rare then and even rarer
in the decades to follow as Hollywood films with a sense of class
consciousness dwindled like a species nearing extinction.
In John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, Huw Morgan, now a
middle-aged man leaving the mining town of Cwm Rhondda, recalls
the events that most impressed themselves upon his younger self
(Roddy McDowall). Still too young to work in the local coal mine
like his her, Gwilym (Donald Crisp), and his five older
brothers, he senses the seriousness of an imminent strike by the
rift it creates between his her and the other boys. Richard
Llewellyn's nostalgic novel, with its Fordian themes of family
and community, could hardly have found a better director. While
the acting and writing are excellent, this is truly Ford's film,
one in which his brilliantly chosen groupings and compositions
are the most expressive elements. Possibly the most moving film
of Ford's career, How Green Was My Valley received five Os,
including Best Picture and Best Director.
The Horse Soldiers - This latter-day sort-of Western from John
Ford--falling midway between The Searchers and The Man Who
Liberty Valance--is a crisp re-telling of a true-life episode
from the Civil War. In 1863 a Union colonel named Grierson
(Marlowe in the film, and John Wayne by any name) led his cavalry
several hundred miles behind Confederate lines to cut the
railroad between Newton Station and soon-to-be-embattled
Vicksburg. There's a certain a of bombast in the running
arguments about wartime ethics between Marlowe and the new
regimental surgeon (William Holden), who don't take to each other
at all. But Ford more than makes up for it with such tasty scenes
as an encounter with a couple of redneck Rebel deserters (Denver
Pyle and Strother Martin), an ethereal swamp crossing led by a
cornpone deacon (Hank Worden), and above all the famous skirmish
with a hillside full of grade-school cadets from a venerable
academy. The film ends rather abruptly because Ford
abandoned a climactic battle scene--the veteran stunt man and bit
player Fred Kennedy having been killed in a horse fall. --Richard
T. Jameson
My Darling Clementine - In another of his classic Westerns, John
Ford again reflects upon the advance of civilisation on the
receding frontier, recounting the events leading up to and
including the legendary fight at the O.K. Corral. As they
drive their cattle toward California, Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda)
and his brothers, Morgan (Ward Bond), Virgil (Tim Holt), and
young James (Don Garner), stop outside Tombstone, Arizona, where
they refuse an offer for their stock made by Old Man Clanton
(Walter Brennan) and his son, Ike (Grant Withers). The three
older brothers ride into town, and, after Wyatt subdues a drunk,
return to the wagons to find James dead and their cattle stolen.
With little doubt about who the perpetrators are, Wyatt decides
to accept the offer to be marshal of Tombstone that he had just
recently refused. Although ostensibly focused on the famed
fight, My Darling Clementine's more concerned like many of
Ford's films with the creation of a community, the rule of law,
and the civilising influence of women on the wild and woolly
West. When the showdown finally comes, it's without blood lust,
as the Earp brothers conduct themselves with the ritual solemnity
of samurai warriors. Fonda gives a subtle, brilliantly
understated performance in the lead role, establishing a
naturalist motif that is picked up and furthered by Joseph
MacDonald's magnificent, barely lit s of Ford's beloved
Monument Valley.
