The Searchers

John Ford’s The Searchers is the classic western.  It has everything a western needs and more.  It’s set in the old west, under a beautiful blue sky and amazing red rock formations in the distance.  There are plenty of cowboys riding around, indians they can justify shooting, fights to get into, and a girl that needs saving.  And, of course, it stars John Wayne.

The year is 1868, and Ethan (Wayne) has just returned from the Civil War.  He hopes to settle in peacefully with his brother’s family, including his nephew Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), who is ⅛ indian.  Not long after his return, Comanche indians, led by Chief Scar, lure the men away from his family’s home and kill all but the youngest daughter, Debby.  Ethan leads a band of men to track down the tribe and bring the girl home, but it proves to be too dangerous.  The band falls to a duo, Ethan and stubborn young Martin.  As time goes on, Martin senses Ethan’s dark hatred of the Indians and fears for Debby, who has been living assimilated with the tribe during all their searching.

There’s an amusing side plot, involving a young woman, Laurie (Vera Miles), waiting for Martin.  She makes her feelings obvious and has had her heart set on him since they were small children.  But in true cowboy fashion, Martin is not as clear about his affections.  While he is out searching for Debby for years, he only sends one letter.  Poor Laurie may not wait forever for him, and who knows what kind of reputation Martin will return with, if he returns at all.

After the film was over, I felt a little dumbfounded.  There were dozens of questions racing through my mind.  What can possess two men to search for one girl for over five years?  Some interpret underlying secrets to fuel the searching; could Debby be Ethan’s daughter?  Ethan has some extreme hatred toward the Indians that comes up before the murders and kidnapping, where did that come from?  Is that connected to why it took him three years to return from the war?  There seem to be half-hints along the way to a couple of these questions, but nothing to satisfy any real answers.

I’d also like to discuss my dissatisfaction with the ending, so here’s your spoiler alert, skip this paragraph.  In one scene, didn’t Debby say she wanted to stay with the Indians?  She even went as far as to call them her people.  So what was with the sudden willingness to leave with Martin?  And Ethan was ready to kill her when she refused to go earlier, he knew nothing of her sudden change of heart, how convenient that he has one too.

Now, don’t let my hang-ups on the plot/writing bring down the film.  I was actually very impressed and happy to have finally seen it.  The cinematography is splendid, making great use of the beautiful Monument Valley.  The framing of the beginning and end shots were much appreciated.  There were perfect moments where a beautiful shot, a swell of music really brought an impact on an important moment in the story.  Both Hunter and Wayne put on a great performance that I could take seriously and become very involved in both of their characters.  There is a good amount of action, as well as laughs and drama.  The Searchers really is a great classic western that I have waited too long to see, and suggest everyone check it out.

“Injun will chase a thing till he thinks he’s chased it enough.  Then he quits.  Same way when he runs.  Seems like he never learns there’s such a thing as a critter that’ll just keep comin’ on.”

Stagecoach

After seeing John Ford’s Stagecoach, I don’t think I could ever complain about modern day travel.  Being stuck between two overweight businessmen on an airplane is a luxury compared to the wilds of the open west, even when the flight attendant passes you up for peanuts.  In the days of stagecoach travel, Ford shows us that there are no roads, just the bumpy plains, and no rest stops between towns to pick up any provisions or supplies.  The coach itself is cramped, anymore than three across each of the two seats is uncomfortable, and if a seventh passenger is picked up along the way he just has to sit on the floor.  When the wind picks up, dirt and dust will just fly in.  And if you have to cross Apache territories, just hope Geronimo isn’t leading them on a war path.

Just the idea of traveling on a Stagecoach is dramatic in itself, add in some interesting characters and you have yourself a hell of a movie.  This particular coach’s travelers include a frequently drunk doctor (Thomas Mitchell), a fat-cat banker who has taken off with his client’s money (Berton Churchill), a whiskey salesman (Donald Meek) and a Southern gambler (John Carradine) who joins in at the last minute with an idea of protecting the two women.  Dallas (Claire Trevor) is an ex-prostitute just run out of town and Mrs. Mallory (Louise Platt) is traveling to be with her cavalry officer husband.  Loud-mouth Buck (Andy Devine) drives the stagecoach and keeps Marshall Curley Wilcox (George Bancroft) by his side for protection in case of any attacks by the Apache Indians.  Along the way, they find the Ringo Kid (John Wayne) who has just escaped from jail and on his way to Lordsburg to get revenge on the Plummer boys who killed his brother and father.  Being a Marshall and knowing Ringo’s intentions, Wilcox has to arrest him and take him along their journey.

Throughout the journey, this rag-tag band of strangers must set their differences aside and work together.  When an unexpected medical emergency arises, the doctor must sober up and remember his calling.  After that, everyone knows the dangers of resting for a while, but don’t want to risk the health of their weakest passengers.  As romance between Dallas and the Kid grows, so does the worry over what will happen to him in Lordsburg, whether he lives or not.

The greatest moment in this film is the scene where the Apaches chase and attack the stagecoach.  I honestly wasn’t expecting a chase scene so exciting to occur in the middle of the desert.  The dramatic music mixed with the constant beating of hooves and gunfire is perfect.  Some of the camera angles are quite daring, especially showing the stagecoach drive right over the camera with Apaches on horseback following behind.  Though some of the techniques to make some of the horses fall and appear shot were cruel, it was very effective from a visual standpoint.  Every moment of that scene is pure gold, and gets us to hold our breath up to the very peak of the climax.

There are so many reasons to see Stagecoach.  It was the film Orson Welles watched over and over again while filming Citizen Kane.  I believe you’ll find many great details that cross over into Kane.  Besides seeing how it inspired other great films, I think Stagecoach can be considered one of the first road-trip movies.  Thinking about how it compares to more modern odysseys is some interesting food for thought, perhaps another post for another day.

“If there’s anything I don’t like, it’s driving a stagecoach through Apache country.”

The Informer

In John Ford’s The Informer, we are taken to a foggy night in Dublin, 1922.  Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) is a starving now that he’s been cast out of the organized rebels.   When he sees a reward poster for his old pal, Frankie (Wallace Ford), the twenty pound reward is tempting.  So tempting that he tears it from the wall, but the windy night has the poster follow him.  His girlfriend, Katie (Margot Grahame), is so desperate for money she has turned to prostitution.  When she sees a poster for a voyage to America, she says, “Twenty pounds and the world is ours.”  This seems to be the final straw for Gypo, he decides to turn Frankie in.

After we see Frankie gunned down in an intense gunfight in front of his mother and sister, Gypo is a free, and rich man with a growing guilty conscience. Anyone with twenty pounds in his pockets is considered loaded here.  He at first tries to extinguish the guilt with a bottle of whiskey, but that is only throwing gas on the fire.  When people start getting a whiff of all the money Gypo has on him, they take him out on the town, on his dime.  As Gypo gets more drunk, the worse he feels about squealing on Frankie and the less careful he is with his money, or who he gives it to.  By the end of the night, people will making the connection between Frankie’s death and Gypo’s new fortune.

Victor McLaglen won the Oscar for best actor for portraying Gypo through his downward spiral.  He is simply a large, desperate brute with a conscious that works best in the aftermath of a terrible moral decision, but watching that conscious grow and torment him from the inside out is truly intriguing.  By the climatic trial scene, I felt terrible for how stinking drunk and tired Gypo looked.  The story goes that Ford made McLaglen perform that scene through a fierce hangover he planned on McLaglen getting after the grueling film schedule.

Sometimes the simplest films have the greatest affect.  Here, the plot is a simple story of guilt set in a mysteriously foggy Dublin, but it was done so well.  This fog is so thick that lights seem to just get lost in it and only shadows can slice through.  The wind, with it’s ability to continually bring the crumpled wanted poster back to Gypo, is wonderfully eerie that only adds to the growing tension within Gypo.  And reading how John Ford pushed McLaglen throughout filming and into that hungover performance is intriguing and makes the end even more painful to watch.  It took me a long while to think about it, but I personally would rank The Informer as the best picture of 1935.  Mutiny is a very close second.

“I’m in with the fog and out with the fog and no one will be the wiser.”

How Green Was My Valley

In a Welsh mining town, the youngest son of the Morgan family recalls his youth, when the valley was turning from green and peaceful to troublesome for all the community.  His father (Donald Crisp) and older brothers all work in the mines, despite the risks.  Their pay is not handsome, but is plenty for the family.  Soon the pay is cut and the sons talk about forming a union, an idea their father fiercely disapproves of.  As workers strike and money becomes tight, the youngest son, Huw (Roddy McDowall) has a close call falling through ice.  He starts to regain his strength around spring time, partially thanks to the encouragement of Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon), the new preacher.  Mr. Gruffydd also visits the family’s daughter Angharad (Maureen O’Hara).  Romantic tensions run high between them, but she does not act and Mr. Gruffydd doubts that he could properly provide for her.

Mr. Morgan sees more potential in Huw than to become another coal miner, so he starts sending Huw to a new school with upper class children.  Immediately, Huw is the odd one out, the teacher mockingly calls him “a little genius from the coal pits.”  The children are no less friendly and one boy beats poor Huw.  When he returns back to the valley, it’s heartwarming to see a few men in the town take the time to teach Huw to box.  The skill comes in handy and makes his classmates respect him, but only brings brutal punishment from the teacher.  Soon, Huw starts to wonder if he should give up on school and simply work in the mines like everyone else.

The sense of community we see in this valley is very beautiful in the beginning.  We are shown how the men sometimes start singing together as they walk home from a day working in the mines.  To celebrate a wedding, it seems everyone is there, making a chain of hands and swaying as the happy couple exits the church.  The reception shows how these people can really kick back and have a good time, I love the quick scene showing the men’s drinking games.

There are only two things that seem to disrupt his harmony: the mines and the church.  When the mines cut wages, then jobs, and people begin to talk about unions, the impact starts pitting neighbors against each other.  The church is little more than a social institution that instills fear in the valley.  The deacons are not afraid to point out any wrong doing in front of the whole congregation, which makes some of the young people question the role of the church.  Mr. Gruffydd is a positive addition to the church, but it takes a while for the people to realize his less judgemental character.  Unfortunately, he is no match for that row of hypocritical deacons.

While How Green Was My Valley won the award for Best Picture, I cannot agree with the Academy.  The film is a wonderful display of John Ford’s work and the story is a good depiction of trials similar to what many people were enduring and remembering just after the Depression, so it resonated more with many viewers at the time.  Today however, it cannot compare to the wonderful achievements we uphold in Citizen Kane.  I’ll get to that later.

“Nothing is enough for people who have minds like cesspools.  Oh Huw, my little one, I hope when you’re grown their tongues will be slower to hurt.”

Arrowsmith

Here is John Ford’s very first Oscar nominated film.  Let’s just say he could only go up from here.

Arrowsmith is based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis about a young medical research scientist with so much potential.  All Martin Arrowsmith’s (Ronald Colman) life seems to be in preparation to be a great scientist.  He’s told by his professor and mentor that he could do great things in the world of research, but Martin meets a young nurse, Leora (Helen Hayes) and marries.  A research scientists salary won’t support them, so they move to her hometown in South Dakota and Martin becomes the town’s doctor.

Throughout the film, the men of science who work in laboratories trying to find cures for diseases look down on private doctors.  They write them off as pill distributors, only helping one person at a time.  These lab rats seem to thrive on the idea that though their work may be slow and tedious, their rewards will be much greater in the end.  It seems that Martin is selling out.

Martin quickly finds out that he’s not very good at practicing medicine.  It’s not so much that he’s a bad doctor, but that he is not motivated by running house to house distributing pills.  When a disease breaks out among the town’s cattle, Martin steps into the case, just for fun.  He ends up turning his kitchen into a lab and creating a serum to cure the infected cattle.  We easily see that he’s more invigorated by creating medicine rather than delivering babies or pulling children’s loose teeth.

Word soon gets around about Martin, the cow doctor, and when Leora loses their baby they decide to move back to New York, where Martin will work under his old professor again.  His research starts slow at first and of course once he’s a little discouraged he makes a great discovery.  Along this time there’s also an outbreak of plague, which propels the Arrowsmiths to go to the West Indies to see if his newly discovered medicine can help.

All that just seems like perfect timing, don’t it?  But don’t worry, the travels prove to be tragic and Myrna Loy shows up as a beautiful Hollywood headliner in the last quarter who doesn’t really have much other purpose in the film.  Hard to believe this trite plot line has been reused for over eighty years now.

Honestly, this seems like one of the first boring biographical films made just for an Oscar buzz.  It’s not biographical, but it has that sort of feel, building Arrowsmith up to some hero with all sorts of drama around him.  I don’t know how well the film follows the novel, (perhaps Loy’s character has more time and purpose) but I think you’d get much more satisfaction out of any novel than this film.

“That’s no compliment, it’s a scientific fact.”

 

Mister Roberts

Directed by John Ford, Mister Roberts is a military comedy-drama set aboard a US cargo ship in the Pacific during the later part of WWII.  Captain Morton (James Cagney) is a tyrant regularly disciplining his crew over the tiniest infractions, including putting cigarette butts in his beloved potted palm tree.  As one sailor puts it, the palm tree is a reward “for delivering more toothpaste and toilet paper than any other ship.”  Life aboard “the Bucket” is less than glamorous, and Lt. Doug Roberts (Henry Fonda) wants to transfer to a battleship before it’s too late to fight.  He constantly writes letters requesting his transfer and describing the disharmony aboard the ship.  But with the Captain won’t let his letters go through.  He knows he has a good cargo officer and refuses to sign Mister Roberts’ transfer papers.

The sailors haven’t been off the ship in nearly a year and are getting anxious.  There are fun scenes where the sailors are using binoculars to spy into the nurses shower room on the nearby island.  When Ensign Pulver (Jack Lemmon) invites one of the nurses to the ship, the lengths he and Doc (William Powell) go to to find liquor for his hot date are hilarious and when it all goes south, the crew has one less thing to look forward to.

To help out his overworked crew, Mister Roberts strikes a deal the the Captain to not undermine his authority or send any more letters in order to give the men liberty off the ship.  The men start to think that Mister Robers has lost his backbone.  It’s only when the men realize the sacrifice Mister Roberts made for them, they thank him in their own way.

The majority of the film is a comedy.  The crew is full of fun and zany mishaps, from trying to get a date with the nurses to concocting pranks to pull on the Captain.  When they come back to the ship after their liberty, some bring their good time back with them.  They dance aboard the ship, wearing floral leis and some are so full of liquor they had to be carried aboard the ship in a net.  One man even brings a goat back with him, claiming it to be his new sweetheart.

Fonda portrays Mister Roberts as that person we all hope to have aboard our ship.  He’s caring, smart, always looking out for his crew and not afraid to stand up to unfair authority.  These people will get the credit they deserve eventually, and that’s something to smile about.

If you enjoy military comedies, a lighthearted drama or Henry Fonda, I completely recommend Mister Roberts.

“I forgot my motorcycle.”

The Long Voyage Home

This forgotten gem stars John Wayne.  Based on four one-act plays by Eugene O’Neill, the film follows the lives of the sailors aboard a freighter ship.  They’re comrades and stick together through thick and thin, but at sea, loneliness and of fear enemy submarines come between them and make them suspicious of each other.  When they’re not facing the troubles at sea, they’re having too good of a time on land.  The real tension comes when they need to make sure that Ole (Wayne) gets aboard his ship so he can go back home to Sweden.  They drunkenly run around town for “one more drink” and “just one dance” trying to live as much as they can before they’re cast back to the sea.  While Ole is waiting for his friends to have their fill, a man has been following them, trying to find one more man to sail on a famously dreaded ship, the Amindra.  Till the end, it’s a nail biter to see if Ole will get home or not.

Wayne fans will notice something very odd; he’s playing a Swedish man.  At first, Wayne was apprehensive to the role, thinking people would laugh at his attempt at a Swedish accent, but director John Ford talked him into it.  I’ll admit, it’s a little funny at first to hear Wayne’s cowboy voice say, “Ya, from Sveeden.”  But we’ve got to give him props for branching out, he does it well and we never laugh at him.  Maybe with him.

In my opinion, The Long Voyage Home only bows Rebecca in cinematography.  Shots are set up beautifully and leave a lasting impression of the film.  When a man is punched in the barroom, the camera is graceful as he stubles down the bar.  A man is killed in a lifeboat and covered with a tarp flapping in the wind is captured with surprising elegance.  We watch men approach their ship from under the boarding ramp.  It’s genius, beautiful and more sophisticated than I expected for 1940, but then, so is John Ford.

The Long Voyage Home is a good movie for guys.  They can join this band of shipmates as they drink, party and face hard times together.  Sorry, no quote today.