Three outlaws come to the aid of a young girl after her father is killed.
Quote:
Bob Mastrangelo has called it “One of John Ford’s greatest silent epics.” The film possibly inspired the title for Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 film Three Bad Men in a Hidden Fortress, simply known as The Hidden Fortress in the rest of the world.Read More »
The filmography of John Ford, most specifically his westerns for which he is arguably best known, is presented, those movies which largely made western stars out of John Wayne and James Stewart as two sides of the hero or antihero as the case may be, but also the majestically beautiful landscape of Monument Valley. The films are discussed as a reflection of him as a man – which is arguably the best representation of him as he was a highly private man who often answered evasively or flippantly in interviews, even about his work – and as a commentary on or his hope for American society. That hope largely was for a better world for the disenfranchised, especially the ethnic minority with Native Americans the usual stand-in as ubiquitous to the genre. Those movies in relation to politics, either his own are that of others who want to capitalize on very specific messages, is also discussed. As an interlude to his Hollywood life, his military service in WWII where he used his filmmaking.Read More »
Shiftless Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) and his family of hillbilly stereotypes live in a rural backwater where their ancestors were once wealthy planters. Their slapstick existence is threatened by a bank’s plans to take over the land for more profitable farming; subplots involve the affairs and marriages of son Dude (William Tracy) and daughter Ellie May (Gene Tierney).Read More »
A family saga in which three sons of a Bavarian widow go to war for Germany and the fourth goes to America, Germany’s eventual opponent. One of John Ford’s most important silent films, made very much under the influence of his Fox studio mate, F.W. Murnau.Read More »
Synopsis:
After Custer and the 7th Cavalry are wiped out by Indians, everyone expects the worst. Capt. Nathan Brittles is ordered out on patrol but he’s also required to take along Abby Allshard, wife of the Fort’s commanding officer, and her niece, the pretty Olivia Dandridge, who are being evacuated for their own safety. Brittles is only a few days away from retirement and Olivia has caught the eye of two of the young officers in the Company, Lt. Flint Cohill and 2nd Lt. Ross Pennell. She’s taken to wearing a yellow ribbon in her hair, a sign that she has a beau in the Cavalry, but refuses to say for whom she is wearing it.Read More »
A few short hours after President Lincoln has been assassinated, Dr. Samuel Mudd gives medical treatment to a wounded man who shows up at his door. Mudd has no idea that the president is dead and that he is treating his murderer, John Wilkes Booth. But that doesn’t save him when the army posse searching for Booth finds evidence that Booth has been to the doctor’s house. Dr. Mudd is arrested for complicity and sentenced to life imprisonment, to be served in the infamous pestilence-ridden Dry Tortugas.Read More »
Dublin, 1922. Gypo Nolan, strong but none too bright, has been ousted from the rebel organization and is starving. When he finds that his equally destitute sweetheart Katie has been reduced to prostitution, he succumbs to temptation and betrays his former comrade Frankie to the British authorities for a 20 pound reward. In the course of one gloomy, foggy night, guilt and retribution inexorably close in…Read More »
John Ford returned to his Irish roots in this lighthearted gem featuring three short films introduced by Tyrone Power and shot entirely in Ireland.
The first, “The Majesty of the Law”, is the droll tale of a police inspector (Cyril Cusack) trying to serve a warrant on an old man (Noel Purcell) who assaulted his neighbour.
“A Minute’s Wait” tells the farcical story of how a train’s one-minute station stop turns into a two-hour delay. Filmed on the late, lamented West Clare Railway.Read More »
Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Jode McWilliams wants to marry Peg Owens, but her father (and Jode’s employer) won’t allow it. Jode writes Peg a love letter, but it is stolen by an Indian. The Indian delivers the letter to Peg. Her father finds the letter and kidnaps Jode, he escapes and marries Peg.Read More »