Pilgrimage (1933 - directed by John Ford)

[MissGoddess]

My first foray into the Ford at Fox collection was a Pilgrimage into the world of a woman whose possessiveness toward her only son spurs her to send him to his death and a coldhearted denial of the child he leaves behind. So much for Pappy's purported idealization of the sanctity of motherhood.

For the record, these are my initial impressions of the movie: As is his wont, Ford makes Pilgrimage a journey with twists and turns, flinging both light and shadow on the path. Recriminations and rash actions are followed by gallows humor, suicide watch by bucolic sprightliness and rituals of grief by comic interludes in the "innocents abroad" manner. All of which illustrates life's way of laughing at us and how some cope by laughing right back.

You wouldn't suspect that anything like humor would crack the granite surface "Hannah Jessop" (the brilliant Henrietta Crosman) but since she is convinced her actions toward her son are unquestionably "right and decent", she can look upon life without a qualm and leavens her tough talking ways with amusing and sardonic sallies. Why, even her grim acceptance to join the other widows travelling to France to visit their son's graves seems more like the picking up a flung gauntlet or spitting in a challenger's eye---not at all the soft relenting to motherly sentiment which moves the other ladies. And so Hannah's journey, inward as well as outward, begins on board an ocean liner that takes her to a country with strange customs and language, yet face to face with the identical situation that drove her and her son apart. I won't give any more of the plot away, but even if I outline the whole story you would still find plenty to be surprised by in the way it unfolds. Ford's style is fairly waggish at times in this picture, he even breaks the "fourth wall" and one of the cardinal rules of movies: never have your characters address the camera directly. Both Crosman and Norman Foster do this and it really startled me because I felt---instead of jarred out of the moment---jerked in as though I was a participant and no longer just a spectator at the tragedy tearing them apart. It was really unsettling. I wonder if it will have the same effect when I watch it again.

But the heart and soul of the play is Henrietta Crosman's "Hannah" and it's well worth your time to take the Pilgrimage with her.

More about Pilgrimage and 9 other "underrated Ford films" here, by Jonathan Rosenbaum:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/articles/ ... _films.htm

[moira finnie]

Thanks for sharing your very observant take on John Ford's Pilgrimage, Miss G.

I mainly watched it because it was an unfamiliar Ford flick and any of the movies from the early '30s about WWI interests me. Did you find any of the changes in tone throughout the film from drama to comical unsettling? I still can't make up my mind about that aspect, though pathos mixed with broad humor was always a Fordian characteristic, huh? I liked the sequences in France when Crosman and her new gal-pal with the corncob pipe get into mischief at the firing range. I was also nonplussed by the scene when Crosman burst out with her "I don't belong here because I'm not like the rest of you" speech. While it really wasn't expected, the unpredictable moment made this a better movie than expected. Also, it is always interesting to see older people shown to be uncertain and restless spirits rather than the settled and sometimes smug individuals they were customarily asked to play in movies.

One of the best sequences of the movie for me was when the woman who stopped Crosman as she mounted the gangplank to go to Europe, asked her to take the flowers to the unknown soldier's grave since she couldn't go herself and didn't know where her boy rested. This was a typical, small Fordian moment that said volumes. I get choked up just thinking about it again. Touches like this made the movie worth watching for me, not necessarily the fairly monstrous mother-son relationship.

I didn't think that the situation with the young man in France who was saved from making a fatal mistake by Crosman worked as well as the rest of the film either. It seemed a bit mechanical and tacked on to the story.

Though I knew that Henrietta Crosman appeared briefly in one of my favorite romantic movies, The Dark Angel (1935), a very different Henrietta Crosman may also be seen in Kauffman and Hart's The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), one of the first films directed by George Cukor, (along with Cyril Gardner, who was supposed to be the technical guy on this early talkie). She plays the matriarch of the "Cavendish" (read Barrymore) family whose children are Ina Claire and a very funny, over-the-top Fredric March (as John B. of course). Crosman's character is meant to be an old school Shakespearean trouper who milks what few tears this parody allows from the audience. Her character is pretty close to having had the kind of career that Crosman actually did. She appeared in about 30 Broadway shows starting in the 1890s and toured forever in old repertory warhorses like The Merry Wives of Windsor and Trelawney of the Wells! Her old fashioned manner in these films probably will put off some, but she was quite effective in in "The Royal Family" in part because of this aspect of her style. Even though the acting seems hokey, seeing actors like Henrietta Crosman, or Harry Davenport or C. Aubrey Smith is like a peek at another century and another way of relating to the world.

I know that some of my nitpicking seems to indicate that I didn't like Pilgrimage or Crosman, but just now it occurred to me that a Henrietta Crosman triple feature of these movies be just swell for a cold winter night's viewing. I'd like to see each of them again, despite the flaws and old-fashioned qualities that sometimes distance modern audiences from such movies.

Btw, did you know that the little boy who appears as the illegitimate grandson in Pilgrimage was played by Jay Ward, as in the madcap creative mind behind Bullwinkle and Rocky fame?

Below is a pertinent excerpt from a Senses of Cinema article entitled Ford Till '47 by Tag Gallagher. I thought that it caught the visual and emotional tapestries of Pilgrimage and Doctor Bull quite well. I'm not expressing myself particularly well about my mixed emotions regarding Pilgrimage, but Mr. Gallagher sure does:

Pilgrimage and Doctor Bull offset hard-souled individuals and repressive communities with dreary comedy verging on insanity: a mayor

(Francis Ford) tries to stop a train with his cane. Ford's cinema is a tapestry of excommunicants – blacks, half-castes, fallen women, illegitimate children, impolitic doctors, sons, and blacksmiths. In Pilgrimage objects become testimonials casting into perspective people enshrouded in private myopia and self-deception. Fiery blackness, a lamp witnesses a drunken father, fenceposts the anger of a grandmother. Gazing down a road, the pointed tops of a zig-zaggy fence tell us the sleigh is bringing Hannah news of Jim's death. A foreground table and lamp witness the long-shot scene when Hannah learns Jim is dead; their steadfast presence reminds us that time can neither be turned back nor halted: Hannah has to live every second. Like many Fords, the chrome-dark Pilgrimage pleads for harmony between myth and human needs. Hannah herself was the war that killed her son, just as comparable intolerance in rival patriotic communities killed so many others.

[MissGoddess]

Hi Moira,

I think Gallagher is very locked into seeing only in terms of cinematic visuals instead of taking in the story as a whole. I frankly didn't notice ANY of those objects, but I am always very, very slow at picking up such things. As for the juxtaposition of humor and drama, it worked very well for me in Pilgrimage, as it does in most of Ford's other films. It may be I dislike dramas that are unremittingly serious and grim because they are so false; life isn't like that except perhaps in insanse asylums, where no laughter is born of humor. I need a few grimly sardonic lines or even gallows humor to show me these are human beings working through pain, using humor as one of the most accessible balms.

I did like the moment between Crosman and the woman who handed her the little flower pot. Several times there was this insistent contrast between Hannah's hard-heartedness and the grief being expressed by the other mothers.

I agree the story between Heather Angel and the boy didn't seem terribly smooth, but something had to jar Hannah to her senses so I view their entire reason for existence as purely catalystic. Did you notice how terribly Hedda Hopper over acted? Poor Crosman, she really had to carry that entire scene. Hedda should have pulled back and remained stony but she seemed bent on competing with Henrietta for whatever remained of the scenery. Hannah at least bit off precisely enough to chew and no more.

I also liked the trains station scene, of which there are so many memorable ones in Ford's films. The train ROARS in and its steam and smoke fairly blow away the people on the platform like so many dry leaves. I thought it made them look so fragile.

I really look forward to watching it again because, as I said earlier, I missed alot of details.

[moira finnie]

Miss G., I know what you mean about people who see the visuals in movies immediately, which is why I included this excerpt from Gallagher. I think that much of what he notes is there, but when I look at a movie, I tend to concentrate on the story first and the acting second. I only catch about 25% of the visual nuances--if I'm lucky--during my first viewing. As I believe CineSage Jr. pointed out over on the TCM board recently, if you're watching a movie and you find yourself admiring it visually, that may not be a good moviegoing experience. It does seem better to be caught up in the story more than the visuals.

While a mix of humor and tragedy is usually part of my daily life, as it is most people's, sometimes Ford's relentlessness about what he thinks is funny strikes me as condescending to his characters, his audience and is even mean-spirited. This aspect of his movies can be a big stumbling block for me, though I still think he's the greatest of his time, visually and emotionally.

I wonder if anyone else has seen Pilgrimage and would like to offer their take on it?

[MissGoddess]

You are certainly not alone Moira. I think it only natural that the rough-around-the-edges humor of Ford's films is very out of step with modern sensibilities, and has always grated on sophisticates and particularly, metropolitan audiences used to more refined and subtle forms.


However, I began to defend its inclusion when I realized that it is precisely the kind of humor that is sprung directly from people of the earth, working class and rural. I've known such people all my life and this is how they get their kicks, how they laugh, both the men AND the women. This is why the comic broadsides don't jar me within the context of his stories, which are almost always about such people. The kind who also made up a large part of the moviegoing audience of that day, and who related to it as few anymore do. I'm sure the more educated people winced as they do now, forgetting that it needs to be taken in context of the times and the nature of story. Much of the broader comedy he employs is physically rambunctious, visual ; worlds away from the wit of the written word, of the bon mot, which would really be out of place.

Personally, I prefer more sophisticated verbal wit but I don't look for it or particularly desire it in the milieu of the coal miner, the cavalry outpost, the prairie settler or the farm. Either you have that kind of humor in such settings, or you have patronizing irony---or none at all.

And for an example showing that Ford could with aplomb apply the subtler variation, I refer to Mogambo which derives a great deal of humor from wit and double entendre. The humor threaded faintly throughout My Darling Clementine is of a still subtler, gentler order.

I wonder if anyone else has seen Pilgrimage yet?