John Ford

[MissGoddess]

You bet! I've been waiting for that one.

[RedRiver]

I watched "Rising" on TCM a couple of years ago. It's good.

[MissGoddess]

I watched "Rising" on TCM a couple of years ago. It's good.

I liked the first one ("The Majesty of the Law") about the old gentleman with little Jack MacGowran as the "poteen maker". A lost art!

[tinker]

I can't ever recall seeing this flm sp that os cpmething to look forward to.

On the subject of those two articles, I just saw that picture of the card game in large view. Firstly is that Frank McGrath between Ward BOnd and Henry Fonda. Also when it is enlarged you can see the expressions on Henry Fonda and John Wayne's faces as Ford leans forward to take the winnings. Fonda looks bemused and Wayne, well if it was anyone else but John Ford, you might expect fists to have flown. I wonder if that was a captured example of Ford's famous win at any cost philosophy about games.

dee

[MissGoddess]

it does look like Frank McGrath and I agree, Wayne looks like it's taking all he has to hold it in.

[RedRiver]

Charlie Wooster! This is what I love about this message board. Nobody else in the world knows Frank McGrath! I love that Wayne wears a hat at the table. Just like card players do in the movies. Maybe his hair was thinning?

[JackFavell]

I also thought it was Frank McGrath at the table, and I haven't been able to get back to the thread to read your responses... so it must be him!

[MissGoddess]

Please stop by and enjoy my Q&A with Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author of THE SEARCHERS: THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND here:

http://www.directedbyjohnford.com/blog/ ... an-legend/

[Lzcutter]

Marty Scorsese has written a review of the new book The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend in today's Hollywood Reporter:

The Searchers has been more or less officially recognized as a great American classic. But I have to admit that I never really know what that kind of recognition amounts to. The film turns up on many 10-greatest-films-of-all-time lists, including my own. At least two moments from the picture -- John Wayne lifting up Natalie Wood and then cradling her in his arms and the final shot -- are commonly included in clip reels. Film lovers know it by heart. But what about average movie watchers? Is it as well known as It's a Wonderful Life or Casablanca or Breakfast at Tiffany's? What place does John Ford's masterpiece occupy in our national consciousness? As Glenn Frankel puts it in The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, his fascinating new book about the picture and the history behind it, "The Searchers is perhaps the greatest Hollywood film that few people have seen."

For more of the review:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/r ... ers-426059

[MissGoddess]

Thanks so much for sharing that, Lynn! I'll be sure to add that to my site. Even Scorsese's writing is personable, just like he talks. I love that. It's genuine.

[Rita Hayworth]

Thanks so much for sharing that, Lynn! I'll be sure to add that to my site. Even Scorsese's writing is personable, just like he talks. I love that. It's genuine.

I'll second that too!

[JackFavell]

Thanks for the link, Lz! I do like to hear Scorsese talk about classic films, probably more than watching his own films.

[JackFavell]

That was a wonderful review! I'm actually quite surprised that he hadn't really delved into the Look section of the film before.

[pvitari]

DVDBeaver review of the new Blu-ray of The Sun Shines Bright (the film is also available on standard DVD):

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/blu-ray_ ... lu-ray.htm

Dave Kehr's review with a more insightful reading of the courtroom (banjo) scene:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/movie ... right.html

SPOILERSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

I watched the Blu-ray last week and have been thinking about it ever since -- what a wonderful movie. I had never seen it before and not too surprisingly, as it's a John Ford film, it blew me away. I see it as a transition film (although it works perfectly on its own) between Wagon Master and The Searchers, and the three of them would make a fascinating triple bill. The Wagon Master is about community and how two unattached fellas find themselves love and family by taking up with the Mormon wagon train and participating in their rituals. The Sun Shines Bright, like Wagon Master, uses character/secondary actors in the principal roles but unlike WM, the main character, despite being nominally part of the community, is (like Ethan Edwards in The Searchers) also apart from it, and the last shot of Judge Priest walking further and further into his empty house is every bit as sadly poignant as Ethan's turning and walking away into the desert at the end of his story.

Of course I was also fascinated by John Russell's Ashby Corwin character, because that was undoubtedly the character John Ford had been thinking of casting Ben Johnson as, until the fateful unfortunate call with Ben's agent as described in Harry Carey Jr.'s book Company of Heroes. John Russell was wonderful and I have no faults at all with his performance, but I kept thinking how Ben might have played it and what an interesting role that would have been for him. Ben's characters for Ford may have had some dark spots in their past (Travis in Rio Grande had killed a man over a question of honor) but Ashby is an out and out black sheep who returns to a town that regards him as a scandalous profligate (although we quickly learn he has a heart of gold). I would have loved to have seen Ben play that -- I think John Ford would have agreed with that Peter Bogdanovich quote about Ben having an ambiguous quality, like he was a bad boy once, and he (Ford) used that quality very skillfully in the characters he created for Ben. Ashby would have taken that even further. And I would have had no objections to Ben doing the shirtless whipping scene either. :)

[MissGoddess]

brilliant!! i will be sure to add those links to my site, thank you, Paula. the captures from the Blu-ray make it look brand new.

i'm glad you enjoyed the movie, and i heartily agree that it would have been splendid to have had Ben in Russell's role. I am sure he would have made it his own, bringing more complex humanity as he always does.