Pilgrimage (1933 - directed by John Ford)
Posted: January 3rd, 2008, 1:45 pm
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
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