Comments on: The Essentials: The 10 Best John Ford Films

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

While many characters are racist, often think the films judge them and and also judges the audience who agrees (I think of the death of the Native American wife in The Searchers where the audience is suddenly made to fee guilty for laughing at her earlier). While we can see clear issues now, they seem progressive for their era.

By: Travis Mills

Travis Mills — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

I understand it\’s difficult to pick 10 from his big body of work. However I was disappointed to see no surprises in this list. I love you all because you often make interesting and unconventional choices.

There were no arguments for films that might not normally be put in his top 10, which potentially should be over the recognized classics. I would have argued for the inclusion of any of these films:

Young Mr. Lincoln
The Long Voyage Home
How Green was my Valley
The Sun Shines Bright
The Last Hurrah

By: Davey

Davey — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

Young Mr. Lincoln and How Green Was My Valley both absolutely deserve at least a mention at the end, even if they don\’t make your list. And I\’d put Wagon Master on the list proper, myself–one of Ford\’s finest westerns.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

John Ford was a champion of Whiteness, in particular of a populist strain of Whiteness of the type who didn\’t want to see the Confederate flag go out of "tradition" and "history". These types would like to imagine an America where only White people existed, where slavery was a myth and the moral high ground and the place of the "underdog" in the American imagination still belonged to Whites.

By: Les

Les — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

Great filmmaker but it\’s true he was a racist. Unfortunate the article doesn\’t put two and two together — it\’s there in the films — even all-time great ones.

By: Cuchillo

Cuchillo — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

Only morons like Tarantino and hypocrite
pc assholes calling Ford a racist.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

@Cuchillo – Ad hominem attacks the hallmark of intelligence. Good job.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

@Les I wouldn\’t go so far as to call Ford a racist, at least, not from what I\’ve seen in his films. But he was definitely a culture warrior before they even had that phrase.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

How Green Was My Valley and Wagon Master are among Ford\’s supreme achievements. The Informer seems an embarrassment to me, and personally I could do without The Quiet Man, which is as sentimental as HGWMV without the redeeming iron in its soul.

By: Ford Fan

Ford Fan — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

Young Mr. Lincoln is a great, under-watched Ford.

By: Rich Corle

Rich Corle — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

How Green Was My Valley was possibly his greatest film from a filmmaking standpoint and it\’s not even mentioned here. I love Ford though. Screw those PC morons above who think it\’s ok to apply 2015 rules to the 30\’s and 40\’s.

By: LeonRaymond

LeonRaymond — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

And next we need to list the greatest and favorite films of The Klu Klux Klan since you got an entire post devoted to John Wayne

By: JD

JD — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

These moralistic judgements of Ford strike me as extremely unfair and misguided. Viewed through modern eyes, he may seem like some kind of hateful extremist, but as the success of his films attests, he was in synch with (and a product of) his times. He never pretended to be a nice guy… and yet he made dozens of beautiful, poetic, humane films. He was a complicated, contradictory person who had far more layers than his detractors recognize.

By: Max Fraley

Max Fraley — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

You do it well. A personalized listing of John Ford’s 10 greatest films is one narrow stream that empties into his large river of extraordinary accomplishments. Just as Ford’s name should/would be strongly considered on a “greatest” directors top ten it is difficult to successfully debate against many of the choices except to say there are others of deserving notice.
My Darling Clementine (one of the best western noirs), Stagecoach, and Liberty Valance are at the top of my chart. ‘Expendable’, Wagon Master, The Quiet Man,
Long Voyage Home, The Informer, and Fort Apache and ‘Yellow Ribbon’ of the trilogy are personal favorites, but I’d prefer for them all to be tiered rather than numbered.
Note the absence of The Searchers. I have always felt it loses much of its potential status due to the stretched allotment of time given to the silliness of the corn fed courting and brawling sequences involving Ken Curtis and Jeffrey Hunter. Its blue ribbon ingredients remain John Wayne’s masterful portrayal of Ethan Edwards and the cinematography of Winton Hoch. I believe “Dukes” performance is the primary component that keeps this film so esteemed.
You do it well. A personalized listing of John Ford’s 10 greatest films is one narrow stream that empties into his large river of extraordinary accomplishments. Just as Ford’s name should/would be strongly considered on a “greatest” directors top ten it is difficult to successfully debate against many of the choices except to say there are others of deserving notice.
My Darling Clementine (one of the best western noirs), Stagecoach, and Liberty Valance are at the top of my chart. ‘Expendable’, Wagon Master, The Quiet Man,
Long Voyage Home, The Informer, and Fort Apache and ‘Yellow Ribbon’ of the trilogy are personal favorites, but I’d prefer for them all to be tiered rather than numbered.
Note the absence of The Searchers. I have always felt it loses much of its potential status due to the stretched allotment of time given to the silliness of the corn fed courting and brawling sequences involving Ken Curtis and Jeffrey Hunter. Its blue ribbon ingredients remain John Wayne’s masterful portrayal of Ethan Edwards and the cinematography of Winton Hoch. I believe “Dukes” performance is the primary component that keeps this film so esteemed.

By: max fraley

max fraley — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

By: Cuchillo

Cuchillo — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

Hey Dave, kiss my ass !

By: Jim Beaver

Jim Beaver — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

It\’s McLaglen, not MacLaglen, and it\’s Clanton, not Scranton, in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. And Winton Hoch didn\’t file suit against the studio over shooting the thunderstorm in SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON. He merely shot the scene under protest (with those words on the clapper board), because he didn\’t think there was enough light for a good shot and he wanted to be able to prove he hadn\’t underexposed the scene out of incompetence. Other than those errors, this is a pretty doggone good survey, meaning the Ford films I value most highly are pretty much the ones that are given most acclaim in this list.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

I\’ve been a student of Ford\’s life and work for over forty years and I could write quite a bit about him. However, at this time I will only insist that charging Ford with racism is a facile and wildly inaccurate judgement. If the great Woody Strode was still with us, he would knock to the ground anyone who made such a claim.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

To simply label Ford a \’racist\’ and then walk away is a pretty narrow and ahistorical reading of his work. If you can get past the iconography of cowboys/indians in his westerns, Ford\’s characters are certainly more complicated and conflicted than his contemporaries. I think of the great moment in Liberty Valence when Pompey (a character we modern audiences will recoil at for being a stereotype) stumbles while reciting the declaration of independence, leaving Jimmy Stewart\’s Rance to say "all men are created equal." When Pompey says he forgot that part, Rance replies "a lot of people forget that part." Now, maybe that\’s a little on-the-nose, and Pompey\’s character is certainly stereotypical, but to have a white man and a black man exchange that dialog in 1963 is a pretty bold political statement for something like a mainstream western.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Mon, 23 May 2016 03:00:46 +0000

Let us not forget that Ford made a film in 1960 with Woody Strode playing the TITLE CHARACTER, "Sergeant Rutledge". I dare say that this was unprecedented in a major studio western and given the year it is remarkably progressive. Strode never forgot what Ford did for him and attended to the director completely when Ford was in his last days. As for his treatment of indigenous Americans, "Fort Apache" is one of several respectful treatments of that ethnicity. Ford employed Dineh (Navajo) actors whenever the studio permitted and even "lost" electric generators more than once after productions in Monument Valley in order to help the Dineh. The Dineh people of that time viewed him with great respect and gave him an honorary title, "Natani Nez," or "Tall Leader," with an elaborate induction ceremony into their tribe. His final western, "Cheyenne Autumn", is a mea culpa for all the Hollywood films, including a few of his own, that depicted indigenous Americans unfairly. He would have cast it entirely with Navajo if the studio would have allowed it. Ford was very liberal, very progressive in his politics, and only in his dotage did he say, "God bless Richard Nixon", and that was because of the recent return of the Vietnam POWs and Ford\’s deep affinity with service personnel. I could go on, but people who have only seen a few of his films and without the proper context should be wary of judging his values.