John Ford: Poetry and Heroism
Many directors are referred to as a “man’s director,” and many directors have a poetic style, but no filmmaker has dealt with men or visual poetry in quite the same way John Ford did. In short, Ford made films about men—famous men such as Abraham Lincoln (“Young Mr. Lincoln”) and Wyatt Earp (“My Darling Clementine”) and simple men such as Tom Joad (“The Grapes of Wrath”). Other directors have also gravitated to men and male themes. Howard Hawks (“Only Angels Have Wings,” “Red River”) was interested in a man’s rite of passage, that test in life that makes him a man. Raoul Walsh (“Santa Fe Trail”) was interested in men as roustabouts (“The Uncontrollable Male”), and Henry Hathaway (“Nevada Smith”) was interested in the passions that drive male behavior. John Ford, on the other hand, was interested in all things that made men noble. For Ford, a noble character and behavior made men both big and small, heroic in their extraordinary and ordinary lives.
This idea about heroism was not as individualistic as the Hawks or Hathaway heroes. For Ford’s heroes, their family or community (including the military), as well as ethnic background, made them who they were. Ford’s characters all came from somewhere, and that somewhere (be it Ireland or Illinois) made them who they were. Ford’s visual poetics contextualized the behavior of his heroic characters. It gave their goals and their passions an equivalent visual ground.
Ford’s heroes were not humorless, although they were formal and in a sense old fashioned. Their struggles proceeded in ritualistic rather than realistic fashion. Amplifying inner feeling rather than explaining it was Ford’s mission as a director. The consequence is a series of films unparalleled in their impact on other filmmakers. Orson Welles was inspired by “Stagecoach” (1939), Lindsay Anderson was inspired by “My Darling Clementine” (1947) and “They Were Expendable” (1946), and the list goes on.
John Ford began his career as a director in 1917 and made his last film in 1966. His important films are dominated by Westerns: “The Iron Horse” (1924), “Stagecoach” (1939), “My Darling Clementine” (1946), “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” (1949), “The Searchers” (1956), and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” (1962). Commercial and industry recognition, however, came from his non-Westerns: “The Informer” (1935), “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), “How Green Was My Valley” (1941), and “The Quiet Man” (1952). Critical attention was also focused on “Young Mr. Lincoln” (1939) and “They Were Expendable” (1945). Ford is the director most honored by his peers in the history of Hollywood.
In order to understand this unusual director and to highlight his director’s idea, we need only look at his approach to the Western. This pastoral form was ideal for Ford, a man who wanted to highlight the best in his characters. The Western, representing the past, was a story form best known for its visuality and its action. Various directors have filmed Westerns according to their particular views of the West. Budd Boetticher saw the West as a place where primitivism brought out the worst in its inhabitants. Ford’s characters were not the neurotics that inhabited the Anthony Mann Western nor were they the disillusioned romantics of Sam Peckinpah’s West. Instead, they were men seeking an ideal. They were skilled and capable but they were also hard men. If they were wronged, they sought justice (“My Darling Clementine”) and sometimes revenge (“The Searchers”). But underneath it all, these characters lived by a code of honor. They would have been as at home in King Arthur’s Camelot as they were in John Ford’s Monument Valley.
These same values—justice, fairness, respect for differences, respect for family and culture—characterize Ford’s non-Western characters as well. Tom Joad (“The Grapes of Wrath”), John Brinkley (“They Were Expendable”), and Abraham Lincoln (“Young Mr. Lincoln”) represent the Ford hero in other settings. The challenges confronting these characters differ—economic hardship, warfare, poverty—but Ford’s heroes all demonstrate a capacity to persevere, not simply to survive, and to stand up and represent positivity in life, whatever the outcome.
I have chosen the following four scenes to highlight Ford’s director’s ideas:
- Muley’s story from “The Grapes of Wrath”
- The marshal’s lady scene from “My Darling Clementine”
- The hospital scenes from “They Were Expendable”
- The search for cattle to the search for killers following the murder raid in “The Searchers”
These scenes highlight the poetry of Ford’s work and the passion and nobility of his heroes.
“The Grapes of Wrath” (1940)
“The Grapes of Wrath” tells the story of the Joad family, who had to abandon their share-cropped land in Oklahoma to migrate to California to seek a new life. Muley’s story focuses on the displacement of the Joads’ neighbor. Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) has returned from prison only to find his parents gone, preparing to leave for California. His neighbor Muley tells him of their eviction by the bank in Tulsa. Foreclosures and displacement have accompanied the drought in the region, a drought that coincides with the Great Depression and its nationwide unemployment. In this scene, the bulldozers level Muley’s home, which has been in his family for several generations.
“My Darling Clementine” (1946)
“My Darling Clementine” tells the story of Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda). When he and his brothers drive a herd of cattle to California, the cattle are stolen and his brother James is killed outside of the town of Tombstone. Earp becomes the town marshal to apprehend the killers of his brother. He is aided by his two brothers, Morgan and Virgil, and by Doc Holliday. He and his brothers meet the rustler/killers at the OK Corral and justice is done. The clip focuses on Wyatt’s relationship (or desired relationship) with Clementine (Cathy Downs), Doc Holliday’s lady from the East. In this scene, the two attend a Sunday church meeting. When they dance it is a sign to tell all that Clementine may now be the marshal’s lady.
“They Were Expendable” (1945)
“They Were Expendable” begins just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and ends just before the American loss of the Philippines to the Japanese. The focus of the film is on two PT boat commanders, John Brinkley (Robert Montgomery) and Rusty Ryan (John Wayne). They are advocates of the small mobile boats but the Navy and the Army are not. For the military, PT boats and their men are marginal, expendable. The film focuses on these two commanders and their crews, who want to feel that they are contributing to the war effort. The scene I will discuss takes place in the hospital. Rusty has sustained an arm injury, and a nurse named Sandy (Donna Reed) tends to him. They form a relationship, but Rusty is resistant and wants to fight. The hospital staff wants to help him recover.
“The Searchers” (1956)
Ethan Edwards returns to his home in Texas after the Civil War. In short order, Indians massacre his brother, his brother’s wife, and their son. They take the two surviving daughters hostage. Ethan is determined to rescue them and spends the next five years looking for the single surviving young niece (the older niece is killed by the Indians). He is aided by the adoptive son of the family, Martin. The sequence I will focus on takes place early in the film. When their cattle are stolen, Ethan, Martin, and a posse pursue them, but the theft has been a ruse to get the men away from the farm. The Comanche Indians murder Ethan’s relatives and kidnap his nieces. The clip ends with the burial of his kin and the beginning of his search for his nieces.
Text Interpretation
John Ford’s approach to narrative differs considerably from his contemporaries—Howard Hawks and Henry Hathaway, for example. Hathaway, in “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer” (1936), is concerned with the behavior of his characters but far more of his energy is devoted to making the drive of the plot clear. Few filmmakers of the period were as strong on plot progression and impact as Hathaway. In “Scarface” (1932), on the other hand, Hawks had his hand on the pulse on the character and the plot, and he made sure each worked to augment the other. John Ford was different in that he couldn’t care less about plot. He always stayed close to character, and his films drifted back to the plot whenever necessary. “My Darling Clementine” provides a good example of this. Although the film opens with the loss of the Earp brothers’ cattle and the murder of their brother, the drive for justice or revenge essentially comes to a halt as Wyatt Earp takes on the job of marshal of Tombstone. He periodically encounters the rustler/killers, the Clantons, but the gunfight at the OK Corral is saved until the end of the film. In between, Ford explores Wyatt Earp’s relationship with Doc Holliday’s former fiancée, Clementine, and his relationship with Doc Holliday.
Ford devotes much of the narrative to characterizing Holliday as a man of culture and education. When a Shakespearean troupe comes to Tombstone and the main actor is undone during a performance by ruffians, it is Holliday who completes the actor’s Shakespearean soliloquy. The arrival of Clementine in Tombstone does not particularly advance the narrative, although she does add yet another touch of civilization to the uncivilized Tombstone. In a sense, she provides an outlet for Wyatt Earp’s yearning for a more settled life. Although Clementine and Wyatt Earp do not form a love relationship, her presence in the film shows that Earp is not simply a man of justice but one who has hopes and dreams. Ford used Wyatt Earp’s relationships with Doc Holliday and Clementine to humanize his character. Although Holliday is a killer, he is capable of deep sentiment. Although Clementine is a refined Eastern woman, she has the strength to stay in Tombstone in spite of being rejected by her fiancée. These three characters and their contradictions give rise to the heart and feeling embedded in “My Darling Clementine.” Depicting this reservoir of humanity in the midst of the Wild West was Ford’s goal in his interpretation of the story.
I do want to mention one additional quality of Ford’s interpretations. In the midst of tragedy and darkness, Ford always sought out humor. Again, the goal was to humanize characters and plot. In “The Searchers,” one of the darkest Ford films, Ford has a character named Mose Harper, who was taken by the Indians. He was spared from torture and death by pretending that he was mad, although Mose’s presentation throughout suggests that perhaps it was not entirely an act. When Ethan figures out that the Comanche Indians stole the cattle to draw out the men to carry out a murder raid, Mose does an Indian war dance. Mose is also present when Ethan discovers the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law. Ford made him present for most of the hard moments in “The Searchers” to lighten the mood. This combination of tragedy and humor is another characteristic of Ford’s approach to text interpretation.
Turning to our excerpts, two make the point about straying from the main story line or plot. In “My Darling Clementine,” one of the most famous sequences is a Sunday morning service on the site where a church is to be built (see L. Anderson, About John Ford, Plexus, 1981). In this scene, Clementine accompanies Wyatt Earp to the service, which really is not a service. No minister presides, and when a community leader suggests that he has never read anything in the scripture against music the service becomes a square dance. The scene is set on a platform, the foundation of the future church. The water tower and a flag are all that seem established and complete. A shy Wyatt Earp asks Clementine to dance and as they do the townspeople make way for “the marshal and his lady fair.”
The scene has two parts: Wyatt Earp and Clementine making their way through the town to the site and the dance on the site itself. The purpose of the scene is to establish some decency in a town full of hooligans whose constant misbehavior requires a sheriff such as Wyatt Earp. There is a good deal of humor in the scene. Besides the remarks and attitude of the community leader (unclerical at best), the opening conversation between Clementine and Wyatt Earp has Clementine commenting on the morning smell of the desert air. Wyatt responds it’s not the desert; “it’s me, barber.” He was wearing a cologne the barber had used as aftershave. Here, the humor lightens up the obvious tension a shy Wyatt Earp feels in the presence of Clementine.
In “They Were Expendable,” the plot concerns the response of the American Navy (specifically, the PT boat commanders) to the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Although the numerous battle scenes are impressive, most of the film focuses on the disappointment of the two commanders in their assignments, which they consider to have minimal impact on the war. Duty in these terms requires respect for the chain of command, regardless of personal feeling. The director also pays a great deal of attention to the competitiveness and camaraderie of the crews, from commander to the most junior member. This camaraderie sustains these men as they endure losses and humiliation. One of the most powerful scenes is when crew members visit one of their own who is dying in the hospital. Although they pretend all is well, the scene ends with a frank acknowledgment between the commander, John Brinkley, and the crew member. They say goodbye without tears. It is a very powerful scene.
The scene where Rusty Ryan is admitted to the hospital for an injury and meets nurse Sandy, who attends Rusty and falls in love with him, is a scene that adds nothing to the plot of the film but is one of the most powerful in the film. The focus is on four characters: Rusty, another injured officer, a doctor, and Sandy. Rusty’s poor behavior as a patient is simply noted. The role of the other injured officer is to illustrate how every patient falls in love with Sandy. The doctor and the nurse are all about the business of tending to the wounded. In this scene, their actions and commitment are elevated above and beyond the call of duty by the conditions. The hospital is a converted aircraft hangar; lighting is poor and made poorer by the frequent air raids. Even if they have to operate with Sandy holding a flashlight over the wound, they will proceed. Just as John Brickley and Rusty Ryan accept and work within the chain of command so too do these medical professionals. They are committed to the preservation of life, although they find themselves in a war zone, with an enemy aggressively advancing toward them.
The scene establishes a sense of commitment to duty and, in the case of Sandy, compassion for those men who lived and died in that hospital. For Ford, these feelings are more important than plot details. For Ford, it is all about character—its nature, values, and human face. This is the narrative choice that engaged him most creatively.
Directing the Actors
John Ford’s approach to actors differs considerably from his contemporaries such as Howard Hawks and Henry Hathaway, both of whom were more interested in creating a greater elasticity or character arc in their actors’ performances. John Ford had more limited expectations of performance. To understand Ford’s approach to directing actors, it is difficult to underestimate his reliance on casting. Essentially, Ford tended to cast for type. For leads, he gravitated to an actor with a particular persona—the strength and decency of Henry Fonda, the determination and passion of John Wayne. It is not surprising that these two actor/stars formed their principal screen persona in their work with John Ford. Notable and not unimportant is the fact that neither of these actors had an especially modern persona, which made them suitable for roles in Ford’s films, which so often took place in the past. Other more modern actors such as William Holden, Richard Widmark, and Sal Mineo worked less effectively with Ford. Ford’s actors had to have a look that transcended time.
A second quality of Ford’s casting was that he always focused on particular types of men—rugged, outdoor types who either had a taste for drink or at least looked as if they did. It is notable that Ford rarely focused on women in his films (although his last film was “Seven Women”). Maureen O’Hara is one of the only actresses to make a recurring appearance in his films. She was also the only actress to have multidimensional characters in his films. Ford’s focus on men was inescapable.
Over time Ford developed in effect a stock company that he used repeatedly in his films. Victor McLaughlin, John Carradine, George O’Brian, Andy Devine, Ben Johnson, and Harry Carey, Jr., made multiple appearances in Ford’s films. Although each was used in key secondary roles, as often as not they were used to introduce humor into the narrative; for example, in Ford’s cavalry trilogy, McLaughlin played the role of a functional alcoholic whose purpose was entirely to add an element of humor.
In addition to his casting, a second notable characteristic of Ford’s work with actors is that he was primarily interested in presenting them as feeling or passionate characters—whether working with an artist (Alan Mowbray, as the actor in “My Darling Clementine”) or an intellectual (James Stewart in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”). As a result, Ford’s characters did not have conventional character arcs. They are not transformed characters so much as they are revealed characters. Although John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) is a commander, a leader who always obeys the chain of command without dissent, Ford made a point of establishing Brickley as a man who also feels deeply. He is the character who gives voice to feelings for the others—for the passionate Rusty who wants to get on with the war, for the deeply feeling nurse Sandy who is clearly in love with the men she tends to, for the crew as fellow humans whose loss is the cost of war. As these moments occur in the film, Brickley is revealed to be a fine commander who cares but suffers the losses silently to hold onto his dignity.
The brevity of the character arc makes Ford’s characters less realistic compared to Elia Kazan’s characters, who are psychologically realistic. The characters seem to transcend realism to become icons—the decent lawman Wyatt Earp in “My Darling Clementine” and the passionate Ethan Edwards in “The Searchers,” who was just the kind of man to tame Texas for future generations.
Performance, then, is based on feelings within a very narrow range. John Wayne’s Ringo in “Stagecoach” (1939) is very different from Gregory Peck’s portrayal of Ringo in Henry King’s “The Gunfighter” (1951). The latter role is psychologically complex and realistic in the range of feelings Ringo expresses. The former version is simply passionate enough to hate and kill and passionate enough to fall in love. Ford’s character is impulsive and compelling, while King’s character is soulful and utterly recognizable. Ford’s Ringo becomes an archetype while King’s Ringo becomes a case study, albeit an interesting one.
Directing the Camera
Just as in his work with actors, John Ford’s use of the camera was distinctive. Although Ford, Eisenstein, Lean, and Kurosawa can be considered some of the great visualists of the medium, Ford differed from the others. He did not rely as much on pace and editing as Eisenstein, Lean, and Kurosawa did, and he favored a static camera. His long shots are his most memorable images, and he used close-ups sparingly. In spite of this conservative visual approach, Ford was quite experimental with his use of lighting and sets.
To understand the relationship between the director’s idea (a poetic conception of the hero) we will examine four different aspects of the visuals in Ford’s work and how each contributed to his director’s idea. First up is the long shot in our scene from “The Searchers.” Ford has long been the master of the long shot—Tom Joad walking down the road at the beginning of “The Grapes of Wrath,” the cavalry march through a lightning storm in “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” the accident at the coal mine and the women waiting for news of survivors in “How Green Was My Valley.” In “The Searchers,” the majority of the search for the cattle, the discovery of the murder raid, the burial of the Edwards family, and the subsequent search for the two surviving girls is presented in long shot. Filming in Monument Valley, Ford shot the men small at the bottom of the frame and riding forward toward the camera but overwhelmed by rock abutments and sky. The fact that Ford preferred to film these scenes at dawn or dusk gives the frame a magical, otherworldly quality—let’s call it poetic. Because Ford does not pace these scenes to imply what is about to happen, the audience is unaware of what might follow. In an extreme long shot, a rider high atop a hill waves at the other riders to join him. Two shots later, Ethan and the five other riders have found the killed cattle and a shot later we learn that a Comanche spear has killed one of the bulls. To register the point of the scene (“It’s a murder raid!”), Ford finally moves into a mid shot. Stealing the cattle was only a ruse to draw out the men. After half the men leave for the Jorgenson ranch, Ford moves into reaction mode. Martin, panicked, rides off to his try to save his adoptive parents, while Ethan takes off his saddle to feed and water his horse. As he brushes his horse down, Ford cuts to a close-up of Ethan but masks his eyes as if to shield us from his pain. Because so much of the scene is long shot, the close-up is almost overwhelming. We understand and feel for Ethan.
Let’s move from the still, formal long shot in “The Searchers” to a long shot with more movement in “My Darling Clementine.” By movement, I mean movement within the frame as well as the movement of the camera. The scene in “My Darling Clementine” proceeds as formally as does the scene in “The Searchers.” It begins with the conversation between Wyatt Earp and Clementine. It is early morning, and behind them is the bright desert morning. After Clementine asks if she can join Wyatt for the morning service, they begin to move in the direction of the service. The camera moves in advance of the couple. The feeling of the shot, given the dearth of moving camera shots to that point, is as surprising as if Wyatt and Clementine were marching down the aisle to be married. What follows is a long shot with the service site in the background. As they move into the shot we are aware of how much sky there is. Below the sky are a flag and the foundation for the church to be built. The image is formal and rather ritualistic. Wyatt Earp and Clementine almost march toward the future church.
Ford cuts to the citizen–preacher who leads the service, but as so often happens in Ford films it is music rather than words that makes up the service. As in “Rio Grande,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” and “How Green Was My Valley,” music gives voice to the feeling Ford is establishing. In “My Darling Clementine,” that feeling is the pleasure of being together, the hope that in the future Tombstone will be a community rather than a lawless outpost, a center of society rather than of sin, an ideal rather than its current reality.
Ford utilized a mid shot when Wyatt and Clementine watch the energetic men and women dancing together and he slowly offers himself to Clementine as a dance partner. Ford films the dance itself in long shot, with the camera still and recording the sky, church foundation, and stiff Wyatt Earp dancing with his “lady fair.” As in “The Searchers,” there is no pace to speak of in this scene from “My Darling Clementine.” The movement within the frame is ritualistic, whereas the movement of the camera shot earlier in the sequence was energizing and deeply felt. The contrast moves the scene from feeling to ritual and in doing so alludes to Tombstone’s movement from its past into its future. The composition and the steady camera position take the narrative content in the direction of the music. The scene implies a future for the town, as well as for Wyatt Earp and Clementine. The poetic stirring within the scene merges character and place. The low camera angle that characterizes all of the shots at the church service gives this portion of the sequence a heroic quality that creates confidence in the vision of all who are participating in the service.
So far we have focused on the compositional choices Ford used to support his director’s idea. Let’s now examine how he used light and art direction to support the ideas of poetics and heroism. In “They Were Expendable,” the hospital scene is set in an aircraft hangar. The long, round shape of the hospital is revealed by irregularly placed lighting; entire sections of the hangar/hospital do not appear to be lit. In a number of scenes in this excerpt, the majority of characters are underlit. Light falls across their feet and, if they stand in particular locations, across their face. We are always aware of the source of the light. Often, the lights are at the back of a shot and low so the background is awash in light while the foreground is dark. This same principle is applied to source light during an air raid. The lights are shot out, and the source light becomes a flashlight. When necessary, Sandy or the doctor shines the flashlight on a wound. In this scene, as opposed to earlier scenes in the hospital, Ford moves into close-ups to register Sandy’s feelings about the life-and-death operations in which she is participating.
Generally, our image of hospitals is of overlit settings where nothing is hidden. Ford presented the hospital as a more abstract place as if to propose that in the absence of light there is an absence of life and in the presence of too much light there is too much feeling or compassion. Working with these contrasting notions, Ford created in the hospital a metaphor for life during wartime; that is, life shines brightly but is surrounded by darkness. The metaphor is powerful and poetic.
This kind of stylized light was also used by Ford in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Muley’s story begins in the Joad home. Tom Joad has just returned from prison to find his parents have been displaced from their home. The Joad home has no electricity. Only candlelight reflects on Joad, the preacher, and Muley. Each is presented in close-up. The candle sheds a narrow, flickering band of light, and the high contrast adds drama to the faces of these characters and the story we are about to hear.
Muley’s story is told in two distinct scenes. In one, Muley and his family are told by a sheriff that they will have to move. He wants to know who he can shoot to stop this process. The sheriff tells him that the bank in Tulsa is responsible to its shareholders and has ordered the house to be torn down. The Tulsa bank is a faceless and soulless antagonist. In the next scene, the mules and tractors come to tear down the house. This time, Muley, shotgun in hand, faces a more tangible enemy. The operator of the tractor is another neighbor. When Muley asks him how he can do this to a neighbor, he says he’s doing it for the $3 a day. He has his own family to feed. He bulldozes the house and Muley, in tears, picks up some dirt and mourns how many of his family have died for this piece of land which is now no longer his.
The scene is presented in stylized long shots. Muley and his family are nailed to where they stand. In the early light, the shadows Muley and his family cast are long and dark. There are very few shots in each scene. The morning shoot provides high contrast, bright whites and blacks. The formality of the images is rooted in a higher-than-eye-level camera position. The camera looks downward toward these victims of a faceless antagonist. Ford holds the shots, including the shot of Muley in tears and clutching the dirt of what was his farm. The passion of the character and his determination are heroic, and the tragedy is all the more powerful. It is not a political tragedy, as it was in Steinbeck’s novel; rather, it is a human tragedy. By using a poetic visual style Ford elevated these scenes above the political character of the novel.
John Ford was a great poet among directors. His passion for his characters has been matched only by Akira Kurosawa and the Indian director Sajajit Ray. What elevates his work to this level is a profound understanding that the visual medium of film is a narrative medium with the capacity for poetry. In this sense, he joins a very distinctive group of directors that includes Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Dovshenko. Today, few directors aspire to create the poetry that Ford did. Xhiang Yimou (“Hero”) and Peter Weir (“Witness”) do, but this type of director is rare.