She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, made in 1949, was the second film in John Ford’s famous cavalry trilogy and it nicely encapsulates all that was best in Ford’s film-making style.

It is just after the disaster that befell George Custer’s 7th Cavalry in 1876. The Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho and the Comanches are all on the warpath. It is an uneasy time, with no-one knowing where the next blow might fall. It is an especially uneasy time for Captain Nathan Brittles (John Wayne). He has given his whole life to the army and now they’re putting him out to pasture. In six days’ time he retires. His next mission will be his last.

The commanding officer of the fort has decided to send the women east to safety. That will make Captain Brittles’ job even more difficult, with a wagon and two women accompanying his troop on patrol.

The unease mounts as a large party of Arapaho is sighted. They make no hostile move and Brittles (who has no intention of starting trouble if it’s not necessary) decides to bypass them. This will delay his patrol, with fateful consequences.

More signs of trouble soon follow. The Paradise River patrol is attacked and because of the delay caused earlier they barely escape to rejoin Brittles’ troop, with one badly wounded man. He will need an immediate operation which will delay the troop even further. And they need to get to a nearby outpost in time ti get the women safely on the stagecoach. But they are too late, and they are too late for the people at the outpost. It seems that Nathan Brittles’ career has ended with an ignominious failure.

He leaves a rear guard to defend a ford and heads back to the fort where he will ride off to an uncertain future in civilian life. It seems a strange ending to the movie, with the lead character about to be written out of the picture. But this movie is not over yet, and nor is Nathan Brittles’ story.

Being a John Ford movie there is comic relief as well, mostly provided by Victor McLaglen as a feisty old top sergeant who also happens to be one of Brittles’ oldest friend. He is also about to be retired. In this case the comic relief works well, lightening the mood for a moment before the dramatic climax.

There is also romance. Olivia Dandridge has been enthusiastically courted by both Lieutenant Flint Cohill (who will take over command of the trop when Brittles retires) and 2nd Lieutenant Ross Pennell. The other woman in the picture is the wife of the commanding officer, known affectionately as Old Iron Pants. She is more army than any of the men.

There is action as well, and Ford’s method was always the same with action scenes. He loathed the idea of rehearsing an action scene - he preferred the chaos and spontaneity of simply rolling the cameras and as usual the method works superbly. It is of course a method that only a master film-maker could get away with.

John Wayne gives his usual apparently effortless performance as the ageing Captain Brittles. Of course this kind of apparent effortlessness can only be achieved by an actor with vast experience and who has learnt his craft perfectly. It’s one of Wayne’s finest and subtlest roles.

He gets good support from John Agar as Lieutenant Cohill and Ben Johnson as Sergeant Tyree (a former Confederate officer), and from Joanne Dru as Olivia.

Ford was never cynical about heroism but that didn’t stop him from examining the phenomenon with intelligence and a critical eye. Heroism in a John Ford movie is not a simple or an obvious thing. Nathan Brittles is a doughty fighter but that doesn’t mean he likes fighting. He won’t run away from a necessary battle but he won’t provoke an unnecessary one. As in Fort Apache we see the John Wayne character trying to avoid a fight with the Indians and showing that he regards them with respect. Brittles and his old friend, the equally ageing Chief Pony That Walks, do their best to avoid a fight but again as in Fort Apache circumstances are against them. Younger and more hot-headed men want war.

The Warner Brothers DVD presents the superb Technicolor in all its glory (Winton C. Hoch won an Oscar for his Technicolor cinematography on this picture, and deservedly so. It’s magnificent).

Another intelligent and subtle western from the master of the genre. Anyone who doesn’t take Hollywood westerns seriously has clearly never seen a John Ford western (and I’d further suggest that anyone who doesn’t take John Wayne seriously as an actor has never seen the westerns he made with John Ford). A great movie, and a very entertaining one. Highly recommended.

Fort Apache (1948)

Fort Apache was the first movie in John Ford’s informal “cavalry trilogy” and it’s one of the great westerns. Ford had had a commercial disaster with The Fugitive in 1947 and desperately needed a hit, and Fort Apache put him back on top.

Lieutenant-Colonel Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda) had been a distinguished general in the Civil War but like most regular army officers he’d reverted to his former rank in peacetime and his career is languishing. He regards his appointment as the new commanding officer of Fort Apache in the Arizona Territory as an insult and is keen to find some way to win glory. He knows nothing about the Apaches and is unwilling to take the advice of experienced officers like Captain Kirby York (John Wayne). His first step is to counter what he sees as unpardonable slackness in his new command. Some officers don’t even wear full uniform!



He was accompanied to his new posting by his daughter Philadelphia (Shirley Temple), who immediately falls in love with a handsome young lieutenant. He’s the son of the Regimental Sergeant-Major so to Thursday he’s not really one of the “officer class” and he has no desire to see his daughter marry the son of a mere NCO.

There’s trouble brewing with the Apaches. Cochise has led most of the Chiricahua Apaches over the border to Mexico in protest against the corruption of the local Indian agent who is more interested in selling Cochise’s people rotgut whiskey than blankets and decent food. Bringing Cochise and his people back to the reservation appeals to Thursday as a way of making a name for himself. Thursday’s foolishness will lead inevitably to tragedy.



Ford always liked to mix romance and comedy with the drama even in his darkest films and it often worked surprisingly well, making the tragedy even more poignant. That’s certainly true in this case.

There was a lot of nonsense talked in the 70s about the new breed of “revisionist” westerns that supposedly did ground-breaking things like showing the Indians’ point of view and exposing the reality behind the myths of the Old West. This was utter humbug. Ford had been doing such things for decades, and he did it more intelligently and more subtly. John Ford invented the revisionist western.



I’ve never liked Henry Fonda as an actor but I have to admit he’s superb here, resisting the temptation to overplay the character or to play him as a mere bumbling fool. Owen Thursday is a proud brave man who makes some disastrously foolish decisions but Fonda gives him dignity, and that’s the element that really makes this movie work. John Wayne, one of classic Hollywood’s most underrated actors, gives another fine performance. Like Thursday, Captain York is a complex character, torn between his duty of obedience as an officer and his loyalty to the army on the one hand and his belief that Colonel Thursday is tragically wrong and is leading his command to disaster. York is also a deeply honourable man. He has no great love for the Apaches but he can see their point of view and he believes the best way to deal with Cochise is to deal with him honourably.

There’s a fine supporting cast with Victor McLagen, Ward Bond and Shirley Temple all very solid. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her in an adult role and she’s quite capable.



In Ford’s westerns from Stagecoach onwards the Monument Valley locations are as much the star of the films as the lead actors. In Fort Apache his director of photography, Archie Stout, used infra-red film (developed during the war for military use) to achieve startling effects. It was tedious to use, requiring special make-up for the actors, but both Ford and Stout considered (quite correctly) that the results were worth the extra trouble.

Considering Ford’s reputation for not rehearsing action sequences and for disdaining the idea of planning shots in advance the action scenes in this movie can only fill the viewer with awe. They really are magnificent, not just spectacular but deeply moving as well (especially the scenes of Thursday’s charge and its tragic consequences).



Warner’s Region 1 DVD includes a brief documentary on John Ford’s Monument Valley. One of the reasons that Ford loved making movies there was that he got on very well with the local Navajo people and his films provided much-needed employment for them and pumped a great deal of money into the local community. On one occasion when they faced starvation because of an incredibly severe snow storm he used his military connections (as a former naval officer) to arrange a military air-drop of supplies for the Navajo and their animals. He’s still remembered with a great deal of affection by the Navajo. That’s why all the Indians in Ford’s westerns are played by Navajos!

A great western and a great movie.

Stagecoach (1939)

In 1939 the western had been a staple of Hollywood filmmaking for two decades but it was a genre that was not taken very seriously. Westerns were low-budget potboilers cranked out mainly by Poverty Row studios. John Ford’s Stagecoach changed all that. It ushered in the epic western, westerns made as A-pictures featuring major stars and made by the top talents at the big studios.

It’s worth noting that it was not the only significant western to appear in 1939. Cecil B. DeMoIle's Union Pacific would also adopt an epic approach, and while George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again took a satirical view of the genre it was definitely a major step in the development of the western as something more than just horse operas.



But it was Stagecoach that defined the new style of western. John Ford had discovered two essential ingredients that were to become trademarks of his westerns and major icons of the genre - Monument Valley as the quintessential western location and John Wayne as the quintessential western star.

The plot is simple enough. A stagecoach has to run the gauntlet of hostile Apaches while the nine passengers and crew slowly reveal the depth, or in some cases the lack of depth, of their characters. One of the passengers is the Ringo Kid (John Wayne) and the journey has particular significance for him. He has broken out of prison and when he reaches his destination he will have to confront the three brothers who killed his father and his own brother. Since they’re tough hombres and he’s really just a goodnatured cowboy the probability is that this is for him a journey to his own death. At least the assumption of everyone else is that he hasn’t got a chance.



If you focus on the story then you could easily conclude that Stagecoach is really nothing special. It’s somewhat corny, it’s sentimental, the characters are stock types, the social commentary is heavy-handed and obvious (the social outcasts turn out to be more virtuous than the respectable types). None of that matters. What matters is Ford’s very serious approach to this material. He treats it as the stuff of epic. He gives it a grandeur that makes it work on that level, that forces the viewer to take it as seriously as the director did.

Ford had a good cast to work with and he got the best from them. While the characters may have been stock types that in some ways adds to the epic feel. We don’t expect the heroes of myth to be fully rounded characters. That would get in the way of the myth. And the performances are memorable. There’s a chilling moment when the aristocratic southern gambler played by John Carradine shows that he really does takes his code of chivalry as seriously as he claims to, and while we’re horrified by what he’s about to do it has to be admitted that it forces us to take the character as seriously as he takes himself.



Ford was a Catholic and the theme of redemption is central to the film. And there are three characters in particular need of redemption. There’s the alcoholic doctor (a role that won Thomas Mitchell an Oscar). Secondly there’s the whore, played by Claire Trevor, who manages to persuade us to believe she really is a whore with a heart of gold.

And then there’s the Ringo Kid. This is the role that made John Wayne a star. Prior to this he was regarded as a very lightweight B-western actor. This movie was not just the making of him as a star, but as an actor as well. Ford believed in him and cast him over the strong objections of producer Walter Wanger, and Wayne repaid the director’s faith handsomely. I find myself admiring John Wayne as an actor more and more. In our modern age which regards serious acting as something that should look as tortured and as difficult as possible the quiet authority of Wayne may not seem like real acting but in fact it’s far more effective than the contrived histrionics of today’s stars.



In this film Ford also provided an object lesson in how to shoot an action sequence. The extended chase sequence with the stagecoach being pursued by an Apache war party is a template for just about every similar scene in every subsequent movie but while it’s been copied countless times it’s rarely been surpassed. Ford also provides a lesson in pacing and structure, with character-driven scenes and action scenes in perfect balance. Orson Welles believed that you could learn everything you needed to know about filmmaking from watching Stagecoach and he was probably right.

The first of John Ford’s great westerns, a movie with a huge reputation that lives up to that reputation.

Mogambo (1953)

John Ford’s 1953 Mogambo combines African adventure with a romantic triangle. It’s a movie that manages to be fun if you don’t take it too seriously.

It’s a remake of the 1932 pe-code classic Red Dust but it’s best not to think about that because a comparison between the two films is not at all favourable to Mogambo. Clark Gable is once more the male in the centre of the romantic triangle, as he was in the earlier film.

The setting has been transposed from South-East Asia to Africa and this time Gable is an animal trapper named Victor Marswell rather than a rubber plantation manager. He collects exotic wildlife for zoos. He enjoys the outdoor life but this idyllic existence is about to be thrown into turmoil by the arrival of two women.



The first to arrive is Ava Gardner. She plays Eloise Kelly, known to her friends as Honey Bear. She is the equivalent of the Jean Harlow character in Red Dust but while Harlow’s character was clearly a whore (and delightfully unembarrassed about it) Honey Bear’s occupation is more ambiguous, this being the 50s rather than the pre-code era. She’s obviously a good-time girl and she’s obviously going to be a somewhat disturbing influence. Marswell grumbles about the annoyance of having women on safari but the more he grumbles the more Honey Bear falls for his manly charms.

Things get more awkward when the second female arrives on the scene. This is Linda Nordley (Grace Kelly). The awkwardness comes from the fact that she arrives compete with husband but it’s clear that she’s just as susceptible to Gable’s manliness. And even worse, he’s equally vulnerable to her feminine charms.



Linda’s husband immediately falls ill with fever. She devotedly nurses him through it but she’s becoming more and more obsessed by the grizzled big game hunter Gable.

The problems with Mogambo have nothing to do with the cast. Gable might have been 52 when the picture was made but he’s still Clark Gable and it’s not the least bit difficult to understand why these two gorgeous women fall for him.



Ava Gardner is superb as the free-spirited but very likable Honey Bear. She wisely doesn’t try to emulate Jean Harlow’s performance. Grace Kelly has the most difficult of the three roles. Linda is repressed, awkward and shy and very uncomfortable about her sexual feelings for Marswell. With Gable and Gardner both playing larger-than-life characters and having a very good time doing so the danger is that Kelly will be overlooked. In fact she does a pretty good job.

The real problem seems to be that Ford wasn’t sure whether to put the focus on the adventure or on the romance and the steamy romantic triangle isn’t quite steamy enough. There’s also the problem that Gardner (who could certainly supply all the steaminess anyone could reasonably demand) is left on the sidelines of the action too much of the time. Whenever she’s allowed to take centre stage the movie gets a lot more interesting.



There’s some reasonably nice location shooting but it’s mixed with stock footage and studio shots. This could be seen as a weakness but actually it moves the movie a fun 50s feel. Ford’s slightly breathless travelogue approach to the material is also quite amusing.

I saw this one one on TCM but I believe it’s available on DVD. It’s the sort of movie you’d have expected to be in Cinemascope and had it been made a year or so later it almost certainly would have been. Not a great movie but still very enjoyable. Worth seeing just for Ava Gardner.