John Ford's films unite America's myths, truths

By Michael Wilmington
Tribune movie critic

Who was John Ford? That's something I've mulled over for more than 35 years, ever since co-writing the critical study "John Ford" (British Film Institute and Da Capo Press) back in the early 1970s. And it's still a knotty question, worth re-examining after the recent release of an excellent Ford/John Wayne boxed DVD set.

To comprehend Ford -- that ornery, hard-drinking, deceptively literate Irish-American who won six Oscars and became a U.S. Navy Reserve rear admiral -- you have to accept something seemingly contradictory. As an artist, Ford was obsessed, above all, with truth and the "moment of truth." But, as a person, he could lie with a straight face that hornswoggled enemies or patsies and amused or exasperated friends.

Truth and fiction, fact and legend are the double sides of Ford and of his movies, something that resonates through the most famous line in any of his movies, when nosy, pompous newspaper editor Maxwell Scott, played by Carleton Young said, in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

That volatile mixture of truth and blarney in his films, of historical fact laced with legend or hokum, is often attacked as a flaw of Ford's. In fact, along with his unmatched visual sense, it's part of what makes him great -- and what makes masterpieces of movies such as "Stagecoach," "Young Mr. Lincoln," "The Grapes of Wrath," "How Green Was My Valley," "The Quiet Man," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

When John Ford showed Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) arriving at an isolated house in the opening of his great 1956 western "The Searchers" and drifting away at the end of it -- both times framed by the blackness surrounding the house's open doorway -- he created one of the most imperishable images in the whole wide range of the classic Hollywood movie. Just as "The Searchers," over the years, has been increasingly heralded as an American classic and the finest movie western, Wayne's Ethan has come to incarnate the image of the man alone: the noble outlaw who stands apart from society, sometimes appearing to fulfil its deep violent needs and then vanishing afterward, as Ethan will, to "wander forever between the winds."

Tom Joad as left-wing rebel

There's another noble outlaw in the Ford filmography, as powerful a presence as Ethan, who arrives and departs in images just as unforgettable -- but today, less praised and analyzed. That's Henry Fonda as Tom Joad in Ford's 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."

In "Grapes," also an American film masterpiece, Fonda's Tom, like Ethan, arrives at the film's opening and departs at its end. He first appears as a solitary figure, marching along the dusty roadside, and makes his final exit, walking off in silhouette against the pre-dawn sky, just after his heart-rending farewell speech to his mother (Jane Darwell), "I'll be around in the dark. ... Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. ... "

These days, "The Searchers" usually receives all the critical praise it missed upon its 1956 release, when it was a box-office hit but not a favorite of more intellectual critics. Just a few weeks ago, it was properly celebrated with the DVD set from Warner Bros. of eight Ford-Wayne movies. At the same time, "The Grapes of Wrath," though always accorded classic status, and available itself in a fine DVD edition from Fox, is sometimes criticized as overly solemn and socially conscious, a preachy left-wing drama that doesn't reveal the true Steinbeck or the true Ford. (Steinbeck himself strongly disagreed.)

Yet, "The Grapes of Wrath" is every bit the masterpiece "The Searchers" is. The two movies, which remained personal favorites of Ford's throughout his life, are equally important to understanding him -- and to understanding America as well.

Fonda and Wayne, as the left-wing rebel Tom and the right-wing rebel Ethan, are two sides of the man many regard as the greatest American movie maker of the classic Hollywood era. But as with many complex artists and men, there are a number of John Fords: respectable man and outlaw, warrior and showman, poet and fighter. You cannot truly perceive him or his movies without accepting and understanding all of the Fords.

Some respected critics, such as David Thomson and Richard Schickel, have cogently (and, in Thomson's case, obnoxiously) disputed Ford's rank. But Ford's biggest admirers always included his colleagues. Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Elia Kazan, Orson Welles, Frank Capra and Howard Hawks all called him the "greatest living director" during his lifetime; Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Clint Eastwood are among his admirers today.

And Ford's duality extended to his politics. He is often misperceived as sharing Wayne's hard right conservative views. In fact, he was a self-identified liberal Democrat for much of his career. (He once said of Wayne with a mix of affection and ridicule, "I love that damned Republican.") A decorated WW II veteran -- unlike Wayne, who took a deferment and stayed home -- Ford was a cold war liberal in the mold of two of his three favorite presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. (The other: Abraham Lincoln.). And though Ford changed over the years, he always remained capable of telling one group that he was a Maine Republican, and another that he was a Democrat and rebel, which is how he described himself in 1966 to French critic/director Bertrand Tavernier.

Westerns his specialty

Another element of his greatness is his popular touch. Ford's 60-year filmography includes at least 113 features and 24 short films. And though he worked in many genres, including historical films, war movies, regional comedies, adventure films, social dramas and literary adaptations, westerns were his bread-and-butter. Indeed his most famous personal quote -- which is variously reported as "My name's John Ford: I make westerns" or, "My name is John Ford; I am a director of westerns" -- insists on that vocation.

Ford was never naive. He knew that it was not for his westerns that he was the most honored American director. "Stagecoach" (1939) and some others might be considered classics, but none of his six Oscars came for a "horse opera." It was the social dramas and literary adaptations such as "The Informer" (from Liam O'Flaherty's novel of an IRA traitor and his dark night of reverie and tragedy), "The Grapes of Wrath" (from Steinbeck's epic of the Depression and the dispossessed Dust Bowl Okies) and "How Green Was My Valley" (from Richard Llewellyn's saga of the Welsh coal mines and a troubled mining family) that gave Ford his cachet.

A mistake

Because of that, some Ford admirers today tend to elevate the Westerner Ford of "The Searchers" far above the Popular Front Ford of "The Grapes of Wrath" or "The Informer" -- a mistake, I feel. Yet another part of what makes Ford great is his ability to admire both the Fondas and the Waynes, the left-wing rebel Joads and the right-wing rebel Edwardses.

"The Grapes of Wrath" was one of the most powerful progressive books of its era: a deeply felt expose of inhuman conditions inspired by Steinbeck's own investigations as a San Francisco News reporter -- and it attracted Ford, he claimed, because he immediately saw parallels with his own Irish forebears' experiences in the Great Famine.

Ford was a great image maker, but he was also an artist obsessed with memory, a filmmaker who liked to recall and quote his own movies. In "Liberty Valance," there are echoes throughout of "Stagecoach" (the characters) "My Darling Clementine" (the plot) and "Young Mr. Lincoln" (the music).

"The Searchers" in turn echoes the images and themes of the earlier westerns. But it also recalls "The Grapes of Wrath," with its themes of disrupted family and a man on a quest. That becomes more obvious if we compare both movies to his 1964 western swan song "Cheyenne Autumn," which is about the 1878-79 trek of 286 reservation Cheyenne Indians over 1,500 miles to their Yellowstone homeland -- starting, like the Okies, in Oklahoma.

So Tom Joad of "Grapes" tries to help hold his family together in their ramshackle truck on Route 66 to California. Ethan Edwards of "Searchers" tries to rescue the last member of his own family. In both cases, these men remain at the end outsiders who serve their communities but cannot rejoin them, which is why the endings of both films are so moving.

Striking a pose

Ford carefully choreographed the end of "The Searchers" -- even giving Wayne a habitual hand-on-arm pose used by Ford's first star and mentor, Harry Carey Sr. in their silent westerns. And he wanted Fonda's dramatic leave-taking, like Wayne's, to be the film's last image, though he was overruled by the film's strong-willed producer, Darryl Zanuck. (It was Zanuck who substituted -- and, at Ford's insistence, took over the direction of -- the movie's eventual closing scene, Ma Joad's stirring but pat sermon on "we're the people.")

Both films resonate in our minds for their striking landscapes, for those heroic (sometimes anti-heroic) wanderers and for what their quests reveal about America: economic exploitation in "Grapes," racism and violence in "The Searchers."

"Print the legend," the arrogant "Liberty Valance" editor said, and it's often mistakenly assumed (by Thomson, for example) that he's a mouthpiece for Ford's views. But Ford, as Peter Bogdanovich point out, "prints" both the legend and the fact. Somehow, he magically brings together both the beauty of America's myths and the harsher truth lying underneath them.

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mwilmington@tribune.com