An Examination of Three Westerns by John Ford

The following essay is my final paper for a media integration class:



Not long after making Citizen Kane, Orson Welles was asked who his influences were on the film, to which he replied, "I studied the old masters. By that I mean, John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." He is the most honored director in Hollywood history, winning six Academy Awards, two of which being for documentaries made during the second world war. He has also been called the most influential American filmmaker of the sound era, cited by other greats such as the above-mentioned Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Peter Bogdanovich, Bernard Bertolucci, Francois Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard as a major or even primary influence on their work. One thing is certain, however, John Ford is one of the consummate artists that the medium has even seen, though he would even deny his own status as an artist. When asked to identify himself at a meeting of the director’s guild, Ford stood up and said, "My name is John Ford, and I make Westerns." A fascinating statement for the director of such Academy Award winning drama’s as, The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man, and war films such as They Were Expendable. But no matter how well rounded a filmmaker he may have been, and no matter what success he may have had in other genres, the truth is that John Ford will always be remembered as the director of many of the most enduring Westerns – that most American of film genres. In this paper, I intend to briefly examine John Ford the man, and more extensively John Ford the filmmaker, and the Western mythos that he is largely responsibly for creating in the films, Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Searchers.

John Ford was born Sean O’Feeney in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 1894 to an Irish Catholic family (a fact that would later permeate his films). His older brother Francis, was the first to head off to Hollywood to become an actor where he would take on the stage name of Francis Ford. In 1914, the younger O’Feeney brother made his way to California where he got into pictures as a prop man, then as an actor, and eventually as a director of two-reeler Westerns. Eventually he would follow his brother’s example and change his name to John Ford. As a director in the silent era, Ford never managed to particularly distinguish himself. It wasn’t until the 1930's and the emergence of sound that Ford’s gifts began to show through and his distinctive style began to take hold. In 1935, he made The Informer, his first film to find a strong critical reception, as well as his first Oscar for best director. It wasn’t until 1939, however, that Ford’s reputation was cemented with the release of Drums Along the Mohawk, Young Mr. Lincoln, and perhaps most notably, Stagecoach. It was here where Ford cemented a partnership with a young John Wayne that would go on to span a quarter of a century, no less than fourteen films, and one of the most successful actor-director relationships in film history. In addition to Wayne, over the years Ford gathered together a troupe of actors that he would consistently work with such as Henry Fonda, John Carradine, Harry Carey, Ward Bond, Ken Curtis, Jane Darwell, Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen, Mae Marsh, Mildred Natwick, John Qualen, Woody Strode, Tom Tyler, Patrick Wayne, and his brother, Francis Ford. Many of his most famous Westerns also became known for their distinctive setting, Monument Valley, Utah. In fact, Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Searchers, while all similar in that they are Westerns directed by John Ford, also bear the similarity of starring John Wayne and having been made in Monument Valley. It is through these distinct similarities that I will attempt to develop the progression of Ford’s West, and perhaps, of Ford himself.

Pauline Kael calls Stagecoach, "Perhaps the most likeable of all Westerns, and a Grand Hotel-on-wheels movie that has just about everything – adventure, romance, chivalry – and all of it very simple and traditional." Many consider it to be the first great Western from an era when Western’s were not considered respectable and were almost exclusively B-films. In fact it was Ford’s first Western since the silent era. Ford has often been referred to as a populist filmmaker, preferring the traditional values of the past to whatever alternatives their might be at present. He gathered a cast of formidable character actors as a group of social outcasts thrown together on a stagecoach and pitted against both society and a band of marauding Apaches. Claire Trevor is Dallas, the whore with the heart of gold; John Wayne, in his first major role, is the Ringo Kid, an outlaw; John Carradine is Hatfield, the gambler; and Thomas Mitchell, in an Oscar winning performance, is Doc Boone, a disreputable drunk of a doctor.

At the beginning of the film, Dallas and Doc Boone are being ousted from the town by the respectable society matrons known as "The Law and Order League." This scene is not dissimilar to a scene in D.W. Griffith’s masterpiece, Intolerance, where a group of respectable women barge in and take away the baby of Mae Marsh, an unwed and therefore unfit mother. Griffith, another notable populist filmmaker, shared a similar disdain for the kinds of social codes that would deny people basic human dignity. When faced with the alternative of taking the stagecoach through dangerous Apache territory or remaining an outcast in the town, Dallas stares at her accusers and says, "There are worse things than Apache’s," choosing instead to take the stage. The film is as much pro-army and pro-cavalry as it is pro-outcast and anti-civilization. Danny Peary points out that in Stagecoach, "civilization is not worthy of Ringo and Dallas, who leave town at the end as Doc Boone affirms that they were ‘saved from the blessings of civilization.’" It is interesting to note how, in a way, Ford attacks the notion of the conservative Right as typically against outcasts and minorities, in that Ford himself was traditionally rightward leaning and this film is firmly aligned with his outcast characters. Not to mention his casting of John Wayne, that most conservative of Hollywood actors, as the one character who inherently treats Trevor’s character with respect as a lady. The right-wing Ford would later go on to develop these ideas further in such staunchly pro-worker films as The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. But in the end, Stagecoach is a simple morality play in which basic human dignity ultimately eschews any political philosophies, and in which the Indians are not portrayed as stereotypes (in fact they hardly even get screen time) or as savages, but merely as the source of conflict which forces this group of people together. Steven Greydanus makes the points that, "Instead of rote good-guy/bad-guy conflict, Stagecoach emphasizes characterization, social commentary, and moral drama . . . and with the last outposts of civilization left behind, social roles and status lose meaning, and the outcasts are seen in a more sympathetic and nobler light than their ostensibly more respectable but judgmental and hypocritical companions." As the mild-mannered, Mr. Peacock says, "Let’s have a little Christian charity, one for the other." Well, I can drink to that.

Andrew Sarris describes Ford’s technique as "Double Image; alternating between close-ups of emotional intimacy and long shots of epic involvement, thus capturing both the twitches of life and the silhouettes of legend." This is an idea and technique that later directors such as Sergio Leone would go on to expand and develop in much more blatant ways. Also, this seems to be the film with which Ford establishes his use of traditional hymns and songs in place of the musical score to his film. Lindsay Anderson points out that, "Choosing for his theme ‘traditional sanctity and loveliness,’ Ford is, by Yeats’ definition, also one of the last Romantics. Nothing is more typical of his films than the traditional songs, the popular tunes and marches which accompany them: ‘Red River Valley,’ ‘Rally Round the Flag,’ ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’; revivalist hymns like [his personal favorite] ‘Shall We Gather at the River’ [which Sam Peckinpah would later pay homage to (some might say, subvert) in the opening scene to The Wild Bunch] and ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’; the Naval marches and bugle calls which echo through They Were Expendable – all in significant contrast to the pretentious symphonic scores by Steiner and Hageman for The Informer and The Fugitive. Heavily charged with emotion and nostalgic associations, this music carries us back to another, simpler world, of clear-cut judgements, of established and unquestioned value." Stagecoach establishes Ford’s mythos of the West through archetypes and characterization. As a result, we come to understand a certain type of person, but not a specific person. The characters of the film are not deeply developed because they need not be. They need only represent people.

This brings us to She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the second part of what is known as Ford’s Cavalry trilogy which began with Fort Apache and would later conclude with Rio Grande. In many ways She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the most Fordian of all his Westerns. All of his traditional themes are in place, it stars John Wayne in a tragically underrated performance (there are moments in this film where Wayne’s performance could easily stand amongst the great performances of American cinema), and Monument Valley which has never been more gracefully photographed, this time in Technicolor by cinematographer, Winton C. Hoch. Here, ten years after Stagecoach, Ford’s West is no longer populated by archetypes and representations, but by people – or a person, at least – in the form of Cavalry Captain Nathan Brittles. Brittles is an aging, fatherly figure, preparing for one final mission before retiring from the Army and surrendering his command to an inexperienced, younger officer. Amongst his Westerns, Capt. Brittles represents Ford’s most iconic hero. Lindsay Anderson describes the typical Ford hero as, " . . . all men of purpose, of principles unostentatiously but firmly held. Skillful and courageous in action, they combine their hardihood with a personal gentleness and moral grace; hesitant and tender in love, resolute against injustice. Owing the traditional reverences to God and to his fellow men, the Ford hero is the cinema’s most convincing representation of the righteous man." With this passage, Anderson is primarily referring to the Ford hero as played by Henry Fonda from films like, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Grapes of Wrath, and My Darling Clementine, but in this case, it could also be used to describe Wayne’s Captain Nathan Brittles. Anderson goes on to say, "With the collapse of its popular traditions, Western art has become increasingly sophisticated and eclectic. The popular themes are in general left to be exploited, and degraded, by the opportunists. Ford’s films, in this context, seem hardly to belong to our time at all. His art is not intellectual; his impulse is intuitive, not analytical. Unsophisticated and direct, his work can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of cultural level, who has retained his sensitivity and subscribes to values primarily humane. He applies himself to traditional themes, and is happiest when his story is set in the settled society of another era." Today especially, this feels as a film of a time long past, but even in 1949, it was not so much contemporary as belonging to a forgotten era. Timeless, perhaps. In ten years, Ford’s West has developed from the misunderstood outcast of Stagecoach to the righteous hero of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, from archetype to human being, from morality tale to heroic elegy, from black and white to color, yet both remain firmly planted in the past.

Finally, in 1956, less than ten years after She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, we come to The Searchers – possibly the greatest of all Westerns, and one of the shining achievements in American film. Roger Ebert reminds us of its influence when he points out that, "It inspired a plot line in George Lucas’ Star Wars. It’s at the center of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader, who used it again in his own, Hard Core. The hero in each of the Schrader screenplays is a loner driven to violence and madness by his mission to rescue a young white woman who has become the sexual prey of those seen as subhuman. Harry Dean Stanton’s search for Nastassja Kinski in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas is a reworking of the Ford story. Even Ethan’s famous line, ‘That’ll be the day,’ inspired a song by Buddy Holly." It is a story of obsession, equal in intensity and complexity even to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Its quest focuses on the person of Ethan Edwards an openly racist, Indian-hating, ex-Confederate soldier who returns to the home of his brother just in time to put in a quick visit before they are slaughtered by a band of Comanche warriors. The Searchers and the character of Ethan Edwards provide the western genre with one of its darkest and most complex stories. John Wayne delivers the best performance of his career (it was reportedly his favorite role) as Edwards. Like the surprise of Henry Fonda’s villainous turn years later in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, Wayne also plays dramatically out of type as the film’s antihero whose motivations are downright villainous. In one scene, when their posse encounters a dead Indian, Ethan shoots out its eyes. For Ethan, the physical death of the Indian is not enough, he wants to ensure their spiritual death as well. Much has been made of the characters uncertainty. Not until the final scene is the audience certain of whether or not Ethan is going to rescue the niece he has spent the last five years searching for, or kill her. Steven Greydanus claims, "By far the most disturbingly racist aspect of Ethan’s vendetta is his cold judgment that Debbie (the niece) would be better off dead than living as a Comanche squaw. To some extent this might be seen in terms of outrage that Debbie should be sleeping with the murderer who killed her own family. Yet Ethan unambiguously goes beyond mere issues of loyalty and betrayal when he declares that, for a white girl like Debbie at least, ‘Livin’ with Comanches ain’t being alive.’ A deep hostility to the mixing of the races itself seems to be a basic part of Ethan’s complicated, ambiguous motives."

Once again, Lindsay Anderson returns to describing Ford’s technique as being, "characterized by its extreme simplicity. Seldom indulging in the sophistications of camera movement, his films proceed in a series of visual statements – as sparing in their use of natural sound as of dialogue." Notice the way Ford emphasizes a stylistic exception in the scene where Ethan and Marty visit a Cavalry camp in hopes that they might have picked up Debbie during one of the raids. They stand confronted with a handful of young girls who had been living with Comanche’s. As they are leaving, Ethan turns to look once more, Ford’s camera quickly pushes in on his face, bathed in the shadow of his hat, slits for eyes, and a glaring expression filled with hatred. It’s one of the most frighteningly powerful moments in the film.

Greydanus also points out, "In a genre that traditionally regarded its heroes as good almost by definition and Indians as one-dimensional adversaries, The Searchers broken new ground in casting no less than the Duke himself as a flawed protagonist . . . This challenge to the Western mythos is deepened by a scene in which the ever-reliable Cavalry attacks an Indian camp, brutally slaughtering even women and children in retribution for an Indian attack." He concludes by saying, "It’s a rare classic Western that invites viewers to ponder ambiguities rather than to cheer good guys against bad guys, and even to question its hero and the Western mythos itself." What happened to the Ford hero as "the cinema’s most convincing representation of the righteous man?" Ethan is certainly courageous and capable, and he is a man of principles however questionable they may be, but he is not a righteous man. What happened to the man of virtue and the unquestionable hero? "Gone is the simple black and white morality of the early days (Stagecoach)," claims Martin Scorsese. "Gone are the old-fashioned values of the seasoned Cavalry officer (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon). The same star, John Wayne. The same location, around Monument Valley. The same director, John Ford. But a different character, different attitudes, different conflicts, almost a different country. Ethan Edwards hunts down his niece, abducted and raised by the Indians after the massacre of her parents, because he believes she has been tarnished. Living with Comanches, he insists, is not being alive. Ethan Edwards is actually the most frightening character in the film. [After finally rescuing her] This is no happy ending, though. There is no home, no family waiting for Ethan. He is cursed, just as he cursed the dead Comanche. He is a drifter, doomed to wander between the winds." The final shot of the film, with Ethan standing the doorway, not able to enter civilization, is one of the finest images in American cinema. In Stagecoach, civilization was not worth of Ringo and Dallas. In The Searchers, Ethan is not worth of civilization.

The archetypal morality tale of Stagecoach becomes the ode to the righteous hero of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which finally becomes the embittered antihero of The Searchers. Through the decades, Ford’s West grows increasingly darker and more complex. The consummation of this trend is realized in the director’s final great western, 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, once again starring John Wayne. In this film, however, though a return to the black and white photography of Stagecoach, Ford creates a mournful elegy to the death of the old West, and likewise, the Western itself. Here, the long arm of civilization is unavoidable, and soon there will no longer be any room for the larger than life heroes of men like Tom Doniphon, Nathan Brittles, The Ringo Kid, or even Ethan Edwards – the men of character who tamed the West. This is the mythology of John Ford, the cinema’s chronicler of American history, the teller of the tales of the old West and the folk stories of legends gone by from an era that is no more. The mythology of John Ford is perhaps best summed up with a line from one of his own films, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."