The Straight and the Narrow Even When the Road is Long
Directed by John Ford (1971)
directed by Peter Bogdanovich
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee
I hate "best of" episodes in sitcoms - greatest-hits clips from laugh tracks past - more than anything on television, so I can't very well excuse this blog's patron saint for 45 minutes worth of American history extracted, scene by scene, from John Ford's long career. But neither can you really blame Peter, since Directed by John Ford debuted years before his audience had access to any of Ford's movies at home. More likely than not Bog's trimmed the fat since.
Still, anything worth saying is worth saying succinctly, so thank John Ford we have Duke plowing through the hagiographic repetition with crop-clearing anecdotes no fan of the nation should be without. Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Ford himself pile gruff brush onto the long-burning authoritarian reputation Hollywood's "State of Maine Republican" was famous for, but Wayne is more than willing to put a little heart behind it, revealing Pappy's crew for the decent democrats they were. Lonely men all, and Peter is human enough to conclude with The Searchers' most revealing and magnanimous gesture, a nod to Harry Carey that sends fifty years of useless movie criticism sailing downriver to the wide open sea.
directed by Peter Bogdanovich
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee
I hate "best of" episodes in sitcoms - greatest-hits clips from laugh tracks past - more than anything on television, so I can't very well excuse this blog's patron saint for 45 minutes worth of American history extracted, scene by scene, from John Ford's long career. But neither can you really blame Peter, since Directed by John Ford debuted years before his audience had access to any of Ford's movies at home. More likely than not Bog's trimmed the fat since.
Still, anything worth saying is worth saying succinctly, so thank John Ford we have Duke plowing through the hagiographic repetition with crop-clearing anecdotes no fan of the nation should be without. Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Ford himself pile gruff brush onto the long-burning authoritarian reputation Hollywood's "State of Maine Republican" was famous for, but Wayne is more than willing to put a little heart behind it, revealing Pappy's crew for the decent democrats they were. Lonely men all, and Peter is human enough to conclude with The Searchers' most revealing and magnanimous gesture, a nod to Harry Carey that sends fifty years of useless movie criticism sailing downriver to the wide open sea.
posted by NPK at 10:15 PM
<< Home