10 minutes into this, the narrator declares Ford gave John Wayne his first starring role in Stagecoach. Which any amateur film fan knows is COMPLETELY WRONG. Not only did Raoul Walsh do that in 1930 (9 years earlier), but Wayne had starred in B Westerns all through the thirties.
17 Reviews
Who needs the outsider's opinions
duho-2618123 November 2019
I enjoyed the film footage, and the interviews with Ford, if for no other reason than they revealed his personality, but who needs the opinions of all of the other people that are totally irrelevant. That's what brought my rating down to a 5. And why on earth bring politics into this documentary about a director? Give us a break.
Good documentary but spoiled by politics
mdanderson-3178625 November 2019
Not great, but not terrible
Tryavna27 November 2019
Like other reviewers, I was disappointed with this documentary in many ways. As some have already pointed out, it gets several basic facts wrong: John Wayne was a star before "Stagecoach" (albeit mostly in B westerns), there were complex characters in silent westerns (just take a look at the 1916 William S. Hart movie "Hell's Hinges"), the United States was drawn into WWII at the end of 1941 (not in 1942 as implied by the narrator), and Ford won either four or six Academy Awards depending on whether you count the two he won for his war-time documentaries (this movie apparently forgets about "December 7th" and claims just five). Heck, if Wikipedia is to be believed, recent documents indicate that Ford didn't even attack Cecil B. DeMille at the DGA meeting in quite the way we've been led to believe all these years....
However, I was much less bothered by this movie's focus on Ford's politics than the other reviewers have been. I can understand why some people turn to TCM to escape current politics, but Ford's shifting political views have been a major question for biographers, critics, and fans for decades. So I think the topic is fair game, especially when you consider that several of Ford's own movies were extremely political: the pro-IRA "The Informer," the pro-civil rights (in the general sense) "The Prisoner of Shark Island," the pro-New Deal "The Grapes of Wrath," the implicitly pro-union "How Green Was My Valley," etc. "What made Ford shift to the right in his later years?" this documentary asks. Or perhaps more accurately, what makes us think that Ford shifted to the right when perhaps he didn't after all?
Personally, I think this movie's chief interest is that it spends quite a bit of time toward the end examining "Sergeant Rutledge" (1960) and "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964), two Ford films that never seem to attract much attention but that tackled minority rights head on during the turbulent '60s. This documentary actually made some smart points about both of those movies and enriched my appreciation for them. I suppose that's why I ultimately consider this relatively short documentary worthwhile. That said, it's puzzling that, apart from Chale Nafus, the filmmaker didn't turn to critics of color to discuss these two movies. What does, for example, Donald Bogle have to say about "Sergeant Rutledge" or Angelo Baca (who actually appears in this documentary but doesn't talk about Ford's films directly) have to say about "Cheyenne Autumn"? How perceptive, or not, was Ford's treatment of the Buffalo Soldiers or the Cheyenne?
If you're looking for a good overview of Ford's career, you're better off seeking out one of several book-length biographies or Peter Bogdanovich's still-excellent "This Is John Ford" (1971). If you're a hard-core Ford fan, this documentary's more narrow focus is worth an hour of your time as long as its inaccuracies don't distract you too much -- or you don't mind its explicitly political angle.
However, I was much less bothered by this movie's focus on Ford's politics than the other reviewers have been. I can understand why some people turn to TCM to escape current politics, but Ford's shifting political views have been a major question for biographers, critics, and fans for decades. So I think the topic is fair game, especially when you consider that several of Ford's own movies were extremely political: the pro-IRA "The Informer," the pro-civil rights (in the general sense) "The Prisoner of Shark Island," the pro-New Deal "The Grapes of Wrath," the implicitly pro-union "How Green Was My Valley," etc. "What made Ford shift to the right in his later years?" this documentary asks. Or perhaps more accurately, what makes us think that Ford shifted to the right when perhaps he didn't after all?
Personally, I think this movie's chief interest is that it spends quite a bit of time toward the end examining "Sergeant Rutledge" (1960) and "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964), two Ford films that never seem to attract much attention but that tackled minority rights head on during the turbulent '60s. This documentary actually made some smart points about both of those movies and enriched my appreciation for them. I suppose that's why I ultimately consider this relatively short documentary worthwhile. That said, it's puzzling that, apart from Chale Nafus, the filmmaker didn't turn to critics of color to discuss these two movies. What does, for example, Donald Bogle have to say about "Sergeant Rutledge" or Angelo Baca (who actually appears in this documentary but doesn't talk about Ford's films directly) have to say about "Cheyenne Autumn"? How perceptive, or not, was Ford's treatment of the Buffalo Soldiers or the Cheyenne?
If you're looking for a good overview of Ford's career, you're better off seeking out one of several book-length biographies or Peter Bogdanovich's still-excellent "This Is John Ford" (1971). If you're a hard-core Ford fan, this documentary's more narrow focus is worth an hour of your time as long as its inaccuracies don't distract you too much -- or you don't mind its explicitly political angle.
This documentary glosses over the turning point in John Ford's life . . .
oscaralbert8 August 2020
Warning: Spoilers
. . . when he cravenly (and privately) recanted his public stand against McCarthy's original Witch Hunters in the 1950's. As THE MAN WHO INVENTED AMERICA points out, Ford was a self-confessed Progressive Socialist. Surely he would have headed any logical "Black List" of banned Red Commie U.S. film people had he not sung like a canary, dooming all of his fellow Liberals to bankruptcy, divorce, exile and suicide. As he saw the young children of his former drinking buddies starving to death, stool pigeon Ford felt compelled to spend his free time between movies wallowing in alcoholic benders, JOHN FORD reveals. Karma ordained that this malingering miscreant be no exception to the "Snitches Get Stitches" Golden Rule, as Japanese shrapnel and botched eye surgeries haunted him until his dying day. However, unlike Saint Joan, Ford never recanted his recantation.
You gotta be kidding
drjgardner26 November 2019
This documentary can't even get it right about which eye Ford lost. They don't know that John Wayne got his big break from Raoul Walsh in 1930 but because The Big Trail" was such a box office flop (personally I liked it) Wayne ended up playing endless B westerns. The documentary ignores Ford's long term relationship with Walter Wanger (the guy who backed Ford on Stagecoach and other films). Apparently they don't know that Ford learned about westerns working with Thomas Ince, the man who was called the "Father of the Western". And I could go on and on. John Ford was one of the best directors ever. He deserves better.
ford, according to klotz
mossgrymk15 December 2023
While I did not hate this bio doc as much as the vast majority of my fellow IMDBers there is no question that it is both too short and too Gallic for its subject. The character of this most enigmatic and complicated of film makers is simply too vast an expanse for a fifty minute film! Such brevity ensures that vital parts of Ford's personality, such as his excessive veneration of and gallantry toward women (i.e the guy seemed to lug a pedestal around with him on every set) and his even more excessive cruelty toward cast and crew (first and foremost his chief acolyte, John Wayne) goes unmentioned. And I'm sorry if I come across as Zack Xenophobe, but I just do not see how a French philosopher fits in a documentary about the foremost cinematic interpreter of the American West. (Although it's amusing to imagine Ford's reaction from the grave to her). And the narrator, with his "kick me, I'm an elitist" accent (Liberty Valaaance, The Grapes of Roth), wears out his welcome mighty fast.
So why a 6 rather than a 5 or less, like many of my colleagues below? Because, despite its annoyances and shortcomings damned if old Jean Christophe Klotz does not at times manage to journey to the heart of Ford's appeal ,both as artist and person, namely his ambiguity/ambivalence. Would that Klotz had gone deeper and more fully into his subject. C plus.
PS...Did you catch that laughable mistake when Klotz confuses Bogie in "Oklahoma Kid" with Carradine in "Stagecoach"? Yeah I know an American coulda made it but somehow it encapsulates the whole Cahiers Du Cinema dopiness of this doc.
So why a 6 rather than a 5 or less, like many of my colleagues below? Because, despite its annoyances and shortcomings damned if old Jean Christophe Klotz does not at times manage to journey to the heart of Ford's appeal ,both as artist and person, namely his ambiguity/ambivalence. Would that Klotz had gone deeper and more fully into his subject. C plus.
PS...Did you catch that laughable mistake when Klotz confuses Bogie in "Oklahoma Kid" with Carradine in "Stagecoach"? Yeah I know an American coulda made it but somehow it encapsulates the whole Cahiers Du Cinema dopiness of this doc.
For The Modern Academic
boblipton22 November 2019
I was not terribly impressed with this documentary, in which the great filmmaker's works are dissected to figure out what he felt and thought and was.
First, there was the essential problem of analyzing his films and what they mean to modern intellectuals. There is no doubt that for a work of art to survive, it must appeal to later generations for their own reasons. Yet Ford was not making these movies to comment on whether one twenty-first century American president was better than another, or whether in splitting his lead characters into representatives of one side or another in a conflict, that Ford was making it a matter of being "afraid of his feminine side". Sometimes, particularly in his later westerns, he made them in part to comment on contemporary issues that troubled him. He always stood with the underdog, but is that an expression of his personal Fenianism, or good story telling? After the famous DGA meeting in which Ford stood up, said "I'm John Ford. I make westerns. Mr. Demille, you make great pictures, but you're wrong", Ford called Demille. Is that nowadays considered so bizarre, to let your political opponent know you disagree with him, but respect him? If so, we live in parlous times.
Some of the statements offered in this documentary are clearly false, like Ford inventing the "Good Bad man" in STAGECOACH, as if William S. Hart were not the biggest Western star when Ford was directing his first movies, or being the first director to star John Wayne, as if Walsh's THE BIG TRAIL in 1930 and dozens of leads in B westerns did not count. If you ignore the world in which he lived and worked, how can you understand the man?
The conclusion offered is that John Ford was a man of conflicting impulses; he expressed his conflicting impulses in his movies, and he grew more overtly strident and angry with the America he saw as he grew older and his powers began to fade. Is this so unusual or noteworthy?
In the end, this movie is not about John Ford as a man, or even his movies. Ford is dead, and his movies must find their modern audience based on their virtues as this day and age perceives them. The documentary is about respectability, and respectability of the most irrelevant type. It is about academic respectability. To a business about selling tens or hundreds of millions of tickets to people of every stripe, academic respectability is of importance only to academics. I'm sure this particular work means a lot to them.
First, there was the essential problem of analyzing his films and what they mean to modern intellectuals. There is no doubt that for a work of art to survive, it must appeal to later generations for their own reasons. Yet Ford was not making these movies to comment on whether one twenty-first century American president was better than another, or whether in splitting his lead characters into representatives of one side or another in a conflict, that Ford was making it a matter of being "afraid of his feminine side". Sometimes, particularly in his later westerns, he made them in part to comment on contemporary issues that troubled him. He always stood with the underdog, but is that an expression of his personal Fenianism, or good story telling? After the famous DGA meeting in which Ford stood up, said "I'm John Ford. I make westerns. Mr. Demille, you make great pictures, but you're wrong", Ford called Demille. Is that nowadays considered so bizarre, to let your political opponent know you disagree with him, but respect him? If so, we live in parlous times.
Some of the statements offered in this documentary are clearly false, like Ford inventing the "Good Bad man" in STAGECOACH, as if William S. Hart were not the biggest Western star when Ford was directing his first movies, or being the first director to star John Wayne, as if Walsh's THE BIG TRAIL in 1930 and dozens of leads in B westerns did not count. If you ignore the world in which he lived and worked, how can you understand the man?
The conclusion offered is that John Ford was a man of conflicting impulses; he expressed his conflicting impulses in his movies, and he grew more overtly strident and angry with the America he saw as he grew older and his powers began to fade. Is this so unusual or noteworthy?
In the end, this movie is not about John Ford as a man, or even his movies. Ford is dead, and his movies must find their modern audience based on their virtues as this day and age perceives them. The documentary is about respectability, and respectability of the most irrelevant type. It is about academic respectability. To a business about selling tens or hundreds of millions of tickets to people of every stripe, academic respectability is of importance only to academics. I'm sure this particular work means a lot to them.
Great Subject, Awful Documentary
trprt7729 November 2019
As others have posted, I eagerly sat down to watch this bio of Ford.
As others have also posted, what we saw was a hodgepodge of left wing academia and for some odd reason, multiple French eggheads, put their modern day spin on Fords work.
The worst part was someone claiming Ford put manly men on film because he was afraid of his own feminine side. Where they dreamed up this gem is beyond me, and of course they don't provide any proof of their weird claim. Another gem was claiming the Searchers only shows the savagery of the American Cavalry, because of the devastation left behind in a village of Indians, while completely ignoring the reason for Ethan Edwards search, which arose from the Indians savagery of his family. But the most laughable part was telling us about Ford having failed cataract surgery in his right eye, causing him to wear a patch on his right eye. While showing him in closeup wearing his eye patch on his left eye.
This is not a true bio of a great American director, but an exercise in pushing a set of beliefs disguised as a documentary.
As others have also posted, what we saw was a hodgepodge of left wing academia and for some odd reason, multiple French eggheads, put their modern day spin on Fords work.
The worst part was someone claiming Ford put manly men on film because he was afraid of his own feminine side. Where they dreamed up this gem is beyond me, and of course they don't provide any proof of their weird claim. Another gem was claiming the Searchers only shows the savagery of the American Cavalry, because of the devastation left behind in a village of Indians, while completely ignoring the reason for Ethan Edwards search, which arose from the Indians savagery of his family. But the most laughable part was telling us about Ford having failed cataract surgery in his right eye, causing him to wear a patch on his right eye. While showing him in closeup wearing his eye patch on his left eye.
This is not a true bio of a great American director, but an exercise in pushing a set of beliefs disguised as a documentary.
A tribute to John Ford and his movies.
Grrr826 November 2019
A detailed look at John Ford's films and how they still are relevant in today's society.
"Ford said that his job was to tell stories, not play politics." Then the documentary looks at The Grapes of Wrath.
Listen to what the thieving Banker says in Stagecoach. "America for Americans." Reduced taxes." "Government must not interfere with business." " What this country needs is a businessman for President." Here we have a White-Collar Criminal spewing the same old con that we hear today.
Sergeant Rutledge is given the credit it deserves. More people need to see this movie today.
Finally, we get a chance to revisit Monument Valley.
TCM has the film available currently to stream on demand. Check it out, you will be glad that you did.
December 7
Quartzhillfreak1 August 2020
I was so looking forward to this but it is a huge disappointment
wilmar7722 November 2019
How sadly disappointing this is. Why is it so many feel that EVERYthing has to be politicized today? I didn't tune into this in order to view and listen to the same sort of tripe one can find on any cable news channel 24 hours a day. If this is a biography or documentary of John Ford new definitions are needed for each in the dictionary. Call me naïve if you will, but the last thing I expected when anxiously tuning into this was political drivel and sour grapes more than three years after the 2016 election. Twenty minutes in and my wife and I, enormous John Ford appreciators, can't take any more. Sadly it is not even worth staying tuned in for the potential nugget of John Ford information because it is laced with far too much current politics and far too little content about the supposed subject. If you genuinely want to know something about John Ford I recommend you skip this and read one of the number of biographies readily available.
Be ready to fast-forward
topcat-1928 September 2022
Horrible example of leftist media suckering you in with an interesting topic/subject then filling it with their own political agenda that has nothing to do with the life and times of John Ford.
I'm a huge John Ford film fan; However and I was born after most of his classic Westerns were made, I know little about the man. Only from snippets from the TCM Hosts do I know a few things So I was very interested when I stumbled upon this documentary Well, They tease you with glorious images of Monument Valley; but spend time bashing Trump -right in the middle of a documentary about a legendary field director who made 'Stagecoach in 1939 and The Searchers in '56 They got some clown bashing Trump ?
Also what's with the interviewing of some French people without ever establishing their credentials.
What an epic waste of time.
I'm a huge John Ford film fan; However and I was born after most of his classic Westerns were made, I know little about the man. Only from snippets from the TCM Hosts do I know a few things So I was very interested when I stumbled upon this documentary Well, They tease you with glorious images of Monument Valley; but spend time bashing Trump -right in the middle of a documentary about a legendary field director who made 'Stagecoach in 1939 and The Searchers in '56 They got some clown bashing Trump ?
Also what's with the interviewing of some French people without ever establishing their credentials.
What an epic waste of time.
Politicized drivel!
imdb-246 February 2022
How does some American literature professor who never met John Ford, have the nerve to declare that he was terrified of his feminine side and that's why he made such macho characters. What does Donald Trump have to do with John Ford! This is the worst drivel I've ever seen that was labeled a documentary.
Horrible waste
jellopuke4 October 2022
For a movie that wants to be about John Ford, it would really rather talk about Trump, the US prison system, racial injustices, etc. It also makes mistakes (screwing up which eye he had patched) and only talks about a few of the man's movies (those that fit the agenda of the filmmakers) ie) Searchers, Sgt. Rutledge, Man who Shot Liberty Valance, Stage Coach. So it's a massive failure as a look at the man. But what this really is, is an attempt to say that the IDEA of America was partially created through John Ford's movies and that it's gone off track. Okay, that's fine, but don't market that as a look at the director, instead just make a political essay or something. This was totally not at all what anyone would want.
Watch Bogdanovich's Ford doc instead.
Watch Bogdanovich's Ford doc instead.
Inaccurate sniveling left-wing BS
Mr. OpEd13 December 2023
Was this about John Ford or how much the left hates Donald Trump? At about the 16 minute mark we find out.
It's been said that the left destroys everything it touches and that is certainly true again here. I couldn't watch anymore after the Trump bash where some rancher claims Trump never had to face anything like John Wayne did (guess the cow poker doesn't follow the news).
And the flaws in this bio are too numerous to mention, but here's just one. While discussing Stagecoach, the "film makers" show a photo of The Oklahoma Kid. I like Cagney and Bogart as much as Wayne and Stewart but the photo and film have nothing to do with John Ford. Guess they were too busy hating regular Americans to actually check their work.
If you want a real overview of Mr. Ford's work, check out Directed by John Ford: Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, an actual film maker covering an actual film maker, it's terrific.
It's been said that the left destroys everything it touches and that is certainly true again here. I couldn't watch anymore after the Trump bash where some rancher claims Trump never had to face anything like John Wayne did (guess the cow poker doesn't follow the news).
And the flaws in this bio are too numerous to mention, but here's just one. While discussing Stagecoach, the "film makers" show a photo of The Oklahoma Kid. I like Cagney and Bogart as much as Wayne and Stewart but the photo and film have nothing to do with John Ford. Guess they were too busy hating regular Americans to actually check their work.
If you want a real overview of Mr. Ford's work, check out Directed by John Ford: Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, an actual film maker covering an actual film maker, it's terrific.
fail to learn from the master
SnoopyStyle29 November 2023
This John Ford documentary is airing on TCM. They may even had produced it. It's dissecting the career of this iconic Hollywood director. Most of all, it is showing his private left leaning politics.
His left leaning ideals may be real. Quite frankly, this is not the first that I've heard of it. It is something well known behind the scenes in Hollywood. The problem with this documentary is its inability to learn from the master himself. He lets his works do the talking. There is no need to actually put Trump on the screen. It also puts this film into a specific time. A documentary should try to be timeless. The master would not make this mistake. Trump supporters are never going to like a deep dive into their believes especially from some critical Frenchies and academic eggheads. By doing this badly, it threatens even those who lean left and I don't count the far left who have their own complaints.
His left leaning ideals may be real. Quite frankly, this is not the first that I've heard of it. It is something well known behind the scenes in Hollywood. The problem with this documentary is its inability to learn from the master himself. He lets his works do the talking. There is no need to actually put Trump on the screen. It also puts this film into a specific time. A documentary should try to be timeless. The master would not make this mistake. Trump supporters are never going to like a deep dive into their believes especially from some critical Frenchies and academic eggheads. By doing this badly, it threatens even those who lean left and I don't count the far left who have their own complaints.
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