Women In The Films Of John Ford

While John Ford (1894-1973) remains one of the most influential and revered directors in film history, he is also one of the most frequently misunderstood. One widespread assumption is that he was almost exclusively a man's director, dismissive of, or at best not well attuned to, the stories, perspectives and concerns of women. This book forthrightly challenges such an assumption, giving readers a richer understanding of the director's view of the world and of the women as well as the men who inhabit it. Taking a fresh look at dozens of Ford films, both familiar favorites and under-appreciated gems, it focuses on the complex and diverse female characters in them as well as the actresses who so ably portrayed them.

Films of John Ford.

"This collection of essays offers a comprehensive examination of his life and career. Part one provides an overview of Ford's importance in the early development of cinema. Part two focuses on Ford's personal life. Part three explores theories that explai

The Western is arguably the most popular and longlived form in cinematic history, and the acknowledged master of that genre was John Ford. His Westerns, including The Searchers, Stagecoach, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, have had an enormous influence on contemporary U.S. filmmakers, and on everything from Star Wars to Taxi Driver.In nine majors essays from some of the most prominent scholars of Hollywood film, John Ford Made Westerns: Filming The Legend in The Sound Era situates the sound era westerns of John Ford within contemporary critical contexts and regards them from fresh perspectives. These range from examining Ford's relation to other art forms (most notably literature, painting and music) to exploring the development of the director's public reputation as a director of Westerns. Articles also address the intricacies of Ford's shifting approach to storytelling and the subtle techniques whereby Ford's films guide spectator interpretation and emotional engagement.While giving attention to film style and structure, the volume also explores the ways in which these much loved films engage with notions of masculinity and gender roles, capitalism and community, as well as racial and sexual identity. Authors also examine how Ford's sound-era Westerns create a complex relationship to the genre's traditional project of "defining an American nation" and how they uphold up but also question popular culture depictions of history and nationhood, to offer a commentary that engages with both the past, the present and the future.In addition to new scholarship, the volume also offers a dossier section of out of the way magazine articles that illuminate the issues raised by essays, including the director's tribute to John Wayne as well as a moving posthumous appraisal of the director published by the Director's Guild of America.

An analysis of the films of John Ford features detailed studies of twenty of Ford's most important works, from The iron horse to Seven women.

Orson Welles was once asked which directors he most admired. He replied: "The old masters. By which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." A legend in his own time, John Ford (1894–1973) received a record four Academy Awards for best director, and two of his World War II documentaries won Oscars for the US Navy. He directed 136 films in a career that lasted from the early silent era through the late 1960s. Ford is celebrated throughout the world as the cinema's foremost chronicler of American history, the leading poet of the Western genre, and a wide-ranging filmmaker of profound emotional impact. His classic films—including Stagecoach (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Quiet Man (1952), The Searchers (1956), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)—remain widely popular, and he has been acknowledged as a major influence on filmmakers such as Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Samuel Fuller, Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. In this groundbreaking critical study, Joseph McBride and Michael Wilmington provide an overview of Ford's career as well as in-depth analyses of key Ford films. Analyzing recurring Fordian themes and relating each film to his entire body of work, the authors insightfully explore the full richness of Ford's tragicomic vision of history. This new and revised version includes a study of the twenty-seven Ford silent films now known to survive in whole or in part (more than double the number available when the original edition was published); essays on three controversial aspects of Ford: his tragicomic sensibility, his views of race, and the influence of his Irish heritage; and an expanded version of McBride's interview with Ford on the last day of his career.

This radical re-reading of Ford's work studies his films in the context of his complex character, demonstrating their immense intelligence and their profound critique of our culture.

John Ford remains the most honored director in Hollywood history, having won six Academy Awards and four New York Film Critics Awards. Drawing upon extensive written and oral history, Ronald L. David explores Ford’s career from his silent classic, The Iron Horse, through the transition to sound, and then into the pioneer years of location filming, the golden years of Hollywood, and the movement toward television. During his career, Ford made such classics as Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Searchers-136 pictures in all, 54 of them Westerns. The complexity of his personality comes alive here through the eyes of his colleagues, friends, relatives, film critics, and the actors he worked with, including John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Maureen O’Hara, and Katharine Hepburn.