John Ford Retrospective - Straight Shooting (1917)

STRAIGHT SHOOTING (1917)

Starring: Harry Carey, Duke Lee, George Berrell, Molly Malone, Ted Brooks, Hoot Gibson, Milt Brown, Vester Pegg, William Steele

Writer: George Hively

Cinematography: George Scott

Music: SILENT (Blu-Ray score by Michael Gatt)

B&W, 1h 02m.  1.33:1 presentation.

Released on August 27, 1917 by Universal Film Manufacturing Company.

My experience:  Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-Ray


It's hard to believe that John Ford's first film as director was released all the way back in 1917 -- 105 years ago!  To put that in perspective, if you go back another 105 years from that, you're looking at the War of 1812, when Canada wasn't its own country yet and the United States wasn't even 40 years old.  All this is to say that we often remember John Ford as a director of westerns in its heyday (the 1950s), but he got his start decades earlier.  And after watching his feature length debut, Straight Shooting, the thing that impressed me most was that at the age of 23, his eye for framing and composition was already stunning.

The movie itself, compared to today's oftentimes needlessly convoluted stories, is quite simple.  The protagonist, Cheyenne Harry (Harry Carey), a mercenary gunslinger, is hired by evil rancher Thunder Flint (Duke Lee) to dispose of a homesteading family -- father Sweetwater Sims (George Berrell), daughter Joan (Molly Malone) and son Tom (Ted Brooks) -- whose land he wants for his cattle.  Cheyenne Harry finds himself torn between the two factions soon enough, at which point Flint also hires assassin Placer Fremont (Vester Pegg) as insurance.

Sounds a little bit cliche, doesn't it?  Well, cliches have to start from somewhere, and this type of storytelling was all the rage back in silent cinema.  In fact, the character of Cheyenne Harry is probably a bit less of a stereotype than many other "white hat" cowboys of the day.  There's a sense of humor about him, and he's a little bit uncouth; in truth, he's a bad man who finds himself torn between two worlds and in the end redeems himself, itself a situation Ford would portray on screen many times in the future. 

I've mentioned in previous posts that duality is a key facet of Ford's personality and filmmaking style, and this is evident even at this early junction.  Time and again, in this film and the future, Ford lionizes the good old days and yearns for simpler times, while at the same time being well aware of all the good things progress and the onward march of time has led to.  His main character here, Cheyenne Harry, is likewise caught between his unsavory past and the potential to right himself.

There are some shots in this film -- released over a year before the first World War came to an end -- that are breathtaking.  A posse of horsemen riding down a steep hill; the co-ordination of action on different planes; even the simple use of irises and dissolves are proof of the fact that "Jack" Ford (as he was billed up until 1923) had a preternaturally sublime gift.  While I can't honestly say that this is close to the top of my favourite John Ford films, it is a wonderfully assured debut from a filmmaker who was probably not much more than five years out of high school at that point.  

6.5 dastardly drovers out of 10.

John Ford: An Introduction

John Ford is a name many many people, especially cinephiles, are very familiar with, but to the general public, knowledge of him and his works are increasingly being relegated to the dustbin of history.  While part of this is due to the natural progression of time, some of it is also due to the prevailing attitudes of the era in which he lived, specifically in how race and gender were portrayed in early Hollywood films.  Ford himself was a bundle of contradictions, however, and while some of his films have aged poorly, he was in many ways more progressive and searching than many of his contemporaries.

John Martin Feeney was born on February 1, 1894, in Cape Elizabeth, a suburb of Portland, Maine.  The son of Irish immigrants, he was a first generation American, and throughout his career he displayed immense pride in his native United States and was likewise drawn to stories set in or concerning the land of his ancestors.  In fact, I believe this dualism is key to understanding many of Ford's cinematic tendencies, and indeed his life as a whole.  

As a person, John Ford could be curt and abrasive, yet incredibly caring.  There is a story I've heard in which someone who had previously worked for him was hard up for money.  Ford accosted him and mocked him publicly, then secretly made sure the person had a job with him for life and set him up with a weekly stipend.  His film sets always had the same people working on them, and they all shared close quarters -- the John Ford Stock Company.  He fostered a feeling of camaraderie and goodwill, yet he could be very abusive and dictatorial.  He could be both reactionary and, as previously mentioned, progressive for the times in his beliefs.  

Ford followed his brother Francis (who had taken the last name "Ford" in the interim) to Hollywood after graduating high school.  Francis was thirteen years older than John, and was at that point a big time film director.  Ford got jobs on Francis' sets as carpenter, stuntman, actor: any experience he could get.  By the end of the 1910s, however, Francis' successes had started to dry up, and John decided to try his hand at directing.

A quick note before we get into analyzing some of these movies.  John Ford directed about 60 silent films, of which all but maybe 10 or so are lost.  Therefore I will only be focusing on the ones I am able to have access to.  I don't feel it's right, nor even relevant, to comment on a piece of art that doesn't physically exist and that I can't experience.  So while it may seem that I may be giving Ford's formative years as a director short shrift, rest assured that this is not the case, and the the vagaries of time are ultimately victorious over even the greatest artistic masters.  And with that, let's begin!

John Ford in 1915.

It's been awhile!

Has it really been four and a half months since my last post?  I know it had been a hot minute since I last wrote something on this blog, but four and a half months surprised me!  I guess life sometimes gets in the way and you just have to roll with it!

It's funny, I got back into writing this blog (after a hiatus of about six years, so four and a half months doesn't seem quite as long) with the intention of writing, if not every day, then at least multiple times a week.  That lasted about a month, then I fell into a routine of reviewing ARCs, of which I posted two or three reviews a month.  

Since I was last active on this blog, I have gone through a move, downsizing from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom apartment.  As a result, a lot of my focus was spent on getting rid of a whole bunch of stuff (it's incredible how much stuff you collect over the years that are completely unnecessary) and generally keeping myself and my family sane throughout the chaos.  We've been in the new place for about two weeks now, and are still unboxing things and finding room for them.

I haven't stopped reading those ARCs; in fact there are five that I read in the interim.  Unfortunately, many of them are months in the past and are not as solid in my mind as I feel comfortable writing a whole review for.  They consist of the following:

"Unaccustomed To Grace" by Lesley Pratt Ballantyne:  This was a collection of short stories, many of which led in completely different directions than I was expecting.  There is humor, horror, and sadness in many of them.  Some really great title names, too.  Definitely worth a read.  8/10.

"Bedtime Stories For The Living: A Memoir" by Jay Armstrong:  The author is a former teacher who was diagnosed ten years ago with ataxia, a rare progressive brain disease that affects his balance, sight and speech.  He has written this book almost as bedtime stories for his children, outlining his views on life and subtly guiding and preparing their future selves for life in the future.  It's a heartfelt, wonderful book with a sense of humor about life.  A must-read.  10/10.

"Three Coins" by Kimberly Sullivan:  I did not expect much from this one, but it caught me in its charms and I was HOOKED!  Basically a retelling of sorts of the 1954 film "Three Coins in the Fountain" - which plays a big role in the plot of the book, natch - it grabbed me and never let go.  The interpersonal relationships and the way the three main characters interact and relate to each other are well sketched out, and I had a blast following them through Rome and figuring out which areas I'd been to.  If you've ever spent any amount of time in Italy, I think you'll enjoy the heck out of this one.  9/10.

"Living Rent Free In My Head: Essays On Pop Culture" by Dominique Davis:  This one for me was a bit hit and miss.  I agree with many of the things Davis touches upon, but some of her essays deal with subjects I'm not overly familiar with.  Perhaps it's a generational thing; when she focuses on BookTok and Twitter (which occupy absolutely zero space in my life), the essays don't resonate with me.  But when she talks about the cult of celebrity, reality TV, the lost art of "filler" episodes, and various more generalized essays on music, film and television, it's a delight to read.  Your mileage may vary.  6/10.

"Slanted And Disenchanted: A Novel" by Lisa Czarina Michaud:  The detail in this book is off the hook.  It's a will-they-won't-they quasi-romance between two bandmates, Carla and Pete, in the aftermath of 9/11.  Both characters are well written and have hidden depths of layer that they rarely reveal to anyone, even themselves.  The two seem perfect for each other, but like all people, traumas and past histories can get in the way.  Many musical references of the time abound, and this is another book that I could not put down.  The book ends somewhat abruptly, so I can only hope that Michaud has in mind a sequel.  Time will tell.  8/10.

So that's that taken care of.  But what's next for this blog?  Where do I go from here?  I doubt I'll be posting anything else for at least another two weeks or so, but after that I'm going to switch things up a bit.  I still have a whole bunch of ARCs to read, so I will be posting reviews from time to time on Goodreads.  I may link them here, or I may not, it depends.  But I've decided to review movies again!  Not just any movies, but ouvres. 

What, you say?  What do French eggs have to do with anything?  Ah, my friend ... the word oeuvre is indeed descended from an old French word, "ovre" ... which has nothing to do with chickens or yolks and everything to do with the word "work," which is what "ovre" meant.

You see, friends, I am a completionist.  If I like an artist, be they musician, writer, or filmmaker, I need to experience their entire portfolios.  Call it the OCD in me, but I feel incomplete if I don't experience it all - chronologically, of course!  I have all Charles Dickens' books, all of Edward Rutherfurd, all of Ruta Sepetys.  I own all the Beatles, all of Oasis, all of Led Zeppelin.  The same goes for filmmakers.  I own the complete filmographies of many of my favourite filmmakers (Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Danny Boyle).  Trouble is, those directors are still active, so it would just feel weird to me to do a retrospective for these artists at the current time.

This is why I have decided to review the films of directors of yore.  There are so many to choose from, really.  I have most of Stanley Kubrick's films, but there are only about a dozen of them.  Ingmar Bergman, and Akira Kurosawa likewise, and they have a much greater number of films, but I'm not currently in the mood to rewatch any of them.  I have all of Elia Kazan's films but while his films are wonderful, he doesn't really have a definitive stamp per se.  I'd like to get to their filmographies in due course, just not at the moment.  Same goes with the filmmakers from the preceding paragraph who are still currently working.

That leaves two giants standing above the rest:  Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford.  They both started in silent films, and while many of those are lost to time (especially those of Ford), there are still plenty to go around.  And even though I own about 50 of each of them, there are still almost two dozen Fords and about 5 or 6 Hitchcock that I still need.  So it's a way to add to/complete my collection at the same time.

That being said, I have decided to start with John Ford because while most people know him as a director of Westerns, there is so much more to his films than that.  He did social dramas, historical films, travelogue-type adventures, and even a Shirley Temple musical.  I think it will be fun both to revisit classic films like "Stagecoach" or "The Searchers" and underrated gems like "The Prisoner of Shark Island," but also to discover new ones I haven't yet experienced.  

Assuming I watch (and review) one or two films a week, this should be a yearlong process.  And while I won't begin for another couple of weeks, I hope you'll join me on this journey through the films of John Ford.