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.