Becoming John Ford

Nick Redman's Becoming John Ford is intended as a supplement to the massive 24-film Ford at Fox set. Aimed at those who already believe in Ford's greatness, it has some deficiencies -- primarily random comments that seem divorced from any context -- but Becoming John Ford is generally a pleasant way to spend 93 minutes. The commentators are Joseph McBride (author of Searching for John Ford), Rudy Behlmer (editor of Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck), James D'Arc (curator of the movie archives at Brigham Young University), UCLA professor Janet Bergstrom, French documentarian Jean-Christophe Jeauffre, screenwriters Lem Dobbs and Tom Mankiewicz, and Peter Fonda. Except for Jeauffre, who babbles about discovering America through Ford's movies, all have something of interest to say about Ford, Fox, Zanuck, or Henry Fonda, star of four of Ford's Fox films, presenting a balanced view of Ford as man, mythmaker, and visual stylist.

Redman's method is to approach Ford's Fox tenure in mostly chronological order, cutting between clips and commentators. Though we are told Ford worked exclusively for Fox from 1921 to 1936, he made such movies as Arrowsmith and The Informer elsewhere during this period, a practice that became more common during 1937-1946. Except for The Iron Horse, described by McBride as Ford's breakthrough in the same way Jaws was Steven Spielberg's, the director's silent films are largely ignored.

A strong case is made for the influence Murnau's Sunrise had on Ford with clips from Pilgrimage to illustrate the point, yet the Irish melodrama Hangman's House -- released a year after Murnau's masterpiece -- is not even mentioned. One of the high points among Ford's silents, Hangman's House has the atmospheric, gothic lighting that would become prominent in his later films. Ford is quoted as saying, "black and white is real photography."

Most of the commentary is devoted to The Prisoner of Shark Island, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and My Darling Clementine, all made after Zanuck's Twentieth Century Films absorbed bankrupt Fox. Several commentators claim Zanuck was the only producer Ford ever respected. According to Dobbs, writer of Dark City and The Limey, Zanuck helped Ford emphasize his strengths as a storyteller.

Much attention is paid to Ford's cantankerous personality. Dobbs, the most entertaining of the talking heads, quotes screenwriter Stephen Longstreet's description of the director as a combination of Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, Zorro, and the Boston Strangler. Dobbs, who calls him a bizarre and eccentric "nutjob," met the Ford as a boy when his father, the recently deceased R. B. Kitaj, painted the ill director in his bed, a fascinating work in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (not available on its web site, unfortunately). According to Dobbs, Ford didn't understand women and was afraid of them.

The commentators are all convinced of Ford's genius and perhaps overstate the virtues of some of his movies, especially the visually striking but icky How Green Was My Valley. Yet they all seem to recognize that My Darling Clementine is the best of his Fox efforts and offer fascinating anecdotes about how Ford and Zanuck fell out over the ending of the film.

Though Redman -- who has made several documentaries about Sam Peckinpah, including the Oscar-nominated The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage -- does not reveal the sources, one of the best parts of Becoming John Ford is hearing the comments of Zanuck (read by Ron Shelton) and Ford (featuring the gruff voice of Walter Hill). Ford's feistiness is perfectly captured in the way Hill delivers such lines as, "Front office likes the rushes. There must be something wrong. We'll have to keep shooting till we find out what it is." Also outstanding is Bengt Jan Jonsson's deeply textured black-and-white photography of the commentators.

Becoming John Ford has the drawback of dealing with only a fraction of the director's large oeuvre with few references to his non-Fox films. Stagecoach and The Searchers are each mentioned once. The weakest part is Redman's arty-farty close-ups of the moving components of a projector and the truly strange shots of Ford clips as seen from the back of a projection screen. You can imagine Ford shouting, "stop this horseshit!"

Extras include Ford's three World War II documentaries with additional footage of The Battle of Midway, interactive pressbooks for six movies, vintage programs for The Iron Horse and Four Sons, and posters/stills for twenty-eight of Ford's Fox features.

While not as informative as John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend, available in the Warner Ford-Wayne collection, Becoming John Ford offers some insights into one of the most important American filmmakers. For those not interested in buying the entire Fox Ford set, it can be purchased separately. -- Michael Adams