How to read John Ford

I can never get enough John Ford. I am picky about which ones though, just like I am about everything else. It’s the Westerns mostly. And some of his American frontier ones like Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939). At home I just watched a trio of Westerns I consider to be his last great successes of that genre: The Horse Soldiers (1959), Two Rode Together (1961) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). And these last 2 particularly are something like variations on a theme—Two Rode Together revisits issues from The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance harks back to My Darling Clementine (1946). Wait, can I say variations on a theme? In classical music I think it only applies to a composer reworking a piece from another composer, like lately I been really into Brahms’s “Variations and fugue on a theme by Handel, Op. 24,” but I digress.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance had a ton of stuff I’d never noticed before. And this is a movie I’ve always loved and first saw it when I was in my early 20s. It’s really saying a lot about a movie if it gets better through the years. First of all there’s its subject matter, which along with My Darling Clementine uses characters who serve as symbols for the dualism of man’s nature in terms of wild/domesticated, or civilized/savage, and the clash of a society torn between civilization/wilderness, or law/anarchy; and these 2 characters in both films are caught in a love triangle with a woman.

     What I noticed this time around were certain aspects of TOM DONIPHON. He’s masculine as hell. And he’s the wild part of man’s nature. He smokes cigarettes. He drinks whiskey. And ultimately we see him quit shaving, get falling-down drunk, belligerent, and burn down the part of his house he’d built as an annex for the woman he planned on marrying—but when he destroys the part meant for her, he takes down his own home along with it. That’s powerful stuff. That house symbolizes his heart. I think something that helped me see this aspect was that when I was in film school I picked up on how in David Peoples’ script for Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood) the house LITTLE BILL builds for himself being deformed is a symbol of his interpretation of the law: crooked, and everyone knows it. In contrast, RANSOM STODDARD is the domestic, even feminine. In the scene where Stoddard brings the steak for Doniphon, what’s Valance say? Something like: hey get a load of the new waitress. And Stoddard doesn't drink.

     Another thing that caught my attention for the first time is the meal Stoddard is served. All the other men eat steak. But what’s Stoddard eat? It looks like bread and beans. Because in the Old West vegetarians were probably considered pussies. Nowadays he'd send the toast back and inform the staff he was gluten free.

     Even the biggest part of the story took on a new aspect for me. I’d always thought The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is about how Stoddard came back to pay his respects to his best friend, and how Tom Doniphon is a noble, virtuous, generous, doing what’s best for society forward-thinker. But is he? At the end when Stoddard asks his wife who put the cactus rose on the coffin he seems to say it with contempt. Like maybe he disapproves. Like maybe he’s jealous. And worse, when he suggests moving back, could he be implying that now that Doniphon is dead it’d be a great place to live?

     And even though he has his problems, Doniphon is unquestionably the hero. But there are more problematic aspects of his character. Like the way he treats HALLIE. She’s constantly angry with him, and then there’s the scene where she yells at him about not being his property. Yet when he tells her he’s leaving town for a few days, the way she leaves the house after he’s left to watch him go is one of the most moving scenes in the movie—a very Fordian touch if there ever was one. (Also this moment recalls the same thing HANNAH does when COL. MARLOWE leaves in The Horse Soldiers.) I wonder if this occurs in other of Ford’s films, I know I’ll be looking from now on.

     Another thing about Ford is what he leaves out. Like WYATT EARP never telling CLEMENTINE CARTER he loves her, there are some crucial things left unsaid in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, much to its advantage. Doniphon never tells Hallie that he loves her. After the night Stoddard is elected, what happens to Tom Doniphon? Did he and Hallie ever speak again? Why did Hallie marry Stoddard? How did Doniphon die? The point is none of this matters, and the story works better without these answers. Doniphon represents an outdated way of life, and Stoddard his replacement.

     There’s also the problem about POMPEY. In the standoff with Valance, Doniphon refers to Pompey as his “boy.” But worse is the scene where Stoddard is educating Pompey in the schoolroom and Doniphon barges in yelling about how Pompey has chores to do and pulls him away. Coud this be seen as resembling slavery? No. Because Doniphon later fights for Pompey to be served in the saloon, where there’s clearly a policy of not allowing black people to drink in there. But my point is despite the way Doniphon treats Stoddard, Hallie, or Pompey, (Applyard maybe?) they’re the only ones to mourn him at his funeral. The morals of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are nuanced.

 

8/20/2022

Paramount Pictures 2017 blu-ray

Atlanta, GA

Overlooked and Second Looks in Film 2021

I’d overlooked Candyman (1992, Bernard Rose) maybe because before Scream (1996, Wes Craven) I didn’t know of any decent early 90s horror movies. Still don’t really. After Scream, the cycle of Kevin Williamson knockoffs overpopulated with hot cute teen actresses as box-office bait sucked and the genre was dead until J-horror brought it back to life in the early 00s. But in 2021 I finally watched Candyman and am shocked to say it’s surprisingly one of the most satisfying amazing horror movies I ever seen.

     This claim is based on the Philip Glass score. Also right around the time I saw Candyman earlier this year I was listening to this old Emily’s Sassy Lime song, the last track from 1995’s Desperate, Scared, But Social, called “Superior Threat.” And I couldn’t really say why, but it always sounded to me like somehow it had something to do with Philip Glass. Probably doesn’t. But okay so I was just really in a Philip Glass mood.

     And so yeah I’m just way into the movie, way into the score, then the shocker ending came out of nowhere and it’s the kind of twist I couldn’t believe they actually had the nerve to commit to. I mean taking this nice, good person, the hero of the plot, and then she’s lured into this trap that was set for the villain and she gets burned alive instead—and no she doesn’t end up living, she’s dead, end of movie. But this sublime moment is all set to this Philip Glass piece “It Was Always You, Helen.” There’s even like this early 90s joyous gothic rapturous celebratory quality to it like “Like A Prayer,” by Madonna or something. Like everyone’s rejoicing this horror movie actually did what a horror movie should do, really fuck someone up instead of just going for a and everyone lived happy ever after resolution.

 

II.

In preparation for The French Dispatch (2021, Wes Anderson), I watched Isle of Dogs (2018, Anderson) again. And I mean a lot. Rewatchability at an all-time high with this one. Just kept launching the Disney + app and constantly replaying the hell out of it. It’s not that I didn’t like it when I saw it in theaters, but I fell in love with it like a newly christened cult favorite. Okay but so the reason I’m bringing this up is something that I didn’t pick up on the first time around.

     Giving Isle of Dogs a second look I noticed something I missed before, a montage where the following is summarized:

 

·       CHAIRMAN FUJIMOTO (President of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical) – secretly introduced mega-quantities of infected fleas and contagious tic larvae into a metropolitan city center, creating an unprecedented animal disease outbreak.

·       GENERAL YAMATACHI (Commander of the Megusaki Municipal Task Force) – oversaw deportation of over 750,000 caged animals to a nearly uninhabitable offshore refuse center.

·       SUPERVISOR KATANA (Director of Kobayashi Robotics) – developed most promising artificial life form in the history of corporate technology, and a powerful weapon to boot.

·       YAKUZA NAKAMURA (Head of Clenched-Fist Gang) – Eliminated all pro-dog opposition through the use of bribery, extortion, intimidation, and violent force.

 

And the montage is concluded with MAYOR KOBAYASHI revealing his plan to implement the “final stage/the permanent end to the canine saturation crisis.” Final stage just sounds so much like "Final Solution..." All this, in addition to a later scene where a lab is discovered where 250 dogs were experimented on against their will, finally hit me: this story is basically what the Nazis did to the Jews during the Holocaust, right? I mean I know it this might sound a little absurd but seriously. The reason I bring it up at all is because I thought of this as a cute lighthearted kids movie until, y’kno. The Holocaust? That’s heavy. Still it’s a cool movie and all, but ethically I had to chew on this for a while.

 

DISCOVERING DRAMATIC DEVICES no. 2

The first time I saw The Last Temptation of Christ (1988, Martin Scorsese) I completely freaked over how crazy its ending was. I don’t even know if you’d call it a twist. But I didn’t see it coming. And dare I say it remains something no other art form can accomplish; that elusive quality theatre, books, or paintings can’t do. Something only cinema can do. 

     It’s the titular moment CHRIST is crucified and he gives into the temptation of SATAN: he marries and raises a family… this whole life. And then all of the sudden the movie cuts back to him back on the cross and we realize none of it happened, it was all in his mind. Was it Satan showing him the vision? Was it Christ imagining it? Was it the movie speculating it? Can we ever know? Does it matter? But so yeah as a dramatic device it’s pretty neat.

     In Mommy (2014, Xavier Dolan) I fell for it again. There’s this impossibly rambunctious problem child whose single mother fights to raise him the whole movie without any signs of a peaceful life between them. It’s one hell of an emotionally hardcore experience. And the whole movie is framed 1:1, which is maybe the narrowest vertical aspect ratio of all time, right? Anyway, at the end there’s a montage where the kid grows up, graduates high school, everyone’s happy and everything all to “Wonderwall” by Oasis, and during this montage the screen broadens open to like a 1:85 widescreen frame. But then Mommy cuts back to the present, music stops, back to 1:1 frame, and we realize it was all in her head just like The Last Temptation of Christ. Pretty powerful, effective.

     At the end of The Green Knight (2021, David Lowery) at the moment the hero finally arrives at the object of his journey, to receive a blow from the sword of the GREEN KNIGHT, there’s some dialogue and then he’s back home safe. Then there’s a Last Temptation of Christ montage. But, no. It’s cool and stuff, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t save a movie that was already hanging by a thread of coherence. And moreover it feels like another desperate attempt to borrow something too recognizable from another movie. What’s the point of it? Is he hero or coward? I can do with a movie that refuses its audience a clear resolution, but usually all that led to that moment makes it worthwhile. Not this time. And I don’t think that’s what they were going for. And the post title sequence only pours salt in the wound. 

DISCOVERING DRAMATIC DEVICES no. 1

A device unique to Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan calmly expounding on the fate of someone close to him (or all of humanity) from an omniscient point of view in which he transcends time, is something I don't think I've seen done anywhere else.

   That is until the other day, after I watched 20th Century Women (2016, Mike Mills). Throughout that film there are scenes where a character talks about the fate of one of the other characters, mentioning events that will not occur until the end of their lives, while the narrative itself remains rooted in the present. And coincidentally Billy Crudup turns up in a supporting role in 20th Century Women too.