John Ford grew up with the American cinema. In the early days of filmmaking, his older brother Francis moved to Hollywood to work for Universal Pictures and John joined him in 1914, forging his apprenticeship as a moviemaker during the formative period of the classical Hollywood cinema. By 1917 he had been promoted to contract director, fashioning westerns which often starred Harry Carey, Sr. Ford moved to the Fox studio in 1921 and established his reputation with such films as the western spectacular "The Iron Horse" (1924). In his silent films, Ford composed images with a formality and a symmetry that valued order; even at this stage, he had acquired the mantle of a Hollywood master.
Although best known for his westerns such as the landmark "Stagecoach" (1939), Ford worked in many other genres through his long career. Early in the 1930s, he led Fox's top comedy star, Will Rogers, through "Doctor Bull" (1933)," Judge Priest" (1934) and "Steamboat 'Round the Bend" (1935). Ford also set a number of his films in his parents' native Ireland. "The Informer" (1935), a drama of the Irish rebellion, won him the first of four Academy Awards for his direction. In retrospect, the film seems stylistically stodgy and thematically preachy, especially next to the vitality of "The Quiet Man" (1952), an unpretentious film about an Irish-American returning to settle in his native land. Ford also dealt with American history in "The Prisoner of Shark Island" (1936), "Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939), "Drums Along the Mohawk" (1939) and "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940).
After WWII Ford fashioned some of the best westerns ever to come out of Hollywood, including "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949), "Wagonmaster" (1950), "The Searchers" (1956) and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962). In creating the archetype for the genre in "My Darling Clementine" (1946), Ford focused on the classic cinematic shoot-out, the famous final gunfight at OK Corral, where Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers avenge the murder of their youngest brother. Against the harsh background of the buttes and desert of Monument Valley, Ford had the Earps ally with Easterner Doc Holiday (Victor Mature) to rid Tombstone of the evil Clantons and bring civilization to the town. In reshaping these familiar elements, Ford demonstrated that Hollywood genre films could be transformed into complex artifacts of popular culture and history.
Ford's postwar westerns examined all facets of the settling of the West. He began with a shared optimism in "My Darling Clementine" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and ended with a close examination of the dark side of manifest destiny in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."
Possibly his most underrated film, "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon", should be singled out for its brilliant use of color: rich and muted hues blended into an often somber aura. In this transitional work, part of a trilogy (including "Fort Apache" 1948 and "Rio Grande" 1950) about life in the United States cavalry, Ford praises the work of the military in settling the West, while undercutting the role of war in settling disputes." The Searchers," now highly regarded by critics, historians, and such contemporary directors as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and George Lucas, presents not only a rousing adventure tale, but also a melancholy examination of the contradictions of settling the old West. At the center of the film stands Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a bitter, ruthless and frustrated veteran of the Civil War who engages in an epic quest to retrieve an orphaned niece abducted by a Comanche raiding party. This neurotic man belongs neither to the civilized world of settlers hanging on at the edge of Monument Valley nor to the proud but doomed Native Americans he doggedly pursues. Torn between his respect for, but racist hatred of, Indians, Edwards speaks their language and is at home with their customs but is not deterred from seeking revenge for his murdered sister-in-law and her daughter. In "The Searchers" the wilderness never seemed so brutal nor civilization so tenuous and threatened. There are no towns, only outposts and isolated homesteads. The towering buttes of Monument Valley, in vivid Technicolor, are stunning but seem terribly threatening at the same time. After years of searching, Ethan gently lifts his niece in his arms to take her home, back to a family which is long dead, a homestead long deserted. The western myth persists above all.
If the latter film is one of the most beautiful color films ever made," The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", in black & white, is surely one of the most bleak and barren. This dark vision of a West of deceit and lying, abandons the stunning Technicolor vistas of the buttes of Monument Valley for the rickety buildings of a ramshackle town continually cast in shadow. The heroic shooting by Ranson Stoddard (James Stewart) of evil Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), revealed in flashback, is shown by the end of the film to be a lie and a sham. Still, society hails Stoddard as a hero and elevates him to a position of power as a United States Senator. The true Western hero, Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), dies a pauper, unknown, save to his closest friends.
Although his final film was "Seven Women" (1965), "Cheyenne Autumn", released in 1964 and his final film shot in Monument Valley, seems a more fitting cap to a career begun some fifty years earlier. Ford made many of the best films ever to come out of Hollywood, even as he managed to make a few of the worst. By focusing on the aforementioned works, one overlooks the wretched excess of "Wings of Eagles" (1957). How he could make this film just after his masterpiece, "The Searchers", is a paradox that suggests a great deal about working in Hollywood.