Wow – a great piece by Stanley Crouch about these two often unfairly maligned (now) artists.
(It made me laugh out loud that Shirley Temple was described as “monstrous and adolescent”. hahahahaha – can’t stop laughing)
Read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts pulled out:
On Ford:
No director has ever dealt more insightfully with the offhanded, snide, and potentially suicidal aspects of bigotry than Ford. This sets him above almost all other directors because he could understand and make art of the tragedies that attended bigotry, one of the most pernicious forms of superstition. Beyond that, Ford recognizes how community acts as a protection against the inevitable meaninglessness of human life, which is no more than anarchic energy unless put in a story of some sort.
Wow – so many people who sneer at John Ford now miss that. They really do.
And then he makes a very specific observation about John Wayne in The Searchers(see below). An aside: I love it when people don’t just blow off acting as a by-product of other more IMPORTANT art – like set direction, or scripts, or whatever. I love it when reviewers – and Ebert does this sometimes, although not enough in my opinion – actually make detailed observations about what an actor is doing. Many people have contempt for actors, or they do not understand the actor’s work. That comes across in reviews where the film is disucssed in detail, and then at the very end we get a paragraph like this:
So and so is convincing as Mary Shmary, Blahdee blah overcompensates in his role as the preacher, and Hoo-hah is merely adequate in his important part.
Hey, thanks for your insights. But WHY? I love it when they get into WHY. Films are a collaborative art – and the whole thing must be judged – yes – but I love it when a reviewer actually knows how to analyze WHY a moment is good, or WHY a moment does not work. Gives me goosebumps.
But anyway, here’s Stanley Crouch on a moment John Wayne has in The Searchers:
When Wayne, as Ethan, comes upon the black smoke and the orange flame of the burning house left by the Comanches, his face is one of absolute terror, panic, and rage. At the top of a hill, Wayne flings out his right arm to free his rifle from the long, colorful buckskin sleeve in which it has been sheathed. The force of that flung arm is one of the most explosive gestures in all of cinema, and also among the most impotent: No one down there is alive, and Ethan knows it. He is, at that moment, like the man in Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death who so impressed Hemingway because his choice was to draw a sword when faced with the irreversible horror of encroaching doom.
John Wayne said once that one of the things he learned early on – from doing a play in high school – is that “If you’re going to make a gesture – make it.”
Isn’t that beautiful? Whatever it is. Leaping up on a horse, kissing the girl, punching your son, or flinging your arm out to free your rifle.
It’s a gesture. Don’t pretend to make the gesture. Don’t sketch in the outlines of the gesture. Don’t intellectualize the gesture.
Make it.
Good advice for life too, huh?
This is wonderful. Reading Crouch’s piece is one of those times when you read something that mirrors your own thoughts precisely, but is written with a skill you could never match. His thoughts on patriotism in film are so accurate, particularly as they relate to Ford and Wayne. Wayne and Ford created characters and storylines that were anything but the one-dimensional tripe their detractors claim. “Wead is another of Ford’s impotent heroes who, like Ethan Edwards, has no home other than the memories of what his dreams might have meant if any of them had ever come true.” Wow. The Searchers is a film that continues to reveal its depths every time I see it. I think it is marred by some of the silly domestic scenes, but its core is remarkable, and Wayne(and Ford)is magnificent. As you know, I am one of those that gets pissed off when I hear people say Wayne couldn’t act, or that he played the same character every time. Yes, he created a powerful iconic persona that loomed over his every performance(no minor accomplishment that), but, to me, he was like a great musician–you know who it is when you hear the first note or two because of the individualistic sound they have created for themselves, you expect great things from the song, and you are rarely disappointed. Thanks for finding and posting this, Sheila–Like a big piece of warm apple pie.
DBW – yeah, it’s idiotic – Wayne can’t act? WTF???????
Glad you enjoyed.
Blahdee Blah has always been terrible. He’s always blibbidy blooing instead of crankity smorking. And if I see him trinstur one more time, I’m never going to see another Blahdee Blah movie again.
But Hoo Hah is sublime.
Hoo-hah was robbed last year at Oscar time, I agree.