#17 — The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) Westerns, long a staple of Hollywood filmaking, were absolutely huge in the post-War years. According to Glenn Frankel’s book on the making of The Searchers, by the time John Ford’s iconic film was … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Seventeen
#25 — The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962) There are a plenty of genres and styles that once prospered in American cinema that have fallen out of favor or been modified to the point of being unrecognizable, but none of them inspired observers to see elegiacal profundity in the offerings from their twilight quite like the western. In part, that’s because westerns, no matter how sprightly and charmed, always seemed to carry a tint of the forlorn to them. By the times films were conveying tales of the Wild West, it was already a bygone era being … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Five
Designing Woman (Vincente Minnelli, 1957). This blithe, airy comedy about a mismatched couple is laced with some mild battle-of-the-sexes commentary. For the most part, though, it’s a procession of problematic friends and crooked boxing promoters. In other words, it’s the sort of romantic turmoil that only happens in the movies, and happened all the more frequently when the standard Hollywood product was made monumentally more colorful to compete with the hugely successful new medium of television. The film is directed with typical skill and panache by Vincent Minnelli, but the film works to the degree it does mostly from the … Continue reading Ford, Fukunaga, Green, Minnelli, Stahl
Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962). This beloved film classic only had its notoriety bolstered when Martin Scorsese remade it in 1991. Though my helpless affection for Scorsese is well-documented by now, I must concede that the the original is far superior, largely due to the performance of spectacularly relaxed menace by Robert Mitchum as recently sprung convict Max Cady, who decides to terrorize the prosecutor whose testimony was instrumental to his incarceration. Mitchum is so good developing a fearsome quality out of little more than the way he glares across a room or strolls into a scene that the … Continue reading Affleck, Curtis, Ford, Jarecki, Thompson
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949). The film is the second of Ford’s loose “Cavalry Trilogy.” It’s well-regarded, as are most of Ford’s collaborations with John Wayne, but, while it may be a sort of cinematic sacrilege to say so, the film is little more than a plain-footed entertainment. That assessment seems more damning than it is. The film is expert and buoyant and infused with a nice mix of wit and charm, all qualities that seemingly came naturally to John Ford when he was more concerned with making something simply satisfying than a work of grave importance. … Continue reading Beresford, Fletcher, Ford, Hawks, Twohy
Coffee for Two 