- Messages
- 14,905
- Reaction score
- 2,434
- Trophy Points
- 228
Directed by John Ford (1971)
I thought the heavily re-edited and extended 2006 version of Peter Bogdanovich’s John Ford career retrospective was the only one you could get but I found a copy of the original 1971 cut on archive.org. It looks like a horrendously bad, warped, scratched and discoloured 8mm scan with wonky sound split into three separate reels but I kinda loved all that patina. Bogdanovich conducts fond, anecdote filled interviews with Ford’s key players like John Wayne, Henry Fonda and James Stewart but his interview with Ford himself is like getting blood out of a stone. A taciturn, dryly witty, cantankerous old git. The best part is the final section where Bogdanovich intercuts a bunch of Ford movies to demonstrate the themes that echoed through them. Like nobility, freedom, justice, decency, patriotism and the full panorama of American history. Naturally Bogdanovich’s mentor Orson Welles provides the voice-over.
Bogdanovich: "How did you shoot that?"
Ford: "With a camera."
I thought the heavily re-edited and extended 2006 version of Peter Bogdanovich’s John Ford career retrospective was the only one you could get but I found a copy of the original 1971 cut on archive.org. It looks like a horrendously bad, warped, scratched and discoloured 8mm scan with wonky sound split into three separate reels but I kinda loved all that patina. Bogdanovich conducts fond, anecdote filled interviews with Ford’s key players like John Wayne, Henry Fonda and James Stewart but his interview with Ford himself is like getting blood out of a stone. A taciturn, dryly witty, cantankerous old git. The best part is the final section where Bogdanovich intercuts a bunch of Ford movies to demonstrate the themes that echoed through them. Like nobility, freedom, justice, decency, patriotism and the full panorama of American history. Naturally Bogdanovich’s mentor Orson Welles provides the voice-over.
Bogdanovich: "How did you shoot that?"
Ford: "With a camera."