I received the set yesterday and have already watched half of it, thank you lockdown.
With
The Whole Town's Talking, Ford seems to be fairly anonymous behind the camera but Edward G. Robinson is excellent in the lead, dual roles - including one against type. The Swerling/Riskin script is a delight, and Jean Arthur steals every scene that she's in. It's 'minor' Ford in pretty much every sense, but I thought it was enjoyable enough.
I enjoyed
The Long Gray Line a whole lot more.
The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.
This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished — tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point.
That's an extract from Gen. MacArthur's speech to the Corps of Cadets at West Point in May 1962. The speech was delivered seven years after the release of John Ford's
The Long Gray Line, which has West Point as its setting, but I feel that the tone of MacArthur's words are not dissimilar to what Ford sets out in his masterpiece.
Yes, I say masterpiece. Opinion on The Long Gray Line seems to be split between those like myself, who think it ranks alongside Ford's very very best work, and those who regard it with little more than a shrug.
It follows Marty Maher (Tyrone Power), an Irish immigrant who finds himself working at West Point, the United States military academy, and still finds himself there half a century later. It shares the scaling of time with other films in Ford's oeuvre, notably
How Green Was My Valley, a film with which it shares a cast member in Donald Crisp who plays the father/patriarchal figure in both films, and
The Wings of Eagles, which is also a military biopic albeit a less successful one.
The first near-hour of The Long Gray Line is an entertaining, slapstick immigrant tale as we see Maher try his hand as waiter and swimming coach (he can't swim) as well as courting Mary O'Donnell (Maureen O'Hara) - another recent arrival from his homeland. There's then a tonal shift, and the film transcends.
Time passes. The Long Gray Line, like How Green Was My Valley, becomes poetry and elegy. Maher and his wife see cadets come and go, some as close as sons and brothers with Ford building a sense of family and community at West Point in the same manner as his more famous Westerns. As they come and go, some live and some die - duty, honor, country. Then with time their sons follow in their footsteps, and Maher suffers joy and pain again as such is the way of life.
"What a ruin it'll make!" Maher exclaims when he first sets eyes on West Point. The institution survives the film untouched. Maher defends its inertia, citing the success of its notable alumni including Patton and Eisenhower. It's to President Eisenhower, who he knew as a cadet, that Maher is recounting his life story in an attempt to stay on at West Point beyond retirement age. Beyond death? One could imagine Maher's ghost haunting the halls, as much a part of the institution as the building and the uniform.
One could dedicate an entire chapter of a book to The Thin Gray Line, if not a whole one. Ford is often charged with jingoism, but one could only find it in this film on a very superficial level. Rather, it finds him being skeptical of patriotism and the principles of 'duty, honor, country' that MacArthur would effuse and were the pillars of West Point's traditions. The American flag is miniaturised, framed by dead branches soon after a graveside discussion, in the only shot in the film where Maher looks at it. "What a ruin it'll make" - but as said, the building looks the same. It is Maher who will ruin, weary with the cyclical nature of life and death.
“It’s been a great day for Marty”
“It’s been a great life for Marty”
I doubt that it will ever be widely considered as one of his best works, indeed one of the best works of American cinema, but hopefully this Indicator release will go some way to raising its profile. The 4K restoration is glorious, and entirely necessary for Ford's first Cinemascope production. I have yet to listen to the commentary but the Tag Gallagher video essay is typically essential.
The Red, White, and Blue Line is a 10-minute promo/propaganda film filmed on the set, including footage not in the main film. "Not only is buying United States Savings Bonds good business, it's good Americanism". Duty, honor, country - behind and in front of the camera. Anthony Nield finds the points of interest in the booklet included; it's not entirely clear whether or not Ford directed the short. It's unrestored, but Indicator have done the lord's work including it.