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And of course, I bought it during the latest TT sale. #-o

I was about to buy the TT. Glad I held off!

Amazon wrote:SPECIAL DUAL FORMAT FEATURES including

Stunning High-Definition presentation
Uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Isolated music and effects track
Rebirth – A New and exclusive video essay on the film by Ford expert and scholar Tag Gallagher | New video interview with critic and author Richard Combs
PLUS: A BOOKLET featuring new writing on the film.

Out March 13

Definite double dip for me now that there's a Gallagher essay.

Also sold by Gallagher.

Aside from the scene of the two stars talking by the river, I found this to be one of the absolute worst John Ford films (And I've seen Wee Willie Winkie). But I am tempted just for Tag Gallagher's video essay as well.

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:Aside from the scene of the two stars talking by the river, I found this to be one of the absolute worst John Ford films (And I've seen Wee Willie Winkie).

For me, not one of the worst, but disappointing all around. The story material is too much like The Searchers, with none of the panache in the execution. I don't remember Gallagher saying much good about this one in Ford biography (?) - in contrast to Wee Willie Winkie!

This film is much more highly regarded in the U.K. than America, it seems.

Recall, I think, Philip French hailing it as a masterpiece and Sight and Sound, in a review for a John Ford DVD box set, calling it a "doozy"of a Western.

Rayon Vert wrote:

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:Aside from the scene of the two stars talking by the river, I found this to be one of the absolute worst John Ford films (And I've seen Wee Willie Winkie).

For me, not one of the worst, but disappointing all around. The story material is too much like The Searchers, with none of the panache in the execution. I don't remember Gallagher saying much good about this one in Ford biography (?) - in contrast to Wee Willie Winkie!

This was pretty much my assessment of the film last night, which is a shame because there's a lot to like about the film. Richard Widmark is enjoyable, there's some absolutely beautiful scenery and shots, and the story takes unexpected turns in the final act by focusing more on the social issues than a traditional rescue mission (though admittedly, this wasn't exactly handled all that well). That said, the way Stewart's character seems to evolve left my head scratching, and there are a bunch of elements to the story that seem to come out of or go nowhere. Lastly, some of the musical cues are just atrocious, and the assorted moments of zaniness that are accompanied by a "zany" soundtrack are cringeworthy. Beautiful film to look at, a bit off the mark though all around.

My NEW John Ford book!

https://tinyurl.com/lb6krzo

tag gallagher wrote:My NEW John Ford book!

https://tinyurl.com/lb6krzo

Thank you! Any chance there will be a printed book version?

This was much better than I remembered, refurbishing elements of Ford's own narratives with a tone of downtrodden fatigue. The frequently passionate internal conflicts externalized into a social duo's vibrant collision are portrayed here as nearly-surrendered half-hearted arguments cast into the void of another's deaf ear. The dissolving morals in the dystopian west are exacerbated by two men's intimate histories divided in the present as strangers without overstating the tragedy of this loss. It's all in the eyes, or rather what's missing from their ability to communicate with each other and, in Stewart's case, within himself. I also love how Stewart and Widmark are essentially playing characters that fit the opposite actor's typecasting, demonstrating how displacing this morally bankrupt confusion of western degradation can affect a personality into becoming its opposite, or perhaps revealing true colors buried deep within a socially-procured presentation. Optimistically this switch can also be read as not a switch at all, but a sobering reminder for the audience that people are more complex than the passive shine on their surfaces.

This will be a great film to look at in the Stewart Star project, because it's a perfect output of his tired edgy core, now exhausted and statically coasting in an inebriated existential purgatory, following his 50s transformation of peeling back the psychological layers to elicit these darker corners of his personality. It's far more depressing than the classic anti-Stewart examples, at least for the bulk of the narrative, because of how numb he is to breaking this complacency, or even acknowledging what we, and Widmark, can so clearly see, like an addict blacking out through his own intervention.

Enjoyed this a lot when revisiting courtesy of the MoC Blu (and yes, another typically excellent Gallagher visual essay was the cherry on the sundae). I think the film acts not as a retread of the Searchers but rather a contrasting counter-argument to it in terms of reintegration for kidnapped settlers (which, this film argues, may not be possible). What makes this theme so powerful is that it does come within a film that had been for most of the running time a rather lighthearted hangout movie, almost Hawksian at times. I like Gallagher's argument that Widmark fails as a protagonist and so we're forced to align with the more unlikeable Stewart. Stewart's capitalist greed transforming into moral righteousness didn't strike me as being abrupt as it has for others-- both strains are part of the same practicality of recognizing the reality of a given situation. Stewart thus always does what makes the most sense, and so his defense of the kidnapped Mexican woman against the community is, if anything, more effective and progressive because the film argues that his is a position of common sense

I admire this film a great deal. How does the MoC blu ray compare to the Twilight Time?

A few are saying that the MoC equivalents of the same film have been inferior, for example House of Bamboo due to an apparently inferior encoding job.