Ford, 1939
The energy that explodes through this film is amazing. What faith! What hope! In all that is good in America! What desire to dream the Dream!
The speed of the dialogue, the confidence and the strength of the scenes. How the film doesn’t waste time, how it is always spreading out over the frame the canvas of a simple and honest ideology. Homely and direct. Sensational!
What disturbs me though, is the readiness with which I accepted such a simplistic view of history. Imagine watching it in pre-war America, folk America, WASP America, optimistic America. There is a sense of the naivete of imperialism–so wonderfully simple, so tremendously in place. It was well made.
Now John Ford was one of those one take guys, stick to the fucking script. I respect almost everything about them–they operated within the studios, suffering and struggling–and they fought it out, they taught themselves, they left their mark. They were not complicated by theory, they focused instead on craft and work. I guess their work ethic was informed by some sort of notion that the artist, in the end, is privileged.
This movie demonstrates the power of art to imprint memory on the viewer. Traces of emotions, thoughts and ideas. I can see an entire generation through this film. The aspirations of an entire generation. I had never experienced the joy of patriotism, its true emotional ring, until this film. Above all, the American patriot is overwhelmingly optimistic.
And as I close these words I try to find some way to acknowledge all the terrible realities of 1939, and I know that in reality it was a cruel and ugly time for many, but the thing is that this film was able to hide all this without being dishonest. The film believed in itself.
And I guess the magic of this film is a certain feeling of nostalgia for a time and a mood which are no longer here.
