John Ford- Biography & Discussion

[chester7777]

Thanks for the heads up, May. We still have a pile of John Wayne stamps around here, now we will also have some John Ford.

Chester

[Dooley]

Just watched Sergeant Rutledge for the first time, what a fantastic
John Ford film.
One of the downside of being this side of the pond is many rarer films are not released over here.
Had to order this one from a website, not Amazon, which specialises in older, rarer films, so glad I did!

[ringo kid]

there was a inaugural john ford ireland film symposium held in dublin ireland on the 7th of june to 10th.
Dublin to Host International Celebration of John Ford

Thursday, 03 May 2012 10:02


Filmmakers and film experts prepare to gather in Dublin to honour and celebrate the legacy of John Ford, one of the world’s most respected and influential filmmaker
Images available here: http://press.ifta.ie/photo-archive/viewcategory/21.html
The inaugural John Ford Ireland Film Symposium takes place 7 - 10 June with a four day focus on film and filmmaking, inspired and informed by the timeless work of legendary Irish-American director John Ford.

Ford directed 137 films, worked on circa 80 other projects, documentaries & short films, and still holds the record for winning the most Oscars for his work as Director. Ford, whose parents were born in the west of Ireland, was the first recipient of the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and received the American Presidential Medal of Freedom for his important war documentaries during his World War II American Navy service.

His work continues to be much loved by audiences around the world, with favourites including the big screen classics such as The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath, Fort Apache, Rio Grande, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and How Green Was My Valley.

Ford kept strong connections with Ireland, where he made a number of films, the most important of which was The Quiet Man, consideredhis most personal film.

60 years on from that iconic Irish film, the inaugural John Ford Ireland Film Symposium will feature a diverse programme of events designed to entertain, inform and educate Symposium delegates and movie fans gathering in Dublin for this unique film event.

Highlights of the 1st John Ford Ireland Film Symposium include:

• Opening night Gala Screening of Ford’s silent epic The Iron Horse at the National Concert Hall with music accompaniment from the RTE Concert Orchestra.
• A Public interview and Masterclass with Oscar nominated director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) who knew Ford and made the remarkable documentary Directed by John Ford, which includes rare interviews with Ford, Henry Fonda, James Stewart and Clint Eastwood.
• Keynote address and Ford Lecture by world-renowned biographer and film historian Joseph McBride (biographer for Ford, Spielberg and Orson Welles amongst others).
• The 60th Anniversary screening of The Quiet Man, with special guests Dan Ford (grandson of John Ford), Hollywood royalty Maureen O’Hara and Oscar nominated producer Redmond Morris (son of The Quiet Man producer Lord Killanin)
• Over a dozen Public Screenings; including a FREE outdoor screening of The Searchers, the 1956 classic John Wayne western; rare screenings of Ford classics The Grapes of Wrath, Fort Apache, The Informer and the recently discovered feature film Upstream (screening for the first time in Ireland)
• Ford Panel Discussions each day with leading international film experts including Charles Barr (University of East Anglia), Gaylyn Studlar (Washington University), Kevin Rockett (Trinity), Luke Gibbons (NUI Maynooth) and Waylon White Deer (Choctaw Nation), amongst others.
• Ford Industry Hub with Oscar nominated directors Jim Sheridan (Into the West) and John Boorman (Deliverance), BAFTA nominated Brian Kirk (Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones) and Emmy nominated Thaddeus O’Sullivan (Into the Storm), IFTA winning screenwriter Pat McCabe (The Butcher Boy), Colin Bateman (Divorcing Jack) and Paul Fraser (Once Upon a Time in the Midlands).
• Masterclass with Oscar winning editor Joel Cox (Unforgiven, Mystic River).
• 20th Anniversary screening of Clint Eastwood’s Oscar winning revisionist WesternUnforgiven, facilitated by Empire Magazine’s Kim Newman reflecting on Eastwood’s work as the recipient of the inaugural John Ford Award.
• Music for the Screen event with Golden Globe nominated composer and musician Kyle Eastwood (Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino).
• The Abbey Players & John Ford – an exploration of Ford’s relationship with the actors of the Abbey Theatre.
• The John Ford Exhibition displaying rarely seen Ford papers and correspondence.
• Plus much, much more….

Speaking about the John Ford Ireland Film Symposium programme, IFTA Chief Executive Áine Moriarty said:
“Ford’s films have always connected with and continue to resonate with ordinary people around the world. He was a great storyteller but moreover he was a master-filmmaker who has influenced so many of cinema’s great filmmakers today. The Academy is proud that this annual Ford Film Symposium will now be held in Ireland each year, where film fans, ford enthusiasts and filmmakers can gather to examine and learn from Ford’s work and legacy.”

Speaking on the establishment of John Ford Ireland, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan TD said:
“What a perfect setting to study this legendary filmmaker's work in the land of his beloved ancestors at the John Ford Ireland Film Symposium… I anticipate a tremendous excitement within Ireland's film industry with the establishment of this initiative – and I look forward to welcoming film communities and the extensive Irish diaspora across the globe who have been inspired by the incredible work of John Ford.”

For the full Symposium lineup and information about Season passes, visit the John Ford Ireland website www.johnfordireland.org

[ringo kid]

John Ford Ireland Film Symposium a massive success – VIDEO

Four day celebration of Irish American director “in the land that he wished that he had been born”




[IMG]http://media.irishcentral.com/images/419*279/JOHN+FORD+DIRECTORS+PANEL.jpg[/IMG] Thaddeus O'Sullivan, Jim Sheridan, John Boorman, Brian Kirk & Kim Newman, pictured at the Ford Directors Hub panel discussion, as part of the 1st John Ford Ireland Film Symposium
Photo by IFTA










[?]



The John Ford Ireland Film Symposium concluded on Sunday evening (10th June), in Dublin with filmmakers and scholars from across the world ending a four-day celebration of cinema’s most-lauded Irish-American director “in the land that he wished that he had been born”.
Lively debates, incisive lectures, public interviews with filmmakers, documentary premieres, anecdotal stories on Ford, live music events and, of course, a series of screenings of Ford classics marked a hugely well-received inaugural event, which was an initiative of the Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA), in association with the John Ford Estate in the US, with the support of Ireland’s Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
Oscar-nominated Irish director Jim Sheridan, who took part in the Ford Filmmakers Hub Directors Panel on Friday afternoon, commented that “the whole Symposium has been great,” adding that it was “fascinating” to hear in-depth discussion of Ford’s work.
Sheridan added of the director – whose parents hailed from the West of Ireland: “I think that it [the Symposium] will help set Ford as an Irish director, as opposed to solely an American director. I think that it’s an important event in bringing Ford home.”
Honorary Irishman and fellow Oscar nominee John Boorman commented that the four-day celebration of Ford’s work was “a marvellous thing” adding of the series of screenings that included such classics as ‘The Searchers,’ ‘Fort Apache,’ ‘The Quiet Man’ and ‘The Informer’: “Ford’s films play much better on the big screen than they do on DVD so it’s fantastic that people have had the opportunity to see them again.”
The Symposium was also attended by Ford’s grandson and author Dan Ford who said his grandfather “would have been tickled pink to be so appreciated and honoured in his ancestral home.” He added: “I think he would have been delighted to have been here and he certainly would have appreciated the interest people are showing in his work today.”
As well as Sheridan and Boorman, the list of guests, filmmakers, academics and panelists who took part in the Symposium offered a series of interesting takes on Ford’s work and the filmmaking process in general.
The guests included Oscar-nominee and ‘The Last Picture Show’ director Peter Bogdanovich; renowned film historian and Ford biographer Joseph McBride; Oscar-winning editor and long-time Clint Eastwood collaborator Joel Cox; musicians and film score composers David Holmes, Christopher Caliendo and Kyle Eastwood; screenwriters Colin Bateman, Pat McCabe, Eoghan Harris; directors Stephen Frears, Neil Jordan, Ian Power and Brian Kirk as well as a host of leading Ford academics which included Gaylyn Studlar, Charles Barr, Luke Gibbons, Kevin Rockett and Waylon White Deer.
The Symposium had gotten underway last Thursday (7th June) with a rapturously received Irish premiere of Ford’s 1924 silent masterpiece ‘The Iron Horse’ at Dublin’s National Concert Hall with live musical accompaniment from US composer Christopher Caliendo and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.

It continued on Friday with a series of events that included a Directors Panel, a Public Interview with Peter Bogdanovich and an Opening Lecture from Ford biographer Joseph McBride, whose ‘Searching for John Ford’ biography has been described by Martin Scorsese as a “treasure”.


Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/ent/John...#ixzz1xlPCXXok

[Paula]

Columnist Maureen Dowd published an op-ed about Ford, The Quiet Man, John Wayne, and more Fordian topics this past Sunday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/opini ... ml?_r=2&hp

Cowboys and Colleens
By MAUREEN DOWD

WHEN John Ford was making “The Quiet Man” on location in the west of Ireland, the studio head in Hollywood looked at the extravagantly gorgeous footage — which would win the 1952 Oscar for color cinematography — and complained, “Everything’s all green.”

It had taken Ford, one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, 20 years to persuade anyone to bankroll the “silly little Irish story,” as Maureen O’Hara, one of its stars, dryly noted. And even then the director had to soft-pedal the I.R.A. politics that informed the 1933 Maurice Walsh story that the movie was based on, and he had to fight to use Technicolor, the better to illuminate his Arden of green hills, blue sea and red hair.

I thought that by now “The Quiet Man,” once considered a font of offensive drinking-and-brawling stereotypes by many native Irish, including my dad, would have disappeared into the mist. It has been 60 years since Ford arrived in Cong in County Mayo — spurring the installation of electricity and phone lines — to shoot his sexy culture clash and love letter to Ireland.

Cong, the stand-in for the fictional Inisfree of the movie, is still such a tourist magnet that the Irish had to designate a decoy “Quiet Man” cottage, complete with creepy O’Hara and John Wayne mannequins, because fans seeking keepsakes were dismantling the original chunk by chunk.

Standing on the little bridge where Wayne’s Sean Thornton hears his dead mother’s voice, it struck me that Ford created the most potent cinematic images of two countries, Ireland and America, indelibly shaping our dreams.

“The Irish Cyclops,” as he was known for wearing a black eye-patch, was the Old Master of diametrically different landscapes, lush in the love story shot in Mayo and dusty in the Westerns shot in Monument Valley.

“It’s so ironic that his people left Ireland because they couldn’t survive in the arid land during the famine,” Joseph McBride, the author of “Searching for John Ford,” told me. “But then Ford portrayed the American Dream as this prehistoric desert, and he portrayed the old country as green and fertile.”

In 1965, Joan Didion wrote an homage to the iconic Wayne character conjured by Ford and other directors: “In a world we understood early to be characterized by venality and doubt and polarizing ambiguities, he suggested another world, one which may or may not have existed ever but in any case existed no more; a place where a man could move free, could make his own code and live by it.”

Wayne was, Didion wrote, “the perfect mold,” into which Ford could pour all “the inarticulate longings of a nation wondering at just what pass the trail had been lost.”

The Duke tamed the American West. “Manifest Destiny on the hoof,” as Garry Wills put it in “John Wayne’s America,” adding that he became the “pattern of manly American virtue,” even though he avoided serving in World War II.

In “The Quiet Man,” Wayne tames the fiery O’Hara. As he drags his obdurate bride across a field to fling her at the feet of her obnoxious brother, a woman hands him a branch, saying, “Sir, here’s a good stick to beat the lovely lady.” It’s the most controversial line in the movie.

But O’Hara’s Mary Kate Danaher is usually the one socking the peace-seeking Yank. As the actress points out in Se Merry Doyle’s 2010 documentary “John Ford: Dreaming The Quiet Man,” the tongue-in-cheek line summed up the cantankerous and devious Ford’s brutal methods with actors.

The director, the son of parents who fled Spiddal in County Galway, was born John Martin Feeney near Portland, Me. His father was a bootlegger. He adopted the name Ford, but later liked to imply he was from Galway, his name was Sean and he spoke Irish, getting O’Hara to speak gibber-Irish with him to impress the crew.

As the newspaper editor in Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” said, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

McBride hails Ford as “our national mythmaker, our Shakespeare.”

Reviewing “Fort Apache” for The Nation in 1948, James Agee viciously wrote: “There is enough Irish comedy to make me wish Cromwell had done a more thorough job.” But Ford’s characters — and the land was always a character — are vivid archetypes.

Fintan O’Toole of The Irish Times said the Irish were the Indians of imperial Britain who became cowboys in America. The right-wing Wayne told Playboy in 1971 that the cowboys didn’t steal the land, because the Indians “were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.” Ford told the BBC in ’68, “My sympathy is all with the Indians,” even though he veered between demonizing and valorizing them.

In searing works like “How Green Was My Valley” and “The Grapes of Wrath,” the director was deeply influenced by his parents’ exile.

“He was always dwelling on the breakup and collapse of family, community and traditional American ideals,” McBride said, “which makes him interesting and modern in a sense.”

[may2]

More from Peter Bogdanovich's file.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogd...rd-file-part-5

[arthurarnell]

Hi

I have just finished reading John Ford by Brian Spittles its from the series On Directors. Published 2002 by Pearson Education Ltd 129p.

Again its for the purist as its content discusses the man and his films in genre rather than in depth. Eight chapters

1. Ford's film family
2. Ford as an auteur
3. Generically challenged
4. The greatest storyteller
5. Conservative or subservive
6. Entertainer or ideologue
7. Unconscious racist
8. Patriarchy or matriarchy

The author also relies very heavily on quotes from other authorities on John Ford, but for collectors of Fords work it has its place.

Regards

Arthur

[ethanedwards]

Hi

I have just finished reading John Ford by Brian Spittles its from the series On Directors. Published 2002 by Pearson Education Ltd 129p.

Regards
Arthur

Arthur thanks for this, we did not have listed,
so I have now included it in a new thread I've formed.
John Ford's Books

[may2]

Wilmington On DVDs: Movies By John Ford

http://moviecitynews.com/2013/01/wil...tier-marshall/

[Paula]

This is an article by Frank Nugent (screenplays for many Ford classics, including Wagon Master, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man and The Searchers) about John Ford. It appeared in the July 23, 1949 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

[ethanedwards]

Great update Paula, many thanks

[dukefan1]

Love that picture of the boys playing cards!

Mark