Product Description
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John Ford was easily one of the greatest, most prolific and
versatile directors Hollywood ever produced. Combined with a star
of the caliber and magnetism of John Wayne, what emerges is pure
cinematic magic. WHV now introduces a ten-disc set featuring
eight of the team's finest collaborations: The Searchers:
Ultimate Collector's Edition (1956) Stagecoach: Special Edition
(1939) Fort Apache (1948) The Long Voyage Home (1940) Wings of
Eagles (1957) She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1948) They Were
Expendable (1945) 3 Godhers (1948)
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There may be no better representation of America's love of the
old West than the 10-disc John Ford-John Wayne Collection. The
iconic star and iconic director collaborated on 14 films, eight
of which appear here. Four--Fort Apache (1948), The Long Voyage
Home (1940), The Wings of Eagles (1957), and 3 Godhers
(1948)--are appearing for the first time on DVD, and the two most
famous, Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956), are
represented in brand-new two-disc editions that add new and old
featurettes as well as the outstanding American Masters
documentary John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend.
(This Ultimate Edition of The Searchers adds a variety of printed
materials as well, such as reproductions of press materials and a
1956 comic book.) Two other landmark films previously available
on DVD, They Were Expendable (1945) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
(1949), round out the set. The three non-Westerns in the set have
settings, with They Were Expendable arguably the
greatest World War II picture ever.
The Movies:
A favorite film of some of the world's greatest filmmakers,
including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, John Ford's The
Searchers has earned its place in the legacy of great American
films for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it's the
definitive role for John Wayne as an icon of the classic
Western--the hero (or antihero) who must stand alone according to
the unwritten code of the West. The story takes place in Texas in
1868; Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Confederate veteran who visits
his brother and sister-in-law at their ranch and is horrified
when they are killed by marauding Comanches. Ethan's search for a
surviving niece (played by young Natalie Wood) becomes an
all-consuming obsession. With the help of a family friend
(Jeffrey Hunter) who is himself part Cherokee, Ethan hits the
trail on a five-year quest for revenge. At the peak of his
masterful talent, director Ford crafts this classic tale as an
embittered examination of racism and blind hatred, provoking
Wayne to give one of the best performances of his career. As with
many of Ford's classic Westerns, The Searchers must contend with
revisionism in its stereotypical of "savage" Native
Americans, and the film's visual beauty (the final is one of
the great images in all of Western culture) is compromised by
some uneven performances and stilted dialogue. Still, this is
undeniably one of the greatest Westerns ever made.
The landmark Western Stagecoach began the legendary relationship
between Ford and Wayne, and became the standard for all
subsequent Westerns. It solidified Ford as a major director and
established Wayne as a charismatic screen presence. Seen today,
Stagecoach still impresses as the first mature instance of a
Western that is both mythic and poetic. The story about a
cross-section of troubled passengers unraveling under the strain
of Indian attack contains all of Ford's incomparable storytelling
trademarks--particularly swift action and social
introspection--underscored by the painterly landscape of Monument
Valley. And what an ensemble of actors: Thomas Mitchell (who won
a Best Supporting Actor O as the drunken doctor), Claire
Trevor, Donald Meek, Andy Devine, and the magical John Carradine.
Fort Apache stars Wayne as a Cavalry officer used to doing things
a certain way out West at Fort Apache. Along comes a rigid, new
commanding officer (Henry Fonda) who insists that everything on
his watch be done by the book, including dealings with local
Indians. The results are mixed: greater discipline at the fort,
but increased hostilities with the natives. Ford deliberately
leaves judgments about the wisdom of these changes ambiguous, but
he also allows plenty of room for the fullness of life among the
soldiers and their families to blossom. Fonda, in an unusual role
for him, is stern and formal as the new man in charge; Wayne is
heroic as the rebellious second; Victor McLaglen provides comic
; and Ward Bond is a paragon of sturdy and sentimental
masculinity. All of this is set against the magnificent, poetic
topography of Monument Valley. This is easily one of the greatest
of American films.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the second installment of Ford's famous
cavalry trilogy (which also includes Fort Apache and Rio Grande),
continues the director's fascination with history's obliteration
of the past. It features one of John Wayne's more sensitive
performances as Capt. Nathan Brittles, a stern yet sentimental
war horse who has difficulty preparing for his impending
retirement. It's a film about honor and duty as well as
loneliness and mortality. And O-winner Winton C. Hoch
beautifully photographs it in Remington-like Technicolor tones.
The combination of melancholy and farce (Victor McLaglen makes a
perfect court jester) evokes comparisons to Shakespeare. Best of
all, the scene in which Wayne fights back tears when receiving a
gold watch from his troops is unforgettably bittersweet. If you
view the whole trilogy, it actually makes sense to save this for
last.
It's hardly shameful that Three Godhers ranks as the
slightest John Ford Western in a five-year arc that includes My
Darling Clementine, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Wagon
Master, and Rio Grande. The story had already been filmed at
least five times--once by Ford himself. Just before Christmas,
three workaday outlaws (John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz, Harry Carey
Jr.) rob a bank and flee into the desert. The canny town marshal
(Ward Bond) moves swiftly to cut them off from the wells along
their escape route, so they make for another, deep in the
wasteland. There's no water waiting for them, but there is a
woman (Mildred Natwick) on the verge of death--and also of giving
birth. The three badmen accept her dying commission as godhers
to the newborn. Motley variants of the Three Wise Men, they
strike out for the town of New Jerusalem with her Bible as
road. Ford's is the softest retelling of the tale, but it's
all played with great gusto and tenderness--especially by Wayne,
who's rarely been more appealing. Visually the film is one
knockout after another. This was Ford's first Western in
Technicolor, as well as his first collaboration with
cinematographer Winton Hoch. What they do with sand ripples and
shadows and long plumes of train smoke is rapturously beautiful.
It's also often too arty by half, but who can blame them?
Eugene O'Neill loved The Long Voyage Home, the feature-length
adaptation of his one-act sea plays, with intelligent bridging
material written by Dudley Nichols and a final movement, both
hellish and elegiac, appropriate to the onset of World War II.
John Ford directed, in his more self-consciously arty vein but
with no loss of power or passion. The focus is on the working
seamen aboard a merchant ship making its way from the Caribbean
to New York harbor and then England, with dangerous cargo on the
transatlantic leg. Thomas Mitchell (who had won a 1939 O in
Ford's Stagecoach) gives a career-best performance as Driscoll;
Ian Hunter plays the enigmatic shipmate known only as "Smitty";
Ford regulars Barry Fitzgerald, John Qualen, Ward Bond, Arthur
Shields, and Joseph Sawyer fill key roles; and the top-billed
John Wayne contributes a surprisingly effective supporting
performance as Ole, a gentle Swedish giant who really belongs on
a farm somewhere. Although neglected in recent years, this movie
has a permanent place of honor in one of the most amazing
three-year creative streaks any director ever had.
John Ford had a big emotional investment in The Wings of Eagles,
and his favorite star John Wayne rewarded the director with one
of his strongest performances. The subject is Frank "Spig" Wead,
Naval aviation legend turned Hollywood screenwriter, who had
written Ford's very good 1932 movie Air Mail and his magnificent
WWII elegy They Were Expendable (1945). Ford was fond of
exploring the theme of "victory in defeat." Wead's life was made
to order for that. The hell-raising flyboy shenanigans, and his
flailing marriage to a scrappy Irish redhead (The Quiet Man's
Maureen O'Hara reporting for duty), were abruptly curtailed by a
fall that left him with severe spinal damage. He should never
have been able to walk again, but he fought his way back to
limited mobility and built a new career as a writer. And when
WWII broke out, Wead made a key contribution to the Pacific air
war. It would be satisfying to report that The Wings of Eagles is
a triumph--that the broad comedy of the early reels cuts
brilliantly against the raw pain of the Weads' marriage, the
grief of a family broken and mended and broken again, the film's
specters of death and deep frustration. There are powerful
moments, but the low comedy is very low, the visual style
sometimes stark but more often just drab, and the screenplay is
very choppy about the passage of time.
They Were Expendable is the greatest American film of the Second
World War, made by America's greatest director, John Ford, who
himself saw action from the Battle of Midway through D-day. Yet
it's been oddly neglected. Or perhaps not so oddly: for as the
matter-of-fact title implies, the film commemorates a period,
from the eve of Pearl Harbor up to the impending fall of Bataan,
when the Japanese conquest of the Pacific was in full cry and
U.S. forces were fighting a desperate holding action. Although
stirring movies had been made about these early days, they were
g ho in their resolve to see the tables turned. They Were
Expendable, however, which was made when Allied victory was all
but assured, is profoundly elegiac, with the patient grandeur of
a tragic poem. "They" are the officers and men of the Navy's PT
boat service, an experimental motor-torpedo force relegated to
courier duty on Manila Bay but eventually proven effective in
combat. Their commander is played by Robert Montgomery, who
actually served on a PT and later commanded a destroyer at
Normandy (he also codirected the breathtaking second-unit action
sequences). John Wayne's costarring role as Montgomery's volatile
second-in-command initially looks stereotypically blustery, but
as the drama unfolds, Wayne sounds notes of tenderness and
vulnerability that will take Duke-bashers by surprise. They Were
Expendable is a heartbreakingly beautiful film, full of
astonishing images of warfare, grief, courage, and dignity. This
is a masterpiece.