Searching for John Ford: A Life

Rating:
Summary: "Searchin' Way Out There"...
Review: I don't know why anyone interested in the seminal American director, John Ford, would not find this book utterly fascinating. McBride illuminates Ford's early life and the beginnings of his long career with detailed care. He explores his problematic character with skill, compassion and insight without ever being patronizing and without ever holding back about the darkest aspects of Ford's personality and behavior. For instance, McBride makes it very clear that Ford does not deserve as much credit as he usually gets for what was really an ambivalent attitude toward the notorious Hollywood "blacklist" during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and '50s.

McBride's book is packed with vivid anecdotes from associates, observers of Ford and members of the legendary "Stock Company" (Harry Carey, Jr.'s stories are really wonderful!), and his own critiques of the films are sophisticated and augmented by quotes and assessments by other major "Fordians." McBride is generous with his inclusion of other critics' views and when he disagrees he himself is never mean or dismissive. His illuminations of the significance of the post-WWII western, his accounts of the intricacies of the "blacklist" and his sympathetic understanding of Ford's last films and what they represented are especially valuable.

There may indeed be other biographies just as good as McBride's but this is a captivating, comprehensive and intellectual volume for the Ford aficionado. It is immensely satisfying!

Rating:
Summary: A Monumental Job
Review: This is a very good biography of Ford. Yes, McBride relies on Sarris and Carey Jr. a good bit of the time, yet this book remains very interesting and does a thorough job covering the many films Ford made.

Strengths of the book include an eye-opening look at Ford's WWII service, (How many other guys were at both Midway and D-Day and managed to get to Burma and Yugoslavia as well?) a clear presentation of Ford's relations with the different studios (the list of "better" titles for The Quiet Man the head of Republic tried to force on Ford is hysterically funny) and an evenhanded evaluation of Ford's behavior during the blacklist era.

Perhaps the evenhandedness of McBride's tone is what I liked the most about the book. One could take Ford's life and turn it into a straightforward case of hero-worship, or one could take an axe to him up and down the line, pointing out his failures in family life, his bigoted comments, his questionable actions in some controversial issues. McBride avoids falling into either extreme camp. We get Ford warts and all here, and it is left up to us to decide.

My only complaint is that the book is too short. I would have liked more discussion on a few films, and I would have liked a chapter on Ford's posthumous reputation. McBride raises the issue in his introduction that Ford is being forgotten by the new generation of writers and filmmakers, but he never quite tells why.

Still, this was a fine book, one that I read quickly despite its length.

Rating:
Summary: A tribute to horseshit
Review: This might be the definitive(if that makes sense...)biography of the American Renoir (according to François Truffaut, who eventually came to understand and appreciate the director's work after years of disdain...contrary to Rohmer who never changed his mind), even if thoroughly researched works, among which quite recent ones, are already available: Tag Gallagher's, among others, seemed to embody the bulk of what could be said today of the "greatest poet of the western saga"( "horseshit", according to the guy himself...) or even the "Shakespeare of cinema"...until the release of Joseph Mc Bride's Searching for John Ford.
Mc Bride, with Michael Wilmington, had already explored with sympathy and insight the rich complexity, destructive contradictions and inner conflicts building up the director's work in their 1974 John Ford. The book was an assumed reading of the films in the light of Ford's search for allegiance as a first generation Irish-American, progressively doomed by disappointment and bitterness.The analyses of movies such as Straight Shooting (maybe Ford's first, with most of his themes already in...),The Searchers or The Man who Shot Liberty Valance conveyed a sense of poetry owing as much to the authors as to the soul of the works studied.
This new biography is a thirty-years job, exploring deeper than ever the interconnections between the director's inner life and his films. Nothing is here anecdotal,all is but aimed at understanding a man. As Martin Scorcese puts it on the huge volume backcover: Searching for John Ford should be compulsory reading. And even if Renoir did deserve a pretty good amount of good critical studies, the French John Ford has never been paid such a tribute.