Tryavna

Like other reviewers, I was disappointed with this documentary in many ways. As some have already pointed out, it gets several basic facts wrong: John Wayne was a star before "Stagecoach" (albeit mostly in B westerns), there were complex characters in silent westerns (just take a look at the 1916 William S. Hart movie "Hell's Hinges"), the United States was drawn into WWII at the end of 1941 (not in 1942 as implied by the narrator), and Ford won either four or six Academy Awards depending on whether you count the two he won for his war-time documentaries (this movie apparently forgets about "December 7th" and claims just five). Heck, if Wikipedia is to be believed, recent documents indicate that Ford didn't even attack Cecil B. DeMille at the DGA meeting in quite the way we've been led to believe all these years....

However, I was much less bothered by this movie's focus on Ford's politics than the other reviewers have been. I can understand why some people turn to TCM to escape current politics, but Ford's shifting political views have been a major question for biographers, critics, and fans for decades. So I think the topic is fair game, especially when you consider that several of Ford's own movies were extremely political: the pro-IRA "The Informer," the pro-civil rights (in the general sense) "The Prisoner of Shark Island," the pro-New Deal "The Grapes of Wrath," the implicitly pro-union "How Green Was My Valley," etc. "What made Ford shift to the right in his later years?" this documentary asks. Or perhaps more accurately, what makes us think that Ford shifted to the right when perhaps he didn't after all?

Personally, I think this movie's chief interest is that it spends quite a bit of time toward the end examining "Sergeant Rutledge" (1960) and "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964), two Ford films that never seem to attract much attention but that tackled minority rights head on during the turbulent '60s. This documentary actually made some smart points about both of those movies and enriched my appreciation for them. I suppose that's why I ultimately consider this relatively short documentary worthwhile. That said, it's puzzling that, apart from Chale Nafus, the filmmaker didn't turn to critics of color to discuss these two movies. What does, for example, Donald Bogle have to say about "Sergeant Rutledge" or Angelo Baca (who actually appears in this documentary but doesn't talk about Ford's films directly) have to say about "Cheyenne Autumn"? How perceptive, or not, was Ford's treatment of the Buffalo Soldiers or the Cheyenne?

If you're looking for a good overview of Ford's career, you're better off seeking out one of several book-length biographies or Peter Bogdanovich's still-excellent "This Is John Ford" (1971). If you're a hard-core Ford fan, this documentary's more narrow focus is worth an hour of your time as long as its inaccuracies don't distract you too much -- or you don't mind its explicitly political angle.