Ford and Wayne
By Check out the cool discussion on Johns Ford and Wayne between Lance Mannion, James Wolcott, and a variety of others here, here, here, here, and here. The matter of the discussion has to do with Wayne and Ford’s conservative politics, and with the general aesthetic value of Ford’s films. To give a short and completely unfair summary, Wolcott is troubled by both, while Mannion is only troubled by the former.
My thoughts? First, I’ll confess that the extent of my experience with John Ford films is much more limited than I would like. This bothers me a lot, as The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are among my favorite films. I also quite like My Darling Clementine. On the other hand, I find Rio Grande almost unwatchable. I have not, to my regret, seen The Quiet Man, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Stagecoach, or The Grapes of Wrath.
On the general strength of Ford’s films, I simply can’t agree with Wolcott. I am utterly untroubled by Ford’s re-use of the Monument Valley locations in every film. This indicates to me an understanding of the Old West as a mythic space, and of the Western as a mythmaking project. It conveys to me a sense of familiarity and comfort, rather than the laziness that Wolcott seems to see. While I’m sympathetic with some of his objections, including most notably his hatred of “all the corny, boisterous Irish horseplay in [Ford’s] films,” I find that these tendencies don’t bother me in his best films.
On the reactionary question, I have to agree more with Wolcott than Mannion regarding the appalling content of Ford’s politics (of Wayne, the less said the better). Mannion writes:
Ford was staunchly anti-communist and he could blow off hats and lift skirts with the breezes raised by his all too energetic flag waving, but 60 and 70 years ago those qualities did not disqualify you from being a Democrat or even a liberal.
This is true, but does not capture the most reactionary aspects of Ford’s art. What bothers me the most about, say, Rio Grande is the unrepentant Confederate nostalgia. Rehabilitating the Confederacy and the Confederate project is a long term and extraordinarily harmful project, and has been going on for roughly 140 years, give or take a few months. Ford played a non-trivial role in this project. In Rio Grande, for example, Wayne plays a cavalry colonel who is desperately troubled by his decision to follow orders and burn a collection of Southern plantations. His wife, a Southerner, left him for this very reason. Wayne re-enters the good graces of his wife by giving her a Confederate token, thus admitting his wrongdoing and healing the marriage. I’m not shocked, but I am appalled.
Why do I like The Searchers, but not Rio Grande? The reactionary politics of Ford and Wayne aren’t exactly more restrained in the former film, but they develop in unexpected and interesting ways. Wayne plays a Confederate soldier in The Searchers, a soldier bitter about the Confederate defeat and unwilling to re-integrate himself into “civilian” life. We get some of the same memorialization of the Confederate cause as we do in Rio Grade, but with a difference; Ethan Edwards is not an admirable character. Ford takes pains to point out that Edwards is an anachronism, a model for no one’s behavior. Edwards is extraordinarily reactionary, but also agonizingly twisted. We sympathize with and are repulsed by his character at the same time.
After watching The Searchers many times, I’ve come to the conclusion that the strength of Edwards as a character, and the film as a whole, depends to great degree on the reactionary politics of both Wayne and Ford. To be a bit more clear, I don’t think that any actor who wasn’t John Wayne, with all that “John Wayne” represented, could have pulled off Ethan Edwards. We believe Edwards as a character because we don’t have any trouble in accepting Wayne in that role. Even if Wayne doesn’t believe everything that Edwards is saying, he clearly believes some of it, or something very much like it. This allows us to buy the idea that Edwards genuinely faces a dilemma regarding what to do with his niece. Moreover, Ford takes Edwards’ struggle entirely seriously, and doesn’t let the audience off the hook by either revealing a soft side to Edwards character or by demonizing him. In other words, he steadfastly refuses to allow us to either love or hate Ethan Edwards, instead forcing us to deal with Wayne’s character on his own terms. There is never a sense of a liberal paternalism, waiting to teach us a lesson about men like Edwards. Instead, we get the sense that Ford is just as torn by the Edwards character as Edwards is about his niece. I think that something very similar is going on in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Wayne again plays a reactionary, although the political commitments of Tom Doniphon are a bit more abstract than those of Edwards. Again, we appreciate that actor, director, and character are all torn in similar ways.
So, I suppose I would argue that Ford and Wayne’s politics are inextricable from some of their finest films. When things don’t work out, you get Rio Grande. When they do, you get The Searchers.