the good soldier (ford madox ford)

There was a scrawled note in the book, which I have had for many moons, from 1985. Which suggests it is forty years since I last read it. I have clung to the memory of the book, no matter how faint. But I had forgotten quite what a barnstormingly brilliant piece of writing it is.

Structurally you might say it’s all over the place. The narrator leaps from one moment in the past to another, seemingly at times willy-nilly. The story unfolds like a crumpled sheet. The affairs of Edward Ashburnham, around which the narrative is constructed, flicker and fade. Even the affair with the narrator’s wife, Florence. In the hands of another writer this would be the tragic spine of the story, but Ford has a shrewder take on human nature than most. He recognises that relationships, including marriage, are arrangements. Even love affairs, supposedly driven by the imperatives of the heart, are contingent on time, place and the individual’s tendency to want to fall in love. Edward is a wanton fool, but he is also driven by an excess of what the narrator calls sentimentality, but might also be called affection. In spite of his infidelities, he is a good man to many. Just not his wife. And, as the novel explains, there are reasons for that, which might include that his wife wasn’t ready when she became his wife. Timing is all. Affairs of the heart are accidents waiting to happen.

The exhumation of the affairs and relationships which make up the novel is surgical. Unlike Waugh in Brideshead, perhaps, any romanticism is excised, even if the narrator, and perhaps the reader, cannot help but construct from the figure of the Wykehamist, Edward Ashburnham, a vision of the ideal Englishman, right down to his clumsy naivety in love. He is the cursed romantic, whose absurdity is both admired and reviled by the Yankee narrator.  The differences between an English romanticism and an American pragmatism is laid bare. The novel offers a counterpoint to the typical generalisation of the English as a cold, passionless race. Under the starchy surface, blood rages. The weasel under the cocktail cabinet, as Pinter puts it. 

the fugitive (d. john ford & emilio fernández, w. dudley nichols, graham greene)

Ford’s Mexican movie is a curious, beautifully lit creature. Loosely adapted from the Graham Greene novel, The Power and the Glory, it tells the tale of a priest being pursued by the Mexican army during the religious persecutions following the Mexican revolution. Henry Fonda plays the priest with a deadpan solemnity. The whole movie feels as though it has been mounted and framed, which is gloriously effective during many of the beautifully shot action sequences, or the impeccably lit interiors, but makes for a slightly stiff human narrative. Ford seems to relish the visual possibilities of filming in Mexico, but his actors aren’t given scope to do much more than look the part. 

nb - curious to think of Ford and Buñuel filming in Mexico at more or less the same time.

tobacco road (d. ford, w. nunnally johnson)

Tobacco Road is adapted from a stage play, written by Jack Kirkland, in turn adapted from the novel by Erskine Caldwell. It deals with a family from the Deep South that has fallen on hard times, following the depression. The family has turned into a group of likeable larrikins, who drive like maniacs, squabble and seem to survive on a wing and a prayer. In the introduction to the film, it was asked why these characters would have appealed to Ford as the subjects of one of his movies. But the family belong to a lonG line of hillbillies, a strand of US culture which can be traced from Huckleberry Finn to The Dukes of Hazard right through to JD Vance today. The idea of a genial company of characters living off the land is embedded in the North American psyche, and not so very far removed from Thoreau. These characters have an innate charm which is loosely tied up with the idea of freedom, a freedom to break the rules and live how they want to, which has inspired US consciousness since the earliest days, and Ford does a stirring job portraying their rumbunctious energy. 

fort apache (d. ford, w. frank s. nugent, james warner bellah)

Ford’s sweeping cavalry western is the kind of stuff we in the Anglosphere were raised on. The cavalry is coming. The injuns speaking ‘mexican’. John Fucking Wayne. Watching it one can trace a line in the thinking of those who believe they have a right to annex other people’s territory by any means possible; to trick, cheat and attack those ‘others’ who help to define the supposed values that the aggressor represents.

And yet, whilst being the kind of film that helped to consolidate those opinions, merely by presenting the matrix, Fort Apache is in fact a complex work of art, conscious of the moral ambiguity of the material. Hell, even Wayne feels betrayed by the American hero. In choosing to tell this story, Ford analyses the cruelty and duplicity involved in the conquest of the West. Fonda’s Captain Thursday is revealed in the end to be a foolish popinjay whose arrogance leads his troops to destruction. In one great scene between Wayne and Fonda, the tension between the two reaches boiling point. The casting of Wayne as Fonda’s rival is inspired: the true American is not the one who seeks a genocidal confrontation, it’s the one who is prepared to risk his life to achieve a peaceable settlement with the Apache.

One wonders if the sweeping cinematography and the comedic Irish characters work to obscure this message. The film is layered with enough sub-plots and B-stories to make the most exacting script doctor happy. The images are still breathtaking, all these years later. In so many ways it feels like an emblematic US film. But contained within the apple is the worm of rapaciousness. In a way Fort Apache might have been the place where Doctor Strangelove was born. 

young mr. lincoln (d. john ford, w. lamar trotti, rosemary benét)

Films gain relevance through context. For decades, Ford’s Young Lincoln might have seemed outdated, irrelevant, a throwback to another North American era, one that had little to do with the present. However, watching it at this point in history, its lessons about what might truly represent US values is a sharp corrective. The quintessential American hero, Lincoln is homespun and folksy. He knows how to speak to the common people, successfully thwarting a lynching through the power of his oratory alone. He also has a clear idea that there is a difference between right and wrong. When two brothers are accused of murdering a local, Lincoln offers to defend them, convinced they are innocent in large part by his relationship with their mother, who reminds him of his own mother. Obviously, in this America, he is right, and he gets them off. The last third of the film is given over to events in the courtroom. The incohate values of the mob are thwarted and order is restored. It’s the beginning of the leader’s rise to greatness.

There’s something hokey about the film, in spite of Henry Fonda’s subtle performance, a performance which constructs Lincoln as an outsider, seeking to find his place in society. After seeing his son getting lost in the maze of his mind in The Trip, this is a complete counterpoint, with Henry Fonda’s Lincoln sure of his own judgement, confident in the innate rightness of his actions. There appears to be no place for Ford and Fonda’s Lincoln in today’s United States. 

the man who shot liberty valance (d. john ford, w. james warner bellah, willis goldbeck, dorothy m johnson)

I follow someone on twitter who has an Anglo Saxon name and goes to Cinemateca a lot. He’s one of a few regulars who I do not know, but who, I learn from their twitter posts, live alongside me as hardcore Cinemateca aficionados. Anyway, this person tweeted in Spanish the other day about how much he loves Liberty Valance, Ford’s last great western, one which is full of nostalgia for an era that has ended, whilst also seeking to celebrate the era that replaced it. I have a feeling the writer of the tweets is North American, and clearly has a far firmer footing on the Fordian ground than I do, but watching the film you can see where he’s coming from. Even in its attitudes that today would be questionable, there is a kind of gauche charm, the charm of the frontier, of men and women co-existing with the imminence of violence, and seeking to cherish every new day as a result.

Liberty Valance is also of interest in regard to its portrayal of the Mexican community, who have their own cantina, and to one of whom the hapless sheriff, Link Appleyard, is married. These Mexicans are seen knowing how to party, how to live each day at a time, and when Valance is killed, they come running over, as though they have no real skin in this game, which is after all, a battle between gringos. They are only really humanised when Jimmy Stewart is teaching the sheriffs daughter grammatical English and North American values. Here lurks a forerunning echo of Cormac Macarthy, the sense that that other world, the one which is being displaced by Stewart’s lawyer and is his ilk, will continue to flourish across the border, where the frontier rules will still apply.

There is also, in the film’s remate, an implicit critique of the way notions of history and even civilisation are constructed on the back of myths which are in fact false. The only man who could ever have killed the malevolent Liberty Valance was Wayne, another pea out of the same pod. But Wayne will be buried in a pauper’s grave, only retaining the dignity of his boots because the rival he sent on his way to Washington, and who has stolen the credit for Valance’s death, has come back to Shinbone to honour him. 

strong island (d yance ford)

Strong Island is a meditative, deeply felt and personal documentary, made be Yance Ford about the death of his/her brother, William. William was shot after a petty dispute. His killer was never brought to trial. The documentary analyses the impact of the death on what had been an aspirational family. Her mother was a successful teacher and William himself had just qualified as a correctional officer at the time of his death. Following his murder, their close-knit family was devastated by the way that the state refused to bring his killer to trial. Had the tables been turned, had William been white and his killer black, they had no doubt that justice would have been pursued. There are other aspects of the case which the film touches on, albeit in fleeting detail, such as the unmarked car that sat outside the family home in the days after William’s death and the calls in the middle of the night. But, more than anything else, it feels as though the making of this film is a cathartic, necessary journey for the filmmaker, whose face is captured in vivid close-up, wrestling with the duty bequeathed to ensure that a brother’s death would not be forgotten; that the art of the director’s cinema would offer at least a hint of justice, where the processes of the state have offered none. 

nocturnal animals (w&d tom ford)

There is much to admire in the curious case of Nocturnal Animals. The film’s conceit is that Amy Adams’ character is reading a novel by her ex-husband, (Jake Gyllenhaal), which recounts the story of a husband’s quest for vengeance after his wife and daughter are murdered by a gang of hillbilly hicks following a nighttime encounter on a deserted West Texas highway. The kidnapping scene in the  B-story generates an impressive degree of dramatic tension which fuels the whole film. In addition, the editing, presumably locked into the script, is superb, as the film cuts between the B-storyline and Adams’ lonely Art Dealer character, whilst then incorporating a C-storyline which is the backstory of Adams and Gyllenhaal’s ill-fated marriage. The cinematography and score are Hitchcockian. As noted, there’s much to admire and for large swathes of its two hours, the film is captivating, as we wait to discover what all this means.

Which is where the other side of the coin comes into play. In the end, it would appear that what the director is seeking to do is present a study of masculinity. What makes for a strong man and what makes for a weak man? Gyllenhaal, the novelist, (Gyllenhaal also plays Tony, the victim of his own story, meaning he’s presumably the novelist’s doppelgänger), is dumped by Adams because he’s seen as weak and romantic. In the climactic scene of the B-story, Gyllenhaal, the fictional character, breaks down and blames himself for what happened to his wife and daughter, saying his weakness was to blame. Gyllenhaal the fictional character is presented with two alpha-male antagonists in his wife’s murderer and the detective who investigates the case. The Adams character, who looks like she’s being set up to be the protagonist, virtually disappears from the narrative; her role is to read the book and look distressed as she has flashbacks to the events surrounding the marriage she walked out of. 

The culmination of all this, (sorry to spoil it), is that just when it appears that Adams and Gyllenhaal are going to reunite and possibly get back together again, after he’s communicated his cryptic message through the novel, he chooses to stand her up. At which point, one’s reaction might be, as was mine: is that it? Does the Gyllenhaal character finally prove his masculinity and overcome his weakness by standing up his ex-wife? Her chosen profession as an amazingly successful art dealer has become little more than incidental by this point. Where the film had hinted in the first act at an Antonioni-esque inquisition into the correlation of the values of the art world and the real world, this is a strand which isn’t developed. (There’s even a pseudo Hirst vitrine at one point, a cow with needles sticking out of it.) It’s also notable that the B-story, (the novel) doesn’t really go anywhere, turning into a run-of-the-mill revenge drama which comes to a predictable finale.

Ultimately, what this  glass bead game of a movie presents is a sophisticated structural approach which lacks any real punch. It’s clear that the issue of masculinity that Ford addresses is a potent one in his country, where a macho blowhard can become President because he’s perceived to talk tough and wear a red hat with a catchy slogan. It would appear that there is some kind of crisis of masculinity (perhaps in truth there always has been) and Nocturnal Animals gets the spear gun out and aims at a viable target. Unfortunately, in spite of the beauty of the chase, all it does in the end is deliver a flesh wound. 

the seventh fire (w&d jack pettibone riccobono, w shane slattery-quintanilla, andrew ford)

The Seventh Fire recounts the story of two indigenous North American Indians living in a small town in Minnesota. Neither the older Rob Brown or the younger Kevin are role models. Rob has spent his life in and out of prison. He’s a drug and alcohol addict. The film follows the days he spends before he’s about to start his fifth stint in prison, desperate to enjoy his last days of liberty. Kevin is younger. He’s 18. He has more hope. But he’s already dealing meth and getting addicted at the same time. He deals to the young white youths (who could probably step out of a Linklater movie). His girlfriend ditches him. His life is going to pieces and he ends up in a correctional facility. Rob’s last night of freedom descends into a bacchanal, which is filmed in the raw just as potently as Toro Negro, (Carlos Armella, Pedro González-Rubio), another film which depicts with a terrible candour the ongoing struggle of the native American indians to adapt, half a millennia later, to the imported culture which was imposed upon them. 

This culture is artfully kept at the margins of the film. Kevin makes enquiries about an organisation called La Plazita Institute which incorporates Native American traditions into the rehabilitation of young offenders. It looks at one point as though this is going to turn into a life-affirming positive narrative and the film is all the stronger for not going down that route. Similarly, Rob is a wannabe poet, (one of his poems is featured in the film), who when he’s off the drugs in prison reconnects with his Ojibwe roots. But The Seventh Fire isn’t addressing the exceptional, upbeat stories. Both Rob and Kevin’s cases are all the more poignant because, in spite of the fact we like them, we want them to prevail, they don’t. Life for them is about hard times, bad choices and prison. Only in the very final sequence does the movie suggest, somewhat cryptically, the possibility of another outcome to Rob’s story.

The Seventh Fire is a film which is greater than the sum of its parts. Not a lot happens. There’s no great moment of catharsis or epiphany. This is about how people live day-to-day live within a society where their very presence is like a guilty secret that shouldn’t be told. This is the anti-Utopia, the stolen land, belonging to souls who live in internal exile.