Collaboration on John Ford Films
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The auteur theory developed by French film critics beginning in the 1950s is partly a convenient way of categorizing and analyzing films, collecting titles as the body of work of the director. More than this, though, the theory holds that it is the director more than anyone else who is responsible for the completed film, since he or she is the one who determines visual style and other matters in the course of production. The theory finds that the director expresses meaning through visual style and that analyzing the visual style of a given director reveals consistent thematic concerns, similarities in character development, and other repeated and recognizable signs of a single intelligence at work. At the same time, though, film remains a collaborative medium, and it would seem that directors would be influenced by their collaborators so that there should be some distinctions that can be made between different works according to other members of the production team. John Ford is noted for a large body of work extending from early silents to massive widescreen color epics into the 1960s. A number of his films have been Westerns and gave a distinct view of the West and of the Western hero. Dudley Nichols wrote Ford's most famous Western--Stagecoach--after a period of collaboration in the 1930s on a number of non-Western pictures. Nunnally Johnson wrote The Prisoner of Shark Island, The Grapes of Wrath, and Tobacco Road, and though none were strictly speaking Westerns,
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e symbolism to see the stagecoach and the people on it as representative of society, with the outlaw being the one who saves society because he is the most capable and the most energized.
Indeed, for this particular type of hero, a hero who would recur in other Ford works, it was not the fact that he was an outlaw as much as it was that he was the most capable and the most moral in the truest form. In this sense, there is a connection between the John Wayne character in Stagecoach and that in The Searchers because each does what has to be done for a community that cannot do for itself. The Searchers is written by Frank Nugent, but there are a number of thematic and character concerns that can be traced back to Stagecoach and even to earlier films. Ethan in The Searchers is not an outlaw, but he is an outsider. Like Ringo, he is not part of the society he serves and never can be. Indeed, if anything Ringo has the better chance of being part of society once he has vanquished the Plummers and married the prostitute. Ethan serves the community in The Searchers, arriving just when needed, and then he disappears back into the wilderness that is his true home, never being part of the community although he saves it and even contri
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Grapes Wrath, Yellow Ribbon, John Ford, Lamar Trotti, Ford's Westerns, McBride Wilmington, , Fort Apache, Frank Nugent, Ringo Stagecoach, frank nugent, father figure, wore yellow ribbon, john ford, wore yellow, yellow ribbon, fort apache, visual style, baxter notes, grapes wrath, films written, aspects cavalry life, island grapes wrath, prisoner shark island, shark island grapes,
Approximate Word count = 2774
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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