John Ford et Monument Valley (2013) - full transcript

Ever since my
old childhood I've always

been hooked on westerns.

I liked the action, the freedom.

I never realized as a
youngster going to school

that someday I'd become
a western director.

And I love westerns, I like
to get out on the desert,

on Monument Valley and
smell the fresh, clean air.

This place makes it seem
like it wasn't that long ago.

On the maps of Arizona and Utah,

this is called Monument Valley.

But to me it will always
be John Ford country.



As a matter of fact, folks
call this Ford's Point.

When you stand here and look around you,

you don't have to ask why John Ford loves

to make westerns or why
we like to go see them.

I've been a student of
John Ford for a few years.

He doesn't make pictures
about good guys or bad guys.

He makes stories about people.

On a her neck she wore a yellow ribbon

She wore in the winter
and the merry month of May

When I asked her why the yellow ribbon

She said it's for my lover
who was in the calvary

Calvary calvary calvary

She said it's for my lover
who was in the calvary

Calvary calvary calvary calvary



She says it's for my lover
who was in the calvary

No one before or since

has been able to get on film the vitality

and sheer beauty of the west.

When Pappy found Monument Valley,

he found a subject equal to his talent.

He came here for the first time in 1938,

brought me with him, the
picture, "Stagecoach."

Hold it!
- Whoa, steady, ho, ho.

Well Monument Valley
had always been inhabited

by the Navajo Indians
and in the early 20's,

they were having difficulty
to survive economically.

They really survived from
the wool from their sheep

and a man called Harry Goulding came there

almost by chance and decided
to set up a trading post

in the northwest entrance
to Monument Valley

and he gave employment
to a lot of the Navajo

and created more employment for them.

In 1938, he heard that
John Ford and the producer,

Walter Wanger were considering
to make a film version

of "Stagecoach" which is based on a novel

called "Stage to Lordsburg."

And he thought well
that, it'd be wonderful

if we could get him to shoot here

because most of the films,
most of the westerns

were shot in Gallop which was to the south

of Monument Valley but had
all the right ingredients

for the high street and the main,

it just had the right look
and it was inexpensive

and it had enough hotels for the unit.

So, Monument Valley was unknown,

so he went to Hollywood with a friend

and with a big album of photos
by an Austrian photographer,

Josef Muench Room and he
somehow tricked his way

into Walter Wanger's office in Hollywood

and met John Ford and persuaded
them to shoot the film

in Monument Valley.

And when Ford saw these fantastic
black and white pictures,

he said, "Now that's
the place I want to go."

From the adventures

of these American frontier characters,

John Ford has created a
truly great motion picture,

"Stagecoach."

I was 30-years-old then,

been around pictures for about 10 years.

I'd made dozens of westerns
with other directors

but except for a bit part here and there,

I hadn't worked with Pappy.

"Stagecoach" was not only
the first film he shot

in Monument Valley, it
was also the first western

he'd made with sound and the first time

he'd ever worked with me.

Took us about six weeks
to make that picture.

I was just telling the audience a little

about "Stagecoach."

First time we worked
together it seemed to me

right out here was one of your set ups.

Are you still trying to
impress me with your expertise?

No, I was just thinking
about how many pictures

we had made together since then.

How wonderful it is to
be back up here again.

And it's a living.
- Good living.

Ford's created off Monument Valley

an outdoor studio where
there were no passers by,

there was just the Navajo who
were being used as extras.

But there was no distraction,
they could go there,

they could live there for several weeks

and transport and communications

were incredibly primitive
when he made "Stagecoach."

It took almost weeks for
supplies to come and so on,

they just didn't come in
by jet plane as today.

It was very cut off.

So, I think he did have
to think about each

of those shots and I think
he wanted to integrate nature

into each shot so that the human beings

are always, I wouldn't say
they're dwarfed by nature

but they're almost at one with nature,

more so than practically any
other western director's work.

Howard Hawks, I think
it was, who said that

Ford's long shots were the
greatest in the history

of the cinema.

Monument Valley is so
identified with John Ford,

it's been said that if anybody
else made a picture here,

they'd be accused of plagiarism.

A shot like this a man on a horse

riding against the background
of harshness and beauty,

that's a John Ford trademark.

He doesn't just tell you a story,

he writes a poem about it.

He doesn't just point the camera,

he paints a picture with it.

I guess what John Ford
has been doing for close

to half a century is showing
his love for the west

by putting in motion the moods
of Remington and Russell.

Ford was very much
influenced by the paintings

of Remington and Russel who
both came to their maturity

at the end of the 19th century.

I think a lot of people

when they first see the western paintings

of Remington and Russell,
assumed that they must

have been at work in the mid-19th century.

But it wasn't so, they were
both born in the 1860's

and so their work was really

toward the end of the 19th century

and that makes it all the more vivid

because it was not so
far away from the west

which Ford was actually going to shoot.

Jack would always get
all the Remington sketches

and portraits and I studied them.

And I tried to get his
action with the pictures.

It was exactly Remington's
also Charlie Russell.

Matter of fact, it was
more Charlie Russell

than Remington.

We just studied his pictures,
I studied them rather

and tried to copy them.

Of course with the calvary
stuff, that was mostly Remington.

Around her neck she
wore a yellow ribbon

She wore it in the winter
and the merry month of May

When I asked her why the yellow ribbon

She said it's for my love
who is in the calvary

Calvary calvary

Both those artists,
I think were romantics.

They had this romantic
vision of the settler

as some kind of courageous man
who was braving the elements,

braving the savages out there

who were stopping them
from really colonizing

this wonderful, wonderful wilderness

that was confronting them.

And of course, that's an
incredibly right wing view

but at the time it was
not perceived at such.

It was perceived that the white
man was bringing something

to the Native American which
would improve his lots,

rather as the British
missionaries went out to Africa

to improve the lot of the black man.

And what Ford liked about
Remington and Russell, I think,

as well as not just Remington and Russell,

but also slightly earlier
painters like Albert Bierstadt,

like Schreyvogel, they all illustrated

this huge barren landscape
which had not been populated

and had no, to some extent, no
towns and no buildings on it.

And that was a fascination at the time.

What he liked about Remington and Russell

was the use of the horse and rider

which is a common factor
in both their work

or so even the sculptures
and I think he tried

to copy the image of the sole
rider against the landscape,

against the horizon and
there's one particular shot

of Henry Fonda in "My Darling Clementine"

where you can find an exact replica almost

in, I'm not sure if it's
Remington or Russell

but certainly one of those pictures

that you will illustrate.

He didn't just copy the
detail of the paintings,

he copied the spirit of the paintings,

that was the most important thing.

And when he came to film
"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,"

by that time he was
successful enough to use color

and color was coming in
more and more frequently

and so he said to Winton
Hoch, "Could you try to match

the colors of Remington?"

And so they did a lot of researches,

a lot of technical research
and it was really Winton Hoch

who I think created that look

which people then said
reminded them of Remington.

On her neck she wore a yellow ribbon

She wore it in the winter
and the merry month of May

When I asked her why the yellow ribbon

She said it's for my lover
who is in the calvary

Calvary calvary calvary calvary

She said it's for my lover
who is in the calvary

Ford was not afraid of using

what we would call artificial colors.

In the scene in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"

where John Wayne visits
his late wife's grave

and the sky behind is
extraordinarily colored,

it's not back projections,
it often is in Hollywood,

it was the lighting that
Winton Hoch achieved.

Somebody described Remington
as being the heart beat

of the western myth
and I think that's true

and you could say the same about Ford,

that he's the heart beat of western myth.

Because it was a myth and
his whole universe is a myth.

Drama moves
here, raw, violent, real.

You live the robust days of frontier men,

their nights of danger,
their laughs, their loves,

you feel a penetrating
chill of savage war crimes,

piercing impact of an
arrow shot from ambush,

of Indians of all nations banded together

for one last war on the
advancing white men.

We must stop this war Pony That Walks.

Too late, Nathan, too late.

Remington once said that
"I'm trying to render the west

as I saw it big and full of color

and I couldn't paint it any other way."

And I think that applies to Ford's use

of Monument Valley too.

He wanted it to be big,
he wanted it to play

an integral part in each
composition and in each film.

"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"
is not just wonderful

because of the photography
but it was wonderful also

for this incredible emotion about someone

how has given his life to the Army

and who has to retire and doesn't want to

but accepts it sooner
or later he has to go

and it chimes with his own
loss, the loss of his wife

and all that which is in the past,

and he's not sure what he's going to.

Has he got anything to do
after he retires from the Army.

You don't have to say it
captain, I know all this

is because of me.

You know never to apologize,
it's a sign of weakness.

Yes but this was your last
patrol and I'm to blame for it.

Only the man who commands can be blamed,

it rests on me.

Mission failure.

It's a very moving film

and it's balanced the sentimentality

by the humor of Victor
McClankin which he always brings

in this wonderful, rather
porky, we say in English,

porky humor, a bit crude
but it just like the clown,

or like the grave diggers in Hamlet,

you know, it just stops the
film becoming too dark, too sad.

Men halt, now we want no
unpleasantness, a toast first

and the guard house after if you're able.

In Remington's paintings, particularly

we rarely see cowboys and
Indians in actual battle

or fighting each other and
that's because Remington

had a profound sympathy
for the Native American.

And we mustn't forget that
John Ford also did that.

He was criticized during the 50's and 60's

for having used the Navajo
as extras for other tribes.

I mean, they play not just
Navajo, they play Cherokee,

they play Cheyenne, they play Apache

and in "Cheyenne Autumn"

all the Cheyennes were of course, Navajos

but I think he did it without any malice.

I don't think he was trying
to demean the Navajo tribe

by doing that and I think on the contrary

he had this great respect for them

and perhaps towards the end of his life,

when he got into his 60's he felt guilty

for having made such a big
career out of the Indians

and I think that pushed him
to make "Cheyenne Autumn"

as a kind of coda to his
entire western career,

a final salute to Monument Valley

but also a salute to the
nobility of the American Indian.

Their grace under pressure,

the fact that they did not
give into the white men

without themselves, they didn't
surrender any of their honor

and I think he liked that.

To set the record straight,
Pappy cast the Indians

as heroes in the last western
he made, "Cheyenne Autumn."

He did it he said in an interview

because "We've treated them so badly."

These are the
heroes of this epic story.

You know I came here
to carry out a task,

I can't leave now.

Working in this school house won't help.

It will show them
that I'm on their side.

Mm-mm, not unless you can change color.

You know what they call whites,

and...

Means fighter.

That's right and that's
what they think of us,

that's what they think of all of us.

And why shouldn't they,

how many Cheyennes have you fought,

how many have you killed?

The less than
300 men, women and children

fought a fantastic running battle

with an army of more
than 10,000 blue coats

in a seemingly hopeless exodus
to their Yellowstone homeland

nearly 1500 miles away.

What's interesting, I
think, in Ford's westerns

is that the baddies are
not always the Indians,

they're often the white men,
particularly the traders

and gun runners and then on
the other hand the gangs,

like the Clanton family
in "My Darling Clementine"

who prey upon the new
settlers when they arrive

and take advantage of
their rather naive optimism

and...

Ford used Monument Valley, even though

it was geographically incorrect.

So for example, in "My Darling Clementine"

the real Tombstone was about
600 kilometers to the south

of Monument Valley but you don't mind

because I think that Ford
was wanting to be faithful,

not so much to the precise
geographical locations

of the old west but to the
spirit of the old west.

I think part of the spirit
of the old west for him

was this idea of man
being dwarfed by nature.

This concept of the far
west as being a paradise,

a place where the manifest destiny offered

to American settlers could come true,

everything was unspoiled,
everything was larger than life.

And so he managed to create this symbiosis

between man and his
environment in Monument Valley

more successfully than anywhere else.

What he did, Ford for
Monument Valley for me

was that he put there the
symbols of civilization

or white civilization, he planted a church

in the middle of Monument
Valley, he planted a graveyard

in the middle of Monument
Valley, he planted a homestead,

a school, these were
things which were symbols

of family life and family life
was very important to Ford.

And so I think that
artificially he did this

and it reaches an extreme
point in "The Searchers"

when the homestead of the Swedish settlers

is really in the middle of nowhere.

And you can see it's
been built for the film

and it's one of the few jarring
notes in "The Searchers"

where you think well that's
just not, it wouldn't be there,

it wouldn't be like that you know,

exposed to all the elements,
they would have chosen

a more sheltered place but he
does it because he wants that

to be a symbol of the family and the farm

and raising cattle, raising
sheep, raising children,

the sense of life going on.

From the
thrilling pages of life

rides a man you must fear and respect,

a man who's uncontrollable
will and boneless determination

carved a rusty rough and
boisterous slice of history

called "The Searchers."

It's John Wayne as Ethan Edwards

who had a rare kind of courage,

the courage that simply keeps on and on

far beyond all reasonable endurance,

never thinking of himself as martyred,

never thinking of himself as brave.

So we'll find him in
the end I promise you,

we'll find him.

When I met John Wayne, I never met him.

The only time ever I was near John Wayne,

this is why I always think
like, forget you know,

now he should have known.

It was in the commissary, you
know what the commissary is,

at Warner Brothers.

I had long hair and I was
wearing a leather vest and jeans

and I was editing a rock
documentary for... yes.

He was in Paris, I was editing
this at Warner Brothers,

I had just came out to California

and there I was in the commissary,

there'd be all these actors,
you'd say there's so and so

and I was kinda new.

I was trying to get "Mean
Streets" made but I couldn't

get it made.

And so a year later I finally got it made

with Roger Corman.

In the meantime I was editing.

So, I would sit in the
commissary and one day I sat

right behind me, right
next to me was John Wayne.

So I just sat down right here
and there were two people

eating with me and John Wayne
did this, he looked back

at me like so, he got up

and moved his chair away from me.

Because he didn't wanna be
sitting too close to me,

I had long hair, dirty hippie,
which I was not a hippie,

I don't know, you know, just a long,

everybody had long hair at the time.

And I said, "Oh I see, all right."

"We still love you," I said,
my mind, I said in my heart,

I said, "I still love
you, you'll never know,

you'll never know, it's okay, it's okay."

Keep moving, keep moving.

Looks like you got yourself surrounded.

Yeah, and I figure on
getting myself unsurrounded.

Let's go!

I remember the night my friends

and I who are young Italian-American boys,

we saw the film we were
13-years-old in VistaVision,

which is a big difference.

The part of the, the track
part of the art of the film,

even more so was the use of
VistaVision in Monument Valley

was an extraordinarily, if
you ever saw that projected,

it was overwhelming, the visual clarity

and the beauty of it.

And so the landscape was a major character

is what I'm saying.

And we then saw the film as
we got to be 15, 16-years-old,

17-years-old, it was always on
television in black and white

and we always watched it and watched it.

And one night in the bar we're drinking

and my friend says, "You
know in "The Searchers,"

I said, "Yeah," he says, "There's a scene

where he's watching his
brother, his sister-in-law

take his coat and fold the coat."

"But you know, I think that
he was in love with her."

I said, "You know I think you're right."

And this is not a film critic,
we were the young kids.

He said, "Boy that's interesting,"

'cause we knew John Ford's name by then.

Boy that was really nice the way John Ford

just put that in there, you know, we felt

about that sub, the whole
basic basis is based on that,

on that one shot, a medium shot of her.

It's not even a close up.

Some of the more
extraordinary, deeper scenes

are all done in medium
shot and white shot.

So that when Ward Bond
takes that cup of coffee

and he's in the foreground
staring straight ahead

and John Wayne comes out and
goes to say goodbye to Martha,

there's a slight hesitation,
he winds up kissing her

on the forehead when he leaves.

Ward Bond has never seen a think.

He's looking straight
ahead drinking that coffee.

Ward Bond notices it and he turns away.

He turns away.

And that is like poetry to us, you know.

And that's what and again on a big screen,

the image of her folding
the coat in VistaVision

is much more powerful on
television she becomes this big,

on a small screen here,
you know it's okay.

But on a giant screen, he
didn't need a close up.

And so we were, it was
just a average film goers

beginning to discover the
film, the depth of the film

as we viewed it and as we got older.

A good example of
Ford's economy of means

is when early on in "The Searchers"

they've started their
journey and John Wayne,

who has a sense of doom that
things are going to go badly,

he rides up into a defile,
a cleft in the mountains,

and leaves the other two or three there

and they watch him and he comes back

and doesn't say anything

but it's clear that he's
found something terrible

and probably the body
of one of the settlers.

And takes his knife and makes
a gesture of frustration,

terrible frustration and
when they find the body

of the Indian under the big rock,

John Wayne shoots out his
eyes, so that he can't travel

among the four winds, he
would have had no after life.

He does it with a fury
which is sort of pinned up,

comes out from within, that's
what I like about that film

is this sense of real anger
that's inside this man.

And he comes out at all kinds,

when they're being pursued by the Indians

and he's defending the
other side of the river

with Ward Bond, Ward Bond's
got this long stove pipe hat on

and they're firing away
and Wayne goes on firing

long after it's necessary
and finally Ward Bond,

you know, pushes down
the rifle and says stop,

because he can't understand
that Wayne's got this terrible,

terrible anger in him for
what's been done to the family

at the beginning.

I think that will always haunt him.

"The Searchers" still holds
up in terms of his racism,

in terms of his own demons inside himself.

And the camera tracking into his face,

when he turns and he sees
the two little Indian girls,

the two white girls who
were taken by the Indians,

he's absolutely, the look in his eyes,

that's an extraordinary actor

and also very brave for the time

because he was highly
unpleasant character,

a highly unlikeable character.

I found him, I found Lucy.

What you saw was a buck
wearing Lucy's dress.

I found Lucy back in the canyon.

Was she?

What do you want me to
do draw you a picture,

spell it out!

Don't ever ask me!

As long as you live
don't ever ask me more!

John Ford's
films are very Catholic,

this is another issue and
they deal with morality

and they deal with what's
right and what's wrong

in a very powerful way.

Go, go Martin, please!

Stand aside Martin!

No you don't Ethan, Ethan no you don't!

Stand aside!

And as we grew
and we watched the film

on television, and I'm not
talking about film critics,

I'm talking about average
guys, average kids,

average young men who
are basically film goers

and film lovers, we were
suddenly becoming aware

of more subtext and more
subtext in the picture

and more subtext and once we caught on

to Ethan Edwards'
character, what was really

going on inside of him, it
became a whole different picture.

Let's go home Debbie.

The ending of "The Searchers"

has fascinated students of
the John Ford western world

since it was first released in 1956.

Maybe it does because it's
an unhappy, happy ending,

a loss girl, Natalie Wood is found

and returned to her family,
John Qualen and Olive Carey,

Jeff Hunter and Vera Miles,
the young lovers are reunited.

But Ethan Edwards, the man
the story was all about

is left standing outside all alone.

People have wondered what
John Ford had meant by that.

He's never answered, I
can't answer for him,

I can only tell you what I had in mind.

When I crossed my arm, I did
it the way Harry Carey used

to do it, because his
widow was on the other side

of that door and he was the man Pappy said

taught him his trade.

One of the best examples of Ford's use

of Monument Valley and
of his incredible skill

at framing a composition is
the end of "The Searchers"

where John Wayne goes out of the door way

and in the background you
see this bulk site orange

of the rocks, the soil of Monument Valley

and inside is pure darkness.

It's as though he's at liberty finally,

he's gone, he's freed from
that burden of prejudice

which has haunted him throughout the film.

And then the door closes
and that's the last shot

of the picture and that is a
shot which I'm sure Coppola

used at the end of "The
Godfather" where Diane Keaton

is sent out of the room and the
door closes behind you know.

A lot of people have paid homage to Ford,

even though they don't
always admit that he's great

and Orson Welles, of course,

said that he watched "Stagecoach" 50 times

before he made "Citizen Kane"
and says John Ford, John Ford,

John Ford was my teacher,

we all know these legendary phrases.

And Welles, in fact, was
not at all like John Ford,

I think, in the way he composed imagery

but the spirit of Welles is
in many ways like John Ford,

particularly a film like,
"Falstaff" or "Chimes of Midnight"

where the character of "Falstaff"

is absolutely out of
John Ford, it really is,

not just Shakespeare, you know,
it's a John Ford character.

Oh they're engraved and everything.

This is good, to Jay Stewart.

Well I appreciate it very much boss.

For John Ford, making films

has always been what he
calls, "A job of work,"

but the Motion Picture
Academy of Arts and Sciences

has occasionally considered
it more than just a living.

In 1935, they presented
an Oscar to John Ford

for his direction of "The Informer."

Five years later "The Grapes
of Wrath" won him a second one.

The next year, "How Green was my Valley"

was voted best picture of the year

and John Ford won an
Oscar for directing it.

In 1942, John Ford was in the Navy

but he won an Oscar as the
director and photographer

on the documentary,
"The Battle of Midway."

And one year Commander
Ford won his fifth Oscar

for another documentary, "December 7th."

In 1952, "The Quiet Man"
put this one on his mantle.

Six all together and not
one of them for a western.

Now maybe that's because the excellence

of a John Ford western is something

that we all take for granted

or maybe it's because
he's made so many of them

that even he has lost count.

On camera or backstage,
music has always been

an important part of John Ford's westerns.

And by that I don't mean background music.

Pappy always told me that
"He'd rather hear good music

than bad dialogue."

But more than the music
in a John Ford western

means something, it evokes
a sense of tradition,

a nostalgia for simpler times
when all hope lay ahead.

There and I hope she's gonna stay

Hope she's gonna stay

The music in
this scene, Maureen O'Hare

in "Rio Grande" plays a different role.

For John Ford, there was
no need for dialogue,

the music said it all.

By the 1940's the score
became something very solid,

didn't it, the late 30's
Korngold, by the late 30's,

I think by the late 30's,
Warner Brothers had it's style,

MGM had it's style you know.

Fox had it's style.

And so when Bette Davis's
is listening, let me tell,

she tells William Wyler, which is a,

is it, "Tell me one thing,
when I'm going up those stairs,

is it gonna be me going up
the stairs or Max Steiner."

'Cause no matter what she
did it was underscored,

with this master use of big orchestra,

but that was the style
their wall to wall music.

Max Steiner, everything at
Warner Brothers wall to wall,

shot to shot, not one piece of dialogue

without music in the background.

It was the style, that's
all, it was style.

And also "My Darling Clementine"

when Linda Darnell is shot by accident,

they operate on her on the table, remember

and listen to the music in
the background, it's Mexican,

Mexican music and it works beautifully.

It works beautifully
counterpointing, again, literally

what I'm saying counterpointing.

But I understand to that
Ford and many of the way

these men worked at the time

that often at the end of a
movie, they'd give it over

to the studio and Darryl
Zanuck would put the score on.

First kiss is always the sweetest

From under a broad sombrero

In "Stagecoach"
Claire Trevor got the job.

She played a bar room
girl with a heart of gold.

Ringo asked me to marry him.

Is that wrong for a girl like me.

If a man and woman love each other

it's all right isn't it Doc?

Don't you know that boy's
headed back for prison?

Besides, if you two go in
the Lord's bed together,

he's gotta know all about you.

Ford's women are strong women

and the woman is a tough character,

not just in his westerns
but also in a film like

"The Grapes of Wrath"
where Ma Joad is the pillar

that holds the family
together and never gives up

and makes eventually this wonderful speech

saying we the people, you know we go on,

we will not be broken down by
poverty and by exploitation.

No, they are strong, you have
the mother, Mrs. Jorgensen

in "The Searchers" who is
clearly a pioneer woman

who's seen it all before
and can't be shocked.

So when news of somebody's death arrives,

she doesn't shed a tear.

It's her children who shed
tears but she has become

inured to this cruelty, this loss.

Although they were beautifully dressed,

they were frontiers women underneath

and they had to survive.

They often had to survive
when their men folk

left them for months and years at a time.

Do you remember in "My Darling Clementine"

when the wife arrives
looking for her husband

and they hadn't seen each
other for months and months

and months, but she's bot the courage

to have taken the stagecoach
into the wild west.

Even disguised
in eastern frills,

John Ford's women lose
none of their strength.

In "My Darling Clementine" Cathy Downs

could even get Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp

to take her to church.

The scene is simple,
clear and to the point

but to the me what's just as important

is the way John Ford
treats the characters.

His admiration for Wyatt Earp

and others who won the west at gunpoint

is almost reluctant.

Powerful women like
Clementine, the settlers

and the schoolmarms, he gave
his whole hearted respect.

What'd you say?

They said that, that
they'd like to hear something

from Mr. Stewart.

In "Cheyenne Autumn," I
remember you telling me

that the reason you
put me in as Wyatt Earp

that the whole picture was kinda serious

and it needed an intermission

but you didn't want people to get out

and get drinks and go to the bathroom,

so you put me in as Wyatt Earp
to keep them in their seats

and it actually was an
intermission on film,

is that correct?

Well, I don't know, Jimmy.

Thank you, now would you
hold that bottle up Miss?

Hold up high.

Now you, I want you to keep
your eye right on that bottle,

don't even blink.

It's kinda like hypnotized.

Keep your eye right on it Homer.

Keep your eye right on the bottle.

You're not gonna even feel it.

Give me the bottle again.

One side.

Any chance I get to
work with you or Henry

I would leap at the
chance, I mean, I mean,

that's why I'm here today.

Yeah, well.

I'm very flattered and please.

Well we love you boss.

You're a hell of an
intermissioner, an intermissionee,

I'll say that much for you.

The gag that I remember most

was Mr. Henry performed on me.

We're doing "Young Mr. Lincoln" and Henry,

I'd never met Henry and
the first time I saw him

he was in makeup, this is true, isn't it?

And we were up on location in Sacramento

working on the river.

So we finished and we got
on the plane last night

and this very upstanding
young man sat by me

and we started chatting, I
said, "Would you like a smoke?"

And he says, "No thanks,
I have some cigarettes

and you're smoking cigars."

And I says, "We've met before haven't we?"

He says, "Yes, I believe we have."

I says, "Well, I mean,
my name is John Ford."

He says, "Fine my name is Henry Fonda."

I said, "What!"

And this is true isn't it?

I had never seen him without the makeup

and I didn't even recognize him.

That's a true story.

That was a prank you pulled on me.

"Fort Apache"
last western outpost.

Here live the long, lean calvary men

who fear no living soul.

Here to are their women,
wives, mothers, sweethearts.

In "Fort Apache"
Ford created his own version

of the Battle of Little
Bighorn with Henry Fonda

and the roll model on Custer.

Ford's version may be
at variance with history

but his interest was not
in the man but in the hero.

His concern was not with
the assignment of blame

or placement of...

his interest was in the birth of a legend.

To John Ford, "Fort Apache"
was a eulogy to an era

and perhaps his way of saying
that heroes are men after all.

Colonel if you send out the regiment,

Cochise will think I tricked him.

Exactly, we have tricked him,

tricked him into
returning to American soil

and I intend to see that he stays here.

Colonel Thursday, I
gave my word to Cochise,

no man is gonna make a liar out of me sir.

Tell him I fight him without honor.

Tell him they're not talking to me

but United States government.

Tell that government orders him to return

to his reservation.

And tell him if they
have not started by dawn

we will attack.

Tell him that!

And that's the point
of view John Ford took

on almost every western he ever made.

And that's what John
Ford he prints the legend

and that's a fact.

What's interesting is that
whenever a John Ford hero

arrives in Monument Valley
whether it be John Wayne

or whether it be Henry Fonda,

they have nothing to their name.

In the case of John
Wayne and "The Searchers"

you know he's come there
after the Civil War,

his side has lost, he really
comes almost as an exile

and the same when Henry
Fonda arrives in Tombstone

in "My Darling Clementine"
you feel these are characters

who have left behind a life

and they're trying to start
something new and pure

in this wonderful landscape

and that's where he uses
Monument Valley so well.

He makes it a clean, pure place

where human beings can play
out there, their emotions

and start a new life.

I am not sure that all Ford's
characters are fallen heroes

because some are people
who fall during the film

in "Fort Apache."

Henry Fonda's character
is very, very unpleasant

but he comes to a bad end
during the film actually

where as it usually it's
the other way around.

Ford characters arrive with a lot of grief

in their background but
they end the film purged

and strengthened but in the
case of Fonda in "Fort Apache"

it's the other way
around, it's very tragic.

John Ford has said
that "The best things in film

happen by accident" and he may be right.

When I went out to what
used to be the back lot

of 20th Century Fox, I didn't
expect to find him there.

Henry how are you?
- I'm here.

Last time we worked together
was in "Mr. Roberts"

and the first time was
in "Young Mr. Lincoln."

You remember where you
are, you recognize this?

No I don't, this is the damnest place.

He told me that a
writer had come to see him

that week to interview him.

The result, I gathered satisfied him

but didn't give the writer
much material to work with.

I didn't tell him anything.

John Ford will talk
about anything but himself.

That makes him an easy man to like

and a hard man to explain.

That was the unique thing
about working with Ford,

he made you feel related to each other.

Actors, technicians,
everybody, part of his family.

I'm not saying that
he's not the hard nosed,

cantankerous, do it my
way or not at all director

he claims he is but he's
also a sentimentalist

and there are several
generations of film workers

who will vouch for that.

One of the things about
Ford which, of course,

is common to perhaps most of
the really great directors

in the history of the
cinema, he created a team,

a small team not just of
actors but of technicians

who stayed with him throughout his life.

I remember at the Cannes Film Festival

when they paid a tribute
to Ford in the 90's

suddenly I found myself
setting next to Ben Johnson

and Harry Carey Junior and they would say

that the fun of being with Ford

was not in front of the camera,
it was behind the camera

at the end of the day when they
would have drinking sessions

or play cards and there was a camaraderie

amongst those people, those
characters like Ben Johnson

and Harry Carey, they always
played supporting roles

but they were important supporting roles.

And he used the same editors
and costume designers

and so on throughout his career.

Ford didn't start work on his screen,

on shooting his films till
he was absolutely sure

that the screen play was in good shape

and he used throughout his career

some very important screen writers.

So it was a team effort,
it wasn't just Ford,

he had the overall vision but I think

some of the economy of
it comes from the way

his actors understood him
and knew how to communicate

with a glance or a snarl or a laugh

and knew how to communicate the emotion.

You're the one that found me.

Yes ma'am.

Will you save my baby?

Yes, ma'am I'll save you.

And I will help.

Me too ma'am.

I want you, all of you
to be my baby's godfathers.

In my opinion gents
taking a bath is the least

of the troubles confronting little Robert.

Robert William.

Robert William Bezo.

Comedy is what John
Ford claims he does best,

and I don't wanna argue
with him but somebody said,

I think it was Orson
Welles, that John Ford

is as much a poet as he is a comedian.

Maybe he's both, for sure
he's a sentimentalist.

And Ford's legacy lives
on because he influenced

a small but considerably
important band of directors.

First and foremost Akira
Kurosava who modeled

his samurai world on the
world of the western hero.

And so Toshiro Mifune in
films like "Seven Samurai"

in "Rashomon" he is very
much like the cowboys

of John Ford and he used the landscape.

He couldn't get to Monument
Valley but he used the landscape

so well in a film like "The
Hidden Fortress" for example

which is filled with
rocky valleys and defiles

and the sense of nature being larger

than the human beings within it.

And in turn Sergio Leone
was influenced by Kurosava

and he remade some of
Kurosava's films as westerns

but those westerns echo very
much the films of John Ford,

particularly "The Good
the Bad and the Ugly,"

"Once Upon a Time in the West"

have these huge horizons
and skies and deserts

which Ford used so well.

When you see a film like
"Lawrence of Arabia"

you can also see how
David Lean was influenced

by Monument Valley and John Ford,

particularly towards the
beginning of the film

when Lawrence first goes out
and he meets the veteran guide

and they look down together
and the guide says,

"Bedouin, bedouin out there,"

they can't at first see
through the binoculars

and then finally they
see this group of men

moving on camels through
this vast, vast valley.

Then I suppose you could
also say that he's had

an indirect influence on
directors like Scorsese and Lucas

particularly in the "Star Wars" films.

But nevertheless the spirit
of John Ford lives on

in those film makers.

They were good years, very good years.

When this was the back
lot of 20th Century Fox,

back lot's gone now.

It's been homesteaded.

I think the people admire John Ford

because of his use of what
I would call the grammar

of film.

He could put together a
sequence extremely well.

He could structure a film extremely well.

He knew how to keep the rhythm going

and I think that what
people like is the way

that he could direct actors so easily,

he could put his camera in the right place

at the right time.

He knew when to cut and
he knew when to really

bring a scene to a climax and
bring a sequence to a climax

in a way that creates a shock effect.

So I think modern directors admire that.

Like Jimmy Stewart says,
"When it comes to a choice

between what really happened
and what should have happened,

John Ford prints the legend."

in working with John Ford it's pretty hard

not to pick up a few facts
about making pictures.

One of his first rules is not to

pack too many ideas in one scene

and the second don't talk too much.

Come on, go, go.

Thanks.

I like that, he just
takes it and says thanks.

They want action pictures damn it,

it's what we're getting paid for.

Try it again.

Print the other two takes.

He had a wonderful eye for landscape

and for long shots as I've
said that Howard Hochs

felt he did the best long shots
in the history of the cinema

so he saw in Monument Valley
the idea of man being dwarfed

by nature and so he hardly
ever looks at his characters,

straight up, he looks at them

almost either flat on or from above.

There is a place in Monument
Valley called John Ford Point.

There are two or three
scenes in various films

where John Wayne in particular
comes to the edge of that

and he watches Indians in the plain below

and Ford's camera is behind and above him.

So you always have this
sense of immense space

and I think he took advantage of this,

there was nothing to compare it with,

there were no towns, no
cities by which to judge that.

And so that's why the sky is so important

and he loved this silhouettes,
he loved silhouettes

and he used it not just at Monument Valley

but if you take a film
like "The Horse Soldiers"

towards the end of his
career made in 1960,

there there are several
wonderful shots of riders

against the horizon and he
did that throughout his work

so that that bottom third of the frame

is the riders and the top two is the sky

because the sky is always more important

than the human beings certainly.

Jack Ford made all
or part of nine westerns

here in Monument Valley.

When we came back in June
it was the first time

we had been here together in 15 years.

The valley hadn't change,
it never does but we had.

Mostly just getting older I guess.

I came back to reminisce
and I got the feeling

that maybe Pappy came back to say goodbye.

He was gonna take that over again,

I said, no, I have a
knowledge are you kidding,

cross out the action, wasn't
any action, I...

Wayne almost rolled over me.

I said "Oh I think it looks good."

I did too, just got right up on his.

Memories come back.

When I pass on I wanna be
remembered as John Ford,

the guy that made westerns.

I'm not a career man, I never was.

I'm just hard nosed,
hard working director.

They'd hand me a script,
I says "This oughta

make a fair picture, this
will make a good picture."

I think it's gonna be a lousy picture

but you have a schedule so I'll go ahead

and do the best I can with it.

But I never felt important

or thought I was a
career director or genius

or any other damn thing.