Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Tom Brennan (A) on November 26, 2002 at 08:02:12

In Reply to: Forget Ebert posted by Victor Khomenko on November 26, 2002 at 07:01:56:

Victor---Looking over Ebert's list of 100 films I started thinking that he just doesn't "get" John Ford at all. He lists "The Grapes of Wrath", which any respectable older critic would, and "The Searchers", which any baby-boomer critic must. But in a lifetime of watching Ford movies (my Father loved Ford pictures and took me to the pictures) I'm thinking he did much better work than those pictures, as good as they are.

I think Ford was really expressing himself much more in pictures like "Young Mr. Lincoln", "The Sun Shines Bright", "The Last Hurrah", "The Informer", "Man Who Shot LIberty Valance" and in his real masterpiece "Rio Grande".

I think Ebert is just taking the safe, conventional view on Ford and isn't really effected by his pictures at all.

And I didn't see any Walter Hill pictures. Rewatching "Wild Bill" yesterday got me to thinking about Hill and the common things about his movies; laconic characters living in a tough, supermasculine world. Guy has something going, had he directed in the late 40s we'd be going on about what a genius he was.