Re: The 1960s List: Discussion and Suggestions
Posted: Sat May 29, 2021 6:36 pm
A few from Ford
7 Women: In a change of pace for Ford this decade, here is an economically-paced, fervently sober war pic, toned down into the confines of a brief runtime and intimate setting with the immediacy and thematic scope of an epic. This film begins as a twist on The Beguiled, with Bancroft's foreign doctor infiltrating the hiveminded and sheltered puritanical Christian community of women. The idea of a female from a different cultural context, rather than a male embodying universal threats, is a necessary variable to initiate the film’s ethos into being, by assuming that there are not fatalist divides between groups, but a hopeful possibility of learning and conditioning ourselves to shift beliefs and actions under the same broad connective spiritual values.
Bancroft may reject the superficial rituals and attitudes of this Christian community, and verbally express her doubts about God, but what Ford gradually encourages is a flexible reading of skepticism as natural and human, and not mutually exclusive from faith but rather a painful yet necessary part of it. The film’s anthropological friction provides a modernist reworking of Christian principles outside of the rigid exteriors to demonstrate dynamic shifts in how one can express God’s will. Bancroft and Leighton’s opposing influences on Lyon reflect both a Christian love and a corporeal selfish projection of their own choices onto her, using the woman as a symbol of youth to validate the life path each woman has chosen for themselves.
We can empathize with both polarized forces in the matriarch and brazen outsider, as we witness the oppressive violence that indiscriminately debilitates their confidence in the expected ‘reliable’ powers of justice. The idea of placing the value of power on or away from a higher entity or the self appears subjective enough in argumentation here not to endorse one over the other, so while Ford is certainly more concerned with ushering us into expanding our scopes of definition to be inclusive of Bancroft's rebellious nature as fitting Christian ideals, the compassion for these characters to find any concept of hope to latch onto is concurrently affirmed without conditional discernment. Bancroft’s willingness to sacrifice her purity for higher utilitarian needs is gesturing towards being interpreted as a messianic sacrifice, but her martyrdom isn’t intrinsically valued as greater than the other group.
Her choice may even merit a diagnosis of self-destructiveness to controllably fulfill her cynical views that distrust general (religious to nationalist) systems-reliant moral security. The alienation of Bancroft v. the rest of the women elicits a new understanding of optimism in systems: that we need counterparts to challenge us to fight complacency, to become elastic and teachable, and that each perspective can help inform another lost soul with objective warmth. If this concept isn’t fully realised in this film, that’s not an indication that the philosophy doesn’t exist; it’s an elision of hope suppressed by the very milieu that thwarts and compels these women’s conceptions of faith. The denouement directs us towards a more dichotomously didactic hierarchy with Leighton devolving back into her dogmatic pathology of acting erroneously as God’s judge, and Bancroft emerging as the Virgin Mary figure of paradoxical purity in soiling herself. This movement into choosing sides unfortunately lessens the impact of complexity laid down before us over the previous hour and change, and keeps the film at bay from qualifying for the status of a novel biopsychosociospiritual-elaborate masterpiece.
Sergeant Rutledge (Revisit): Well, I totally forgot that I had seen this before until about halfway through, which probably tells enough about where I stand on this unfortunate misfire. It seems like almost everyone adores this late Ford, but it's an incredibly sloppy narrative journey to its haughty destination of self-consciously melodramatic social justice commentary. The methodology by which events unfold can't even abide by their own internal logic (gotta love Cantrell's witness-testimony flashback continuing on after he's left the room so we get some preachy dynamics with the four black soldiers, as if Cantrell would be able to comprehend the marginalized group processing the macro-sacrifices of banded collectivism even if he was told about it afterwards!) and its general rhythm falls on a messy stream-of-consciousness trajectory that dulls instead of inspires.
There is a lot of potential in these flashbacks, spilling from relentlessly mobile information reveals of mystery into action and horror posturing, but any momentum gained is obstructed by pauses to switch gears against credibility of both courtroom procedures and thoughtful narrative form in a segregated Rashomon style. It's rather obnoxious, and blatantly violating its own aims, to remove Mary from the chair when they do, only to aggressively try to provoke our interest through a rule of "more;" and the tacked-on efforts to add merit badges to the titular convicted's heroism in its final act only dilutes the moral of the film: It's not enough that this black man didn't commit the crime, or that he saved the life of the primary witness, or that he went willingly in accordance with law and stressed his position on racism in America, but he needs to demonstrate twice the valor by coincidentally finding an opportunity to do so in front of his peers/captors, not in order to sell the story to the prosecution, but to sell the filmmakers and liberal audience, who are nervously unable to stand by their principles without stacking additional evidence to smooth it over! It's an ignorant and subtly racist position for the film to take, fabricating fantastical occurrences to arrive at the same value that should exist (and that the film stresses does exist, before it says otherwise!) divorced from those supplemental actions, while holding onto a humanist philosophy that would be better practiced with restraint and focus to the crime itself.
Sergeant Rutledge functions a lot like Ford’s similarly-preachy and hollow Cheyenne Autumn from the decade, though while that film was more unbearably tedious (fresh off a first-watch, it was so understimulating I don’t have a thing to write about), at least it wasn’t as unconsciously damaging to its cause. Ford didn't make a ‘bad’ movie, but an unfair and mismanaged one, foregoing any care to the actual glimpses at humanity it claims to be supporting in favor of its superior extravagance. Instead of ceaselessly beating us over the head with its bombastic agenda, the same ethics would have been much more effectively translated with some deliberate moderation, attention to characterization and empathy via longer stretches of perspective and recognition of details. The film opts for an erratic strobe light of dynamic viewpoints and problematic magical-negro intrusions to enhance the drama when it's only deflating any utility of its equalizing judicial intentions in the process.
These criticisms are just the beginning, and I don't have the energy to go through them all, but I can't ignore how the final theatrical conflict in the closing arguments ventures so far removed from the purpose of the film that it threatens to make white shame the primary subject of pity; or how deus ex machina plagues the film like a disease after Rutledge’s second wave of heroism into the neat and tidy courtroom closing moments, again making the powers of deduction so damn easy for whites- as the culprit literally inserts himself into the hot seat smoothly winking at the lawyer to deliver a winning formulation. I don’t know, I’m not saying that the film needed to be Super Progressive in 1960, but god damn is it confused in who it even wants to empathize with or empower- and it’s problematic because it truly tries to gift its compassion to Rutledge for a while before jumping the shark against the grain of its stated liberalism. If the film always stayed objectively aloof a la Preminger, it would’ve been just fine as it is, but everyone involved seems to believe they care about Sgt Rutledge and addressing racism, then anxiously break eye contact and go the other way. The film is a failure because it's cowardly and doesn't even know it, a textbook example of implicit racism propagating by outwardly progressive collectives posing as social justice pioneers.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Revisit): A fascinating western that exists somewhere in the barren desert between the communities of the classic western and the revisionist westerns to come, bearing its soul through twisting and rendering naked the faux-securities from value in characterization.
Stewart and Wayne begin with their own traditional personas and Ford gradually unveils the soft human cores beyond the ostensible shells, which means genuine fear and fallibility posing as valor for Stewart’s righteous man, and empathetic yet self-destructive sacrifice for Wayne that extends beyond stoicism and into an unfamiliar place of low self-regard in terms of leaving what he feels he does not deserve. The manipulations on each’s presence may seem slight, but Ford decidedly shows how folly and morality can coexist without discounting the humanity that runs as an intimate thread through both different men’s actions.
Perhaps Wayne is too afraid to depart from his humble familiarity in an everyman to step into the shoes of Stewart’s ambitions, that would surely come from the publicity of the shooting. Does Wayne bow out because he’s generous or because he surrenders to a fatalist attitude about the intrinsic destiny of personality, with Stewart the ‘right’ option for the accolades. Also, that look on Vera Miles’ face, left ambiguous to wonder if she’s thinking about whether or not she married the right man… it stings with its moral realism that plagues these characters in a moral wasteland, left half-wandering in the dark.
This is not only Ford’s best this decade, but one of his very best, period, for both cynically dissecting the nature of western myth-making and producing multiple definitions of humility that cause us to recontextualize the moral philosophy behind those actions. The final scene confronts both optimistic and pessimistic views of realist existentialism, holding two ideas together: that our lives lose meaning when we recognize our lack of responsibility in our successes, but also that they are meaningful because we succeed based on the compassionate support of others. This optimistic compromise is arguably refuted a few years later in Hombre- but more on that later.
7 Women: In a change of pace for Ford this decade, here is an economically-paced, fervently sober war pic, toned down into the confines of a brief runtime and intimate setting with the immediacy and thematic scope of an epic. This film begins as a twist on The Beguiled, with Bancroft's foreign doctor infiltrating the hiveminded and sheltered puritanical Christian community of women. The idea of a female from a different cultural context, rather than a male embodying universal threats, is a necessary variable to initiate the film’s ethos into being, by assuming that there are not fatalist divides between groups, but a hopeful possibility of learning and conditioning ourselves to shift beliefs and actions under the same broad connective spiritual values.
Bancroft may reject the superficial rituals and attitudes of this Christian community, and verbally express her doubts about God, but what Ford gradually encourages is a flexible reading of skepticism as natural and human, and not mutually exclusive from faith but rather a painful yet necessary part of it. The film’s anthropological friction provides a modernist reworking of Christian principles outside of the rigid exteriors to demonstrate dynamic shifts in how one can express God’s will. Bancroft and Leighton’s opposing influences on Lyon reflect both a Christian love and a corporeal selfish projection of their own choices onto her, using the woman as a symbol of youth to validate the life path each woman has chosen for themselves.
We can empathize with both polarized forces in the matriarch and brazen outsider, as we witness the oppressive violence that indiscriminately debilitates their confidence in the expected ‘reliable’ powers of justice. The idea of placing the value of power on or away from a higher entity or the self appears subjective enough in argumentation here not to endorse one over the other, so while Ford is certainly more concerned with ushering us into expanding our scopes of definition to be inclusive of Bancroft's rebellious nature as fitting Christian ideals, the compassion for these characters to find any concept of hope to latch onto is concurrently affirmed without conditional discernment. Bancroft’s willingness to sacrifice her purity for higher utilitarian needs is gesturing towards being interpreted as a messianic sacrifice, but her martyrdom isn’t intrinsically valued as greater than the other group.
Her choice may even merit a diagnosis of self-destructiveness to controllably fulfill her cynical views that distrust general (religious to nationalist) systems-reliant moral security. The alienation of Bancroft v. the rest of the women elicits a new understanding of optimism in systems: that we need counterparts to challenge us to fight complacency, to become elastic and teachable, and that each perspective can help inform another lost soul with objective warmth. If this concept isn’t fully realised in this film, that’s not an indication that the philosophy doesn’t exist; it’s an elision of hope suppressed by the very milieu that thwarts and compels these women’s conceptions of faith. The denouement directs us towards a more dichotomously didactic hierarchy with Leighton devolving back into her dogmatic pathology of acting erroneously as God’s judge, and Bancroft emerging as the Virgin Mary figure of paradoxical purity in soiling herself. This movement into choosing sides unfortunately lessens the impact of complexity laid down before us over the previous hour and change, and keeps the film at bay from qualifying for the status of a novel biopsychosociospiritual-elaborate masterpiece.
Sergeant Rutledge (Revisit): Well, I totally forgot that I had seen this before until about halfway through, which probably tells enough about where I stand on this unfortunate misfire. It seems like almost everyone adores this late Ford, but it's an incredibly sloppy narrative journey to its haughty destination of self-consciously melodramatic social justice commentary. The methodology by which events unfold can't even abide by their own internal logic (gotta love Cantrell's witness-testimony flashback continuing on after he's left the room so we get some preachy dynamics with the four black soldiers, as if Cantrell would be able to comprehend the marginalized group processing the macro-sacrifices of banded collectivism even if he was told about it afterwards!) and its general rhythm falls on a messy stream-of-consciousness trajectory that dulls instead of inspires.
There is a lot of potential in these flashbacks, spilling from relentlessly mobile information reveals of mystery into action and horror posturing, but any momentum gained is obstructed by pauses to switch gears against credibility of both courtroom procedures and thoughtful narrative form in a segregated Rashomon style. It's rather obnoxious, and blatantly violating its own aims, to remove Mary from the chair when they do, only to aggressively try to provoke our interest through a rule of "more;" and the tacked-on efforts to add merit badges to the titular convicted's heroism in its final act only dilutes the moral of the film: It's not enough that this black man didn't commit the crime, or that he saved the life of the primary witness, or that he went willingly in accordance with law and stressed his position on racism in America, but he needs to demonstrate twice the valor by coincidentally finding an opportunity to do so in front of his peers/captors, not in order to sell the story to the prosecution, but to sell the filmmakers and liberal audience, who are nervously unable to stand by their principles without stacking additional evidence to smooth it over! It's an ignorant and subtly racist position for the film to take, fabricating fantastical occurrences to arrive at the same value that should exist (and that the film stresses does exist, before it says otherwise!) divorced from those supplemental actions, while holding onto a humanist philosophy that would be better practiced with restraint and focus to the crime itself.
Sergeant Rutledge functions a lot like Ford’s similarly-preachy and hollow Cheyenne Autumn from the decade, though while that film was more unbearably tedious (fresh off a first-watch, it was so understimulating I don’t have a thing to write about), at least it wasn’t as unconsciously damaging to its cause. Ford didn't make a ‘bad’ movie, but an unfair and mismanaged one, foregoing any care to the actual glimpses at humanity it claims to be supporting in favor of its superior extravagance. Instead of ceaselessly beating us over the head with its bombastic agenda, the same ethics would have been much more effectively translated with some deliberate moderation, attention to characterization and empathy via longer stretches of perspective and recognition of details. The film opts for an erratic strobe light of dynamic viewpoints and problematic magical-negro intrusions to enhance the drama when it's only deflating any utility of its equalizing judicial intentions in the process.
These criticisms are just the beginning, and I don't have the energy to go through them all, but I can't ignore how the final theatrical conflict in the closing arguments ventures so far removed from the purpose of the film that it threatens to make white shame the primary subject of pity; or how deus ex machina plagues the film like a disease after Rutledge’s second wave of heroism into the neat and tidy courtroom closing moments, again making the powers of deduction so damn easy for whites- as the culprit literally inserts himself into the hot seat smoothly winking at the lawyer to deliver a winning formulation. I don’t know, I’m not saying that the film needed to be Super Progressive in 1960, but god damn is it confused in who it even wants to empathize with or empower- and it’s problematic because it truly tries to gift its compassion to Rutledge for a while before jumping the shark against the grain of its stated liberalism. If the film always stayed objectively aloof a la Preminger, it would’ve been just fine as it is, but everyone involved seems to believe they care about Sgt Rutledge and addressing racism, then anxiously break eye contact and go the other way. The film is a failure because it's cowardly and doesn't even know it, a textbook example of implicit racism propagating by outwardly progressive collectives posing as social justice pioneers.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Revisit): A fascinating western that exists somewhere in the barren desert between the communities of the classic western and the revisionist westerns to come, bearing its soul through twisting and rendering naked the faux-securities from value in characterization.
Stewart and Wayne begin with their own traditional personas and Ford gradually unveils the soft human cores beyond the ostensible shells, which means genuine fear and fallibility posing as valor for Stewart’s righteous man, and empathetic yet self-destructive sacrifice for Wayne that extends beyond stoicism and into an unfamiliar place of low self-regard in terms of leaving what he feels he does not deserve. The manipulations on each’s presence may seem slight, but Ford decidedly shows how folly and morality can coexist without discounting the humanity that runs as an intimate thread through both different men’s actions.
Perhaps Wayne is too afraid to depart from his humble familiarity in an everyman to step into the shoes of Stewart’s ambitions, that would surely come from the publicity of the shooting. Does Wayne bow out because he’s generous or because he surrenders to a fatalist attitude about the intrinsic destiny of personality, with Stewart the ‘right’ option for the accolades. Also, that look on Vera Miles’ face, left ambiguous to wonder if she’s thinking about whether or not she married the right man… it stings with its moral realism that plagues these characters in a moral wasteland, left half-wandering in the dark.
This is not only Ford’s best this decade, but one of his very best, period, for both cynically dissecting the nature of western myth-making and producing multiple definitions of humility that cause us to recontextualize the moral philosophy behind those actions. The final scene confronts both optimistic and pessimistic views of realist existentialism, holding two ideas together: that our lives lose meaning when we recognize our lack of responsibility in our successes, but also that they are meaningful because we succeed based on the compassionate support of others. This optimistic compromise is arguably refuted a few years later in Hombre- but more on that later.