Director: John Ford
Year Released: 1949
Rating: 1.5
Of all these old movies I spent so much time watching and re-watching, a good portion of John Ford's massive oeuvre don't quite hold up to scrutiny (both Twelve O'Clock High and Thieves Highway are from the same year as this, and both continue to astound) - I find a lot of them to be corny and repetitive, and this is no exception. The girl with the yellow ribbon that the cavalry men fight over so proudly in acts one and two all but disappears for act three, when it switches to John Wayne's character and his retirement (not to mention that of one of Wayne's friends and a Ford staple: the drunken Irishman). I think part of my problem with Ford is that he's so very patriotic and self-righteous - along with that disgusting fraud John Wayne - and loves things like flag-waving and sees all non-white Americans as a mindless horde of faceless invaders. I must hand it to him, however - in the last third, there is a wonderful exchange between Wayne and the leader of a Tribe that has both of them concluding that they're just too old for war. This 'making peace' is a nice touch in a genre that very often can be painfully racist.
