Three Hollywood Classics

Some Hollywood classics that I saw for the first time recently...

The Informer (John Ford, 1935): John Ford received the first of his four best director Oscars for this 1935 film. The Informer of the title is a man named Gypo Nolan who betrays one of his friends, who works for the Irish Republican Army, to the police in return of a small monetary reward. The whole film tracks just a few hours in his life on one fog-bound night on the streets of Dublin as he disintegrates emotionally, struck by his guilty conscience and struggling and failing to come to terms with the crime he committed. Gypo as played by British actor Victor McLaglen (who won an Oscar for this role as well) comes across as a brutish clown, who acts only on impulse, without giving it any rational thought, of which he is obviously not capable of. It is to Ford's and the writer's credit, and the main element in the success of the film, that they emphasise this aspect of his character and as a result the character of Gypo is humanised and his final fall in the end becomes a tragedy, which resonates deeply long after the film has ended. This is by all accounts one of Ford's best films, even within a career crowded with great classics. The film could have been a great classic just for its sympathetic character study but what really makes it a masterpiece is its visual style. It very clearly shows the links between the American crime films and film noirs of 1940s and the German expressionistic silents of the twenties. The first ten or so minutes are without any dialogues and the story is told purely in visual terms. Also, like in many expressionist films shadow and fog play a vital part in externalising the dark and tormented subjectivities of the characters of the story. In fact the way it uses fog is absolutely stunning. Some shots even look like parodies (Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog for example), specially quite a few scenes in which Ford shows the shadows before the characters enter the frame. Or the shot where the camera tracks the poster drifting on the streets. There are also wonderful tracking shots which shows the influence of Murnau. Film history aside, it is quite simply a marvelous and a deeply haunting film, not to be missed.

How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941): Ford has often been accused of sentimentality, a very "masculine" kind of sentimentality by some critics. They probably must have been thinking of this film. It is sentimental no doubt but the sentiments are well-placed, natural and honest, they never come across as made-up. Ford really makes us believe that these people are good people, people with lofty and noble sentiments and then shows how these sentiments don't really have a chance against the vagaries of fate and the passage of time. The film is the story of a hard-working family set in a mining village in Wales as it tries to struggle with one crisis after another. Ford is also sometimes criticised for his conservatism, traditionalism and political quietism but watching this film made me realize how wrong this really is. He does celebrate traditions, religious values, the institution of the family, the role of the patriarch (even when showing its weakness) but is fairly explicit in its condemnation of the institutional religion for example and elsewhere showing that those old traditional values don't take us too far in this modern fast-changing world. In the end it also comes across as being on the side of workers who attempt to unionize and struggle for their rights. It is not The Grapes of Wrath by any means but still, in the context what Hollywood was at that time, this film is quite radical in its political views. This may not be in the top-tier of John Ford Classics but comes quite close.

The Ox-Bow Incident (William Wellman, 1943): Two cowboys, one of them played by Henry Fonda, walk into a ghostly town and find themselves embroiled in a mob which has decided to dispense instant justice to the killers of a local rancher. After some searching they find three innocent people and decide to hang them on the spot only on the basis of flimsy suspicions. The producers of the film at the twentieth century fox thought that the downbeat subject matter of the film wouldn't go down well with the audiences and they were proved right. It was made only when Fonda himself insisted on being part of the project since it was a subject close to his heart. Incidentally he doesn't have much to do in this role though as always he shines in even the small scenes. The last scene of him reading the dead man's letter about what law should be and what conscience is, is unforgettable and we don't even see Fonda's face! We just see his lips moving, it is all his nasal and husky voice and the depth that he brings to those words that make you feel that those words have really touched his soul and they are coming from deep inside. More than Fonda it is Dana Andrews who steals the show in a small but important role as one of the victims of the mob. The film also has a powerful subplot about an army man, who actually leads the posse, trying to teach his "timid" son what manhood really is by showing him the abuse of power. It also becomes a powerful critique of masculinity, which is not very typical in the western genre. It is not that the film is sentimental about gender though, there is woman in the mob too, certainly one of the most vicious and cruel one. The low-budget of the film and the fact that most of the events take place at night, both are responsible for deeply atmospheric nature of the visual design of the film. One of the main factors why it has remained a great classic after all these years.