Post by Hedvig on May 31, 2010 16:50:37 GMT -6
I saw The Iron Horse (1924) directed by John Ford.
Then I read the section on The Iron Horse in Kevin Brownlow's The War, the West and the Wilderness. Apparently the filming was quite violent, with the company bootlegger getting killed among other things. And of course, a lot of the atmosphere of the film probably comes from its director's personal relation to the story. John Ford's father both fought in the civil war and worked on the railroad.
This movie isn't a perfect masterpiece but still I think it's great - though weighed down by a lot of comic relief-characters, which is reminiscent of The Big Parade, and hardly presenting Native Americans in a humane light - you don't get to see much from their point of view, and the main villain of the piece is a bit of a mystery to me. Is he meant to be one of those "cunning mixed-race"-archetypes that appear in early cinema, like Silas Lynch in BoaN? Anyway, the movie is still an epic, following the construction of the railroad that went across America and throwing in a lot of famous historical characters into the mix, like Buffalo Bill and Abraham Lincoln - I particularly liked this cameo, since I had recently seen John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln from 1939, and according to a biography about him he used to speak of Lincoln as though he were an old friend. Young Mr Lincoln is also a good film, which I think is little known. I can recommend it.
It's the setting in the great open countryside, and the sense of going through a journey traveling along the tracks of the railroad while making history that makes this such an accomplished epic film, I think.
Then I read the section on The Iron Horse in Kevin Brownlow's The War, the West and the Wilderness. Apparently the filming was quite violent, with the company bootlegger getting killed among other things. And of course, a lot of the atmosphere of the film probably comes from its director's personal relation to the story. John Ford's father both fought in the civil war and worked on the railroad.
This movie isn't a perfect masterpiece but still I think it's great - though weighed down by a lot of comic relief-characters, which is reminiscent of The Big Parade, and hardly presenting Native Americans in a humane light - you don't get to see much from their point of view, and the main villain of the piece is a bit of a mystery to me. Is he meant to be one of those "cunning mixed-race"-archetypes that appear in early cinema, like Silas Lynch in BoaN? Anyway, the movie is still an epic, following the construction of the railroad that went across America and throwing in a lot of famous historical characters into the mix, like Buffalo Bill and Abraham Lincoln - I particularly liked this cameo, since I had recently seen John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln from 1939, and according to a biography about him he used to speak of Lincoln as though he were an old friend. Young Mr Lincoln is also a good film, which I think is little known. I can recommend it.
It's the setting in the great open countryside, and the sense of going through a journey traveling along the tracks of the railroad while making history that makes this such an accomplished epic film, I think.