Cattleman Flint cuts off farmer Sims' water supply. When Sims' son Ted goes for water, one of Flint's men kills him. Cheyenne is sent to finish off Sims, but finding the family at the newly dug grave, he changes sides.
Joan of the Cattle Country, The Cattle War, O Último Cartucho, Pred puskami cowboyu, Centro!, Tiro al blanco, A prueba de balas, Le Ranch Diavolo, 스트레이트 슈팅, 开枪射击
USANR
USA
Lots of gorgeous, signature imagery Ford would return to here; the solitary horse with no rider, the overwhelmingly large natural landscapes/rock formations dwarfing the action, the silhouetted lonely doorframe, etc. Also a couple unique to the time period like some really excellent iris shots, one that traps two characters together pointing guns at each other and another that almost abstracts an intense glaring close-up at the right moment. I think his handling of romance and character would get a lot stronger and more intimate from here but the broad strokes (especially the wide vista chase sequences/gunfights) he was clearly just gifted at from the get-go. Still so crazy to me he was there at the birth of this genre (and industry, really), helped create all these images and myths, and was still finding new angles on them as late as the 1960s.
He made this when he was 23, and already there are some of the most beautiful compositions in cinema, explosive moments matched with intense contemplation, and most importantly an ultra-sensitivity to social outsiders. And to top it off, there's a montage directly inspired by Griffith, but it's so good that it manages to top even his work!
John Ford's first feature, a good bad man story with Harry Carey as Cheyenne Harry, who gets caught up in a range war between wholesome farmers and evil ranchers. Climaxes in a solid action sequence of Griffithian intercutting, but the highlight comes just before, a showdown between Harry and one of the villains on a deserted street, Ford manipulating space and environment to expand and contract the distance between them both physically (the beginning shots are medium close-ups with no master shot, then Ford cuts back to show them far apart on opposite sides of a broad street; throughout the buildup to the showdown, they're separated by buildings, railings, horses and finally by intersecting sides of the same building) and…
john ford's talent for photographing painterly landscapes is already in full-bloom in his earliest surviving film, and his economy of action has hardly been equaled before or since; you can see so much in this that would go on to profoundly influence the next 100 years of cinema, especially in the staging of the central duel, which has become the gold standard for everything from yojimbo to john wick.
John Ford’s first full-length feature is brimming with early genre aesthetics and a special kind of energy; it is unmistakably a John Ford film. From novelty shot compositions to the way his performers visually kick across a role, it’s almost identical to the work that he would later go on to produce, minus the sound.
166/200
New Book coming soon!
"What does the audience want to see, and how do they want it shown to them? He was making this up as much as he was learning anything and it shows. This is a marvel of visual demonstration. The story isn’t so important as two shots connected by a breezy cut to make meaning. No wonder Sergei Eisenstein loved him. Young Ford was creating cinema (and the 20th century) and recreating the 19th century every time a horse rode toward the camera. He makes Griffith look sluggish."
John Ford's feature directorial debut, and oldest surviving film, Straight Shooting is a simple and straightforward western, but nevertheless pretty good. Western genre tropes had been around a while by 1917, but it's interesting to see them in a relative infancy here. Especially as the look of the western was not yet the stereotype it now is. The frontier is not so barren in Straight Shooting. Though the film does have some great landscape shots. It's also an exciting film, with some action and stunts, as well as immersive tension. The final shootout has a large scale and some thrilling moments. Straight Shooting contains the typical man of the frontier, someone who can never settle down. Here he…
nobody does it (the blending of landscape and person) better... than john "jack" ford. just look at the establishing shots, the grand-scale shots covering groups of people with their do-or-die agendas. Straight Shooting operates on a narrative structure we're all pretty familiar with at this stage (the lone hero against an oppressive group in an effort to save one life, one family), but the absolute charm of the film comes from the sheer confidence. not that we would know for certain from all the missing films from the earliest days of his career, but ford never had a rookie phase, did he? from the off, he knows his talent and utilises it as much as the american silent film formula…
So much of what we recognize in a classic Ford Western is fully formed in its first iteration. Imagine making a pancake this great on the first pour and flip. Not bad for a 23 year-old.
The Good Bad Man. Harry Carey gets one of the great film entrances of all time emerging from a hollow tree to admire his Wanted poster tacked to it.
The open cabin door framing we’d see perfected in The Searchers.
Gunsight Pass (Beale’s Cut) with two riders on top like statues on a triumphal arch
The horsemen’s dusty S-curve descent down a canyon
The duel with Harry’s horse at 90 degrees in the foreground, adobe structures in the background and in between two advisories…
Conjures a potent nightmare image of the American West when scored by Swans’ To Be Kind.
74/100
Feature film debut of a 23-year old "Jack" Ford. Story is fairly simple but there are well directed moments of tension, thrill and melancholy and it flows really very well. Also Ford's incredible eye for compositions was right there from the start, this is visually extremely sophisticated with full of truly stunning images. Remarkable how good he already was, signs of things to come.
Ford was clearly working out the best ways to do things from the very beginning, though some of his ideas here (lots of God's-eye high angle shots, slowing down the action to show people thinking) were things he'd discard later. Typical Ford thematics in proto form, but I was a little impatient with it for most of the first hour, seemed like apprentice stuff from an exceptional apprentice.
But then came that tour de force defending-the-homestead sequence at the film's climax. Out-Griffiths Griffith with his frenzied cross-cutting. (Doesn't seem to have mastered geographical clarity, it isn't easy to map who's where and what direction they're moving... but that's not something you flat-out NEED here, and he makes up for it with the intense rhythm of it all.)
