Moving Image Presents 20-Film Retrospective THE ESSENTIAL JOHN FORD, Now thru 8/2

Starting fittingly on July Fourth weekend, Museum of the Moving Image will present The Essential John Ford, a tribute to the consummate American filmmaker. Ford made his reputation on westerns, but worked in many genres, creating films of depth, beauty, and ambiguity. From today, July 3 through August 2, the Museum will present 20 movies directed by Ford-all on film, with some restored archival prints-including his masterpieces Young Mr. Lincoln, My Darling Clementine, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

"The eternal conflicts between order and chaos, nature and civilization, the law and the hero's code of ethics, and the disparity between fact and legend are explored with nostalgia and cynicism in these films," said Chief Curator David Schwartz, who organized the series with Assistant Film Curator Aliza Ma. "Ford's films are also deeply cinematic, with a rich use of landscape and an interest in painting a broad visual canvas to depict communities. These are great films to be seen on the big screen."

Orson Welles, when asked what directors he most admired, replied "the old masters...by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

The earliest work in the series is Upstream, the 1927 film that was believed lost until it was discovered in a vault at the New Zealand Film Archive in 2009. This backstage drama about an egotistical actor and a vaudeville couple who partner in a knife-throwing act hints at the influence of F. W. Murnau on Ford's evolving style. The film was restored by Park Road Post Production in Wellington, New Zealand, under the direction of 20th Century Fox and the Academy Film Archive. Film historian Dave Kehr called it a "turning point in the development of one of America's greatest filmmakers." The film will be presented on Sunday, July 26, with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin (keyboard) and Joanna Seaton (vocals).

The opening weekend July 3 through 5, including the Fourth of July, features four films that examine American myth-making and community: Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), starring Henry Fonda; the unsentimental morality tale Pilgrimage (1933); Judge Priest (1934), with Will Rogers as a noble judge in the South; and the little-seen The Prisoner of Shark Island, the 1936 film starring Warner Baxter as Dr. Samuel Mudd, the man who unwittingly treated John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln's assassination.

Other highlights include My Darling Clementine (1946) (showing July 10 and 11), Ford's tender masterpiece starring Henry Ford as the reluctant law man Wyatt Earp, to be shown in a beautifully restored version from the UCLA Film and Television Archive, which contains five minutes that were cut by Fox studio chief Darryl Zanuck at the time of its original release. Another recent restoration from the same archive is She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), an elegiac tale of a grizzled cavalry captain (John Wayne) who takes on one last mission. See below for the full schedule.

At the time of this announcement, nineteen of the 20 films have been confirmed. The final film will be announced soon, on the series webpage www.movingimage.us/JohnFord.

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SCHEDULE FOR 'THE ESSENTIAL JOHN FORD,' JULY 3-AUGUST 2, 2015
All screenings take place in the Sumner M. Redstone Theater or the Celeste and Armand Bartos Screening Room at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue in Astoria, New York. Tickets for each screening are $12 ($9 seniors and students / $6 children 3-12 / Free for Museum members at the Film Lover level and above). Advance tickets are available online at www.movingimage.us/johnford.

Young Mr. Lincoln
Friday, July 3, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1939, 100 mins. Archival 35mm print. With Henry Fonda. Exquisitely dramatizing a series of minor, mainly fictionalized events, John Ford examines the qualities that made Abraham Lincoln his personal hero. Ford "achieves the perfection of his art" wrote Geoffrey O'Brien. "It is a masterpiece of concision in which every element in every shot, every ratio, every movement, every shift of viewpoint seems dense with significance, yet it breathes an air of casual improvisation."

Pilgrimage
Saturday, July 4, 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 12, 2:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1933, 96 mins. 16mm. With Henrietta Crosman, Heather Angel. A mother sends her son to war to prevent his marriage to a woman she disapproves of. A thoroughly unsentimental morality tale, Pilgrimage is, according to Ford biographer Joseph McBride, the director's "first great film... one of the most extreme examples of Ford's tendency, as a romantic pessimist, to explore the dark side of his ideals."

Judge Priest
Saturday, July 4, 4:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 5, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1934, 80 mins. 16mm. With Will Rogers. In his second film with Ford, Will Rogers plays a noble judge who wants to rescue rural southerners from their prejudices. He tries to vindicate the secret father of an "orphaned" girl. Dave Kehr wrote that Judge Priest is "one of the most deeply felt visions of community in the American cinema."

The Prisoner of Shark Island
Sunday, July 5, 2:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1936, 96 mins. 35mm print from Academy Film Archive. With Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart. A little-seen Fordian examination of the process of American myth-making, The Prisoner of Shark Island is an emotional, expressionistic, feverishly atmospheric work. Dr. Samuel Mudd (Warner Baxter), the man who unwittingly treated John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln's assassination, seeks to clear his name. He is sentenced to life imprisonment as an alleged conspirator and sent to a penal colony on a remote island.

The Grapes of Wrath
Sunday, July 5, 4:30 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1940, 129 mins. 35mm. With Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell. One of Ford's most enduring classics, this adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about Depression-era Okies on the road to California is distinguished by Gregg Toland's cinematography and Henry Fonda's indelible performance as Tom Joad.

My Darling Clementine
Friday, July 10, 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 11, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1946, 103 mins. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Restoration funding provided by The Film Foundation. With Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell. The real-life story of the reluctant lawman Wyatt Earp (who Ford had actually met) provides the basis of Ford's tender masterpiece. The legendary shootout at the O.K. Corral is transformed into a symbolic showdown between civilization and the frontier. This beautifully restored version contains five minutes that were cut by Fox studio chief Darryl Zanuck.

How Green Was My Valley
Friday, July 11, 2:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1941, 118 mins. 35mm. With Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Roddy McDowall. Ford's poetic, lovingly observed film about the lives of working people revolves around the homestead of the Morgans, a Welsh coal-mining family whose harmony breaks into intergenerational conflict with the rise of the labor movement. The ensemble cast includes Ford favorite Maureen O'Hara, a very young Roddy McDowall, and Donald Crisp as the family patriarch.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Sunday, July 12, 4:30 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1949, 103 mins. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Restoration funding provided by The Film Foundation. With John Wayne, Joanne Dru. With a visual style closely modeled on Remington paintings, Ford tells the elegiac tale of a grizzled old cavalry captain who has one last mission-to prevent a new Native American war-before his impending retirement. Ford leavens the drama with rousing comedic scenes by his company of stock players.

Wagon Master
Sunday, July 12, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1950, 86 mins. 35mm. With Harry Carey, Jr., Ben Johnson, Joanne Dru. One of his most personal and poetic films, Wagon Master was the western that Ford said "came closest to what I hoped to achieve." The story about a Mormon wagon-train expedition across Utah that joins up with a traveling medicine show and then a group of outlaws is bathed in gentle nostalgia and warm comedy.

The Searchers
Friday, July 17, 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 18, 4:30 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1956, 119 mins. 35mm. With John Wayne, Natalie Wood, Vera Miles, Jeffrey Hunter. With John Wayne at his darkest, as the obsessive Ethan Edwards, the story of an outsider's quest to find his abducted niece and the Comanche chief who kidnapped her combines a study of pathological behavior, a conflicted examination of racism, and breathtaking views of the Monument Valley landscape. Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader are among the many contemporary directors influenced by the structure and style of this darkly ambiguous masterpiece.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Saturday, July 18, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1962, 123 mins. Archival 35mm print. With James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin. Who shot the vicious outlaw Liberty Valance? Was it the law-and-order senator (Stewart), representing the new order, or the rugged gunsman (Wayne), representing the pioneer tradition? There are no easy answers in this twilight western that serves as Ford's profound summation and reevaluation of his earlier movies.

The Quiet Man
Sunday, July 19, 4:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1952, 129 mins. Archival 35mm print. With John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald. Ford-born John Martin Feeney-once again returned to his Irish roots in the sumptuously photographed The Quiet Man. Sean Thornton (John Wayne), an ex-heavyweight from Pittsburgh, returns to his ancestral home in the Irish countryside, where he gets the fight of his life from strong-willed local girl Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O'Hara) who is every bit his equal.

Sergeant Rutledge
Sunday, July 19, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1960, 111 mins. 35mm. With Woody Strode, Jeffrey Hunter, Constance Towers. A black cavalry sergeant (masterfully played by Strode) defends himself against accusations of rape and murder. Remarkably, this was the first Hollywood western with an African American as its hero. Ford explores the workings of prejudice as the accused sergeant's friends quickly betray him.

The Wings of Eagles
Saturday, July 25, 2:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1957, 110 mins. 35mm. With John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara. A biopic of "Spig" Wead, a Navy flier who fought back from paralysis to become a World War II Navy commander and screenwriter-with credits including Ford's They Were Expendable-this is one of Ford's most underrated films. A powerful marriage drama, The Wings of Eagles reunites The Quiet Man stars Wayne and O'Hara, and features Ward Bond parodying his frequent director in the role of Hollywood director "John Dodge."

Mogambo
Saturday, July 25, 4:30 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1953, 116 mins. 35mm IB Technicolor print! Clark Gable, in need of a hit, remade his 1932 Red Dust with Ford, but the cinema's great landscape artist took the love triangle out of the studio, shooting on location in Africa. Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner were never more beautiful-or more real-than in Mogambo, which won them both Oscar nominations, and made Kelly a star.

Upstream
With live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin (keyboard) and Joanna Seaton (vocals)
Sunday, July 26, 2:30 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1927, 61 mins. Restored by Park Road Post Production in Wellington, New Zealand, under the direction of 20th Century Fox and the Academy Film Archive. Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive. With Nancy Nash, Earle Foxe, Grant Withers. Considered lost until a print was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive in 2009, this backstage drama about an egotistical actor and a vaudeville couple who partner in a knife-throwing act hints at the influence of F. W. Murnau on Ford's evolving style. "[A] turning point in the development of one of America's greatest filmmakers." ¾Dave Kehr

Fort Apache
Sunday, July 26, 4:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1948, 125 mins. 35mm print. With Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Shirley Temple. The first film in Ford's "cavalry trilogy" (along with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande) depicts the Custer-like travails of Thursday, a rigid West Point officer who tries to take command of a desert outpost town and tragically mishandles several clashes with the Native American population. Shirley Temple gives one of her finest post-childhood performances as Thursday's lovely daughter.

Stagecoach
Saturday, August 1, 2:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1939, 96 mins. Archival 35mm print. With John Wayne, Claire Trevor. With his first western since the silent era, Ford elevated the genre to an art form and made John Wayne a star. A drunk, a prostitute, an outlaw, a gambler, and a respectable couple make their way across Apache country in a stagecoach, while Ford deftly combines character study, action, and painterly landscapes. In his 1955 essay "The Evolution of the Western," André Bazin wrote "Stagecoach is the ideal example of the maturity of a style brought to classical perfection. John Ford struck the ideal balance between social myth, historical reconstruction, psychological truth, and the traditional theme of the western mise en scène."

The Sun Shines Bright
Sunday, August 2, 2:00 p.m.
Dir. John Ford. 1953, 90 mins. 16mm print from the Academy Film Archive. With Charles Winninger, Arleen Whelan. Charles Winninger's alcoholic judge takes a bittersweet view of post-Reconstruction America in Ford's loose remake his own 1934 Judge Priest, restoring that film's lynching scene, which had been removed by the studio. Ford's favorite of his films, and also a favorite of Jonathan Rosenbaum, who called it "a ceremonial elegy and testament to everything that he loves and respects."

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Museum of the Moving Image (movingimage.us) advances the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media. In its stunning facilities-acclaimed for both its accessibility and bold design-the Museum presents exhibitions; screenings of significant works; discussion programs featuring actors, directors, craftspeople, and business leaders; and education programs which serve more than 50,000 students each year. The Museum also houses a significant collection of moving-image artifacts.

Hours: Wednesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Friday, 10:30 to 8:00 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Holiday hours: The Museum will be open on Saturday, July 4, from 11:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Film Screenings: Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, and as scheduled. Unless otherwise noted, tickets for screenings are $12 ($9 students and seniors / free for Museum members at the Film Lover level and above) will be available for advance purchase online at movingimage.us. Screening tickets include same-day admission to the Museum's galleries.
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Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox.