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Jan 10, 2024 · The director was already on his fourth version, and was especially reluctant to sink his scissors into the final scene, a climax of raw fury that was, to him, the core of the film. The marquee...
Mar 14, 2017 · In 1914, he decided to follow his older brother Francis to the promised land of Hollywood, where the burgeoning silent film industry was beginning to migrate at the time. Francis, a dozen years Jack’s senior, was already making a name for himself as an actor and director.
Feb 23, 2023 · Auteur filmmakers often gravitate toward the same cast and crew, and they often play with the same themes and aesthetics. Here are some of the most famous movie directors and what their cinematic styles involve, including everything from narrative tropes to camera shot types to color grading in post.
Feb 24, 2015 · Steve Schiff: I think that John Hughes got a hold of the instrumental demo without lead vocals, and he started dubbing it into a temp track. In the beginning of the movie, it’s still there.
- Early Career
- John Ford Stock Company
- Directing Is Not An Art
- Character Moments
- Blocking
- Efficient Filmmaker
- Dissolves, Wipes and Fade to Blacks
- Ford The Historian
- Influence
- Akira Kurosawa
John Ford started out as a jack-of-all-trades filmmaker working for his older brother Francis. The year was 1914, thirteen years before the first “talkie” film. John started out as an assistant, handyman, stuntman and occasional actor for his brother, twelve years John’s senior. John worked hard, eventually becoming his brother’s chief assistant an...
Ford famously used a “Stock Company” of actors and crew, a large collection of professionals used in film which included household names such as John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Will Rogers, Maureen O’Hara and James Stewart, to name a few. Knowing his cast and crew well helped Ford to become known as one of the busiest directors in Hollywood, churning out ...
Ford believed his directingto be a job as opposed to an art form or some arcane skill. “Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it’s not an art,” Ford said in a rare interview. Another time he exclaimed, “It’s no use talking to me about art, I make pictures to pay the rent.“
Characters often enter a Ford film as stereotypical caricatures but their humanity soon peaks through as richly detailed characters discovered between gunfights and horse chases. “In between the chases and seemingly life threatening action sequences, sit character moments that advance plot and narrative…” Adam Scovell of CelluloidWickerMan.com stat...
“Nobody ever staged better. Nobody ever staged actors to camera better. But at the same time it seems organic,” said Walter Hill. “The way he frames things and the way he stages and blocks his people, often keeping the camera static while the people give you the illusion that there’s a lot more kinetic movement occurring when there’s not. In that s...
John Ford often shot only one take of a scene believing that the first take usually has the best emotion. In addition, he often shot his scenes in order and “edited in the camera” in order to keep control of the story from an editor or a producer. Ford once said, “I don’t give ’em a lot of film to play with. In fact, Eastman used to complain that I...
Another famous Ford technique — something mostly out of fashion these days — is the dissolve as a transition or his use of fade to black. Film director Akira Kurosawa might have been inspired to use wipes the way Ford used dissolves and George Lucas, who has been influenced by both Ford and Kurosawa, uses all three: dissolves, wipes and fades to bl...
“His films had a powerful influence on Americans’ conception of their own history and values,” said John Sayles. The critic and film historian Joseph McBride said, “[Ford] chronicled our national history on-screen with an epic vision that spanned nearly two centuries, from the Revolutionary War to the Vietnam War. While Ford’s vision of America is ...
Orson Welles reportedly watched Ford’s masterpiece Stagecoach 40 times in preparation for making Citizen Kane. “I try to rent a John Ford film, one or two, before I start every movie. Simply because he inspires me and I’m very sensitive to the way he uses his camera to paint his pictures,” Steven Spielberg once said. “Ford has been such an extraord...
Akira Kurosawa watched Ford’s Westerns as a child and became immensly influenced. The most obvious example is the use of an anti-hero who goes up against innumerable enemies as exemplified by Kambei in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Ringo Kid in Ford’s Stagecoach. Like Ford, Kurosawa used epic wide shots, often with a character moving across the scre...
- Morgan Paar
Aug 27, 2024 · John Ford, iconic American film director, best known today for his westerns, though none of the four films that won him Oscars were of this genre. Because of their popularity and his skill, Ford’s films had a powerful influence on Americans’ conception of their own history and values.
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Oct 28, 2015 · This had a clear impact on his film-making, which took a decisive turn towards revisionism during his final decade as a director. Five of the eight films he directed in the 60s were Westerns, demonstrating the fact that he seemed to grow closer to the genre as he grew older.
