Tag: Francis Ford

Steamboat Round the Bend (1935, John Ford)

The best scene in Steambout Round the Bend is the wedding between Anne Shirley and John McGuire. Neither Shirley nor McGuire is particularly good in the film, but McGuire’s about to be hung and so they’re getting married. Steambout is often a comedy and Eugene Pallette–as the officiating sheriff–tells some really bad jokes at the beginning of the scene. Ford creates this devastating scene between Shirley, McGuire and Will Rogers (Rogers plays McGuire’s uncle). Pallette has ninety percent of the dialogue in the scene, Shirley and McGuire are almost entirely silent, but Ford captures their despondence beautifully. It’s an amazing scene.

Steamboat is often fun–that wedding scene doesn’t even come at the finish (there’s still got to be time for Rogers to try to save McGuire)–but it has a strange sense of humor. Stepin Fetchit plays one of Rogers’s crew members, so there’s some cheap racial humor… but the film also mocks white Southerners. Except Rogers is playing a Confederate veteran. Only white trash Southerners are acceptable targets.

So while that humor doesn’t work, the stuff with Pallette often does. Irvin S. Cobb is outstanding as Rogers’s nemesis.

The third act is too rushed, like screenwriters Dudley Nichols and Lamar Trotti needed more time to close gracefully. Oddly, the pacing’s weak throughout–their dialogue’s often outstanding, but the plotting is off. Steamboat doesn’t have room for subplots and it needs a couple.

Still, Rogers is appealing and Ford does a fine job. It’s problematic, but decent.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by John Ford; screenplay by Dudley Nichols and Lamar Trotti, based on the novel by Ben Lucien Burman; director of photography, George Schneiderman; edited by Alfred DeGaetano; music by Samuel Kaylin; produced by Sol M. Wurtzel; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Will Rogers (Doctor John Pearly), Anne Shirley (Fleety Belle), Irvin S. Cobb (Captain Eli), Eugene Pallette (Sheriff Rufe Jeffers), John McGuire (Duke), Berton Churchill (New Moses), Francis Ford (Efe), Roger Imhof (Breck’s Pappy), Raymond Hatton (Matt Abel), Hobart Bosworth (Chaplain) and Stepin Fetchit (Jonah).

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Drums Along the Mohawk (1939, John Ford)

Every eight years or so, I watch Drums Along the Mohawk to see if it gets any better. According to my cursory notes from my last viewing, it apparently has gotten a little bit better. As the titles rolled, I was hopeful–it is John Ford after all (his first color film) and screenwriters Lamar Trotti and Sonya Levien have both written some excellent films. But it’s rocky from the start. The most film’s most rewarding aspect is seeing Ford get comfortable with filming in color. His composition for the opening is problematic, like he’s trying to fit as much into the frame as possible to showcase the lush colors. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes (one of the nicest things about Drums is how fast it moves), it looks like Post-Impressionist. The colors are so vibrant, they distract from the actors.

And the actors are where Drums Along the Mohawk has problems. The film starts with Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda getting married. The rapid-fire pacing gives them a few minutes–a scene working together in the fields and it’s a fine enough scene–to get a reasonable chemistry going. They don’t. The fault seems to lie with Colbert, who’s either entirely wrong for the role or just terrible. It’s hard to tell, because there isn’t a single moment where Colbert doesn’t appear to be a porcelain doll. Her hair and make-up are always perfect (until the scene where she has to shoot at the attacking Indians–and by then, in the third act, it’s far too late to make up for it). Fonda fares better, but only because Trotti and Levien give him an amazing monologue about the nature of war. But Fonda’s not the film’s focus and in many ways, Colbert isn’t either.

Drums Along the Mohawk is a melodrama; it’s event after event after event. There’s some implied nuance–like Jack-o’-lanterns at a wedding–but the film’s sets and costuming are fantastic, so it’s a totally different department working on such additions. The script only approaches subtly a couple times–first, during that field scene and, second (and fair more successfully), with Edna May Oliver and Ward Bond. Oliver’s the feisty widow who can’t stop talking about her passed husband and–in a great scene–makes a couple marauding Indians preserve her bed while they’re burning down her house. Bond’s comically flirtatious in their first scene together, but it soon develops into what appears to be a discreet and touching romance.

The rest of the film’s acting is fine. Jessie Ralph’s in it, she’s always good. John Carradine’s wasted as a villainous Tory.

As the film progresses, Ford’s use of color flourishes. There’s a magnificent chase scene with Fonda on the run, the action only taking up the bottom fourth of the screen, the rest filled with clouds. The film’s eventually unimaginable in black and white, it simply wouldn’t make any sense–quite a difference from the opening scenes.

There’s a general competency to the script, combined with a good performance from Fonda (the script really doesn’t give him much to do save that one scene) and Ford’s direction, Drums Along the Mohawk passes. It’s just a shame they didn’t get a female actor appropriate for Colbert’s role… who knows how it would have turned out.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by John Ford; screenplay by Lamar Trotti and Sonya Levien, based on the novel by Walter D. Edmonds; directors of photography, Bert Glennon and Ray Rennahan; edited by Robert L. Simpson; music by Alfred Newman; produced by Darryl F. Zanuck; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Claudette Colbert (Lana), Henry Fonda (Gilbert Martin), Edna May Oliver (Mrs. McKlennar), Eddie Collins (Christian Reall), John Carradine (Caldwell), Dorris Bowdon (Mary Reall), Jessie Ralph (Mrs. Weaver), Arthur Shields (Reverend Rosenkrantz), Robert Lowery (John Weaver), Roger Imhof (Gen. Nicholas Herkimer), Francis Ford (Joe Boleo) and Ward Bond (Adam Hartman).

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