I WILL CONTINUE LOVING FORD
by Julia Scrive-Loyer
Watching movies directed by Ford feels, to me, like coming back home and reuniting with an extended family of beloved faces and landscapes. I have always felt comfortable with Ford, except, maybe, the first time I watched The Quiet Man. The memory is blurry, but the colors, the characters and, in a way, the plot, left me feeling the same as when I first watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. A confusing aftertaste; I had enjoyed it, yes, but I couldn’t really understand how I felt or what my thoughts were. And yet, it had all the right ingredients for a delicious Ford movie: John Wayne, Ward Bond, Ken Curtis’ terrifying white teeth, the force of nature called Maureen O’Hara, Ford’s sweet humor and, of course, those landscapes. But above all, it had his sensibility, which often seems to get lost amidst Monument Valley’s long battle scenes — but that you’d have to be very blind not to see. Ford taught me Westerns could be one of cinema’s most melancholic genres: the cowboy’s constant movement forward creates an inevitable tension between the place he left behind and the one he’s riding to. The Searchers, My Darling Clementine, to give two examples, begin way before the first image has appeared on screen and they keep rolling, like a midnight train, farther than its final shot. The Quiet Man paints the portrait of a man who has already left, twice — from his homeland and from the one that adopted him —, and who this time has come to stay, to become a permanent being. Permanence isn’t only shown, in this case, by having an ancestral home of his own, but by adjusting to traditions that could seem ridiculously passé. Wayne left Innisfree when he was a little boy, but Innisfree seems to have always been Innisfree, a place where your ancestors seem to permanently determine your present.
And yet, I still don’t know how I feel about The Quiet Man. I understand it was successful when it came out, against all odds; I understand how important it was for Ford to film in the land of his parents; I understand that I feel tenderness for its characters and the truth they convey. I understand, above all, that I love Ford, and that is why I don’t understand why I don’t love The Quiet Man. I feel I am betraying Truffaut by not loving unconditionally the work of an author I admire. But I believe this unconditional defense ends up objectifying the person behind the work. Permanence, the monument, takes over the human being within it. But in this case, this duality between these two identities isn’t in Ford, since The Quiet Man is considered one of his greatest films. In this case, and this is something Truffaut doesn’t admit either, these dualities lie within us, the viewers. Unconditionality can sometimes have an undertone of hypocrisy. I say this being a dear fan of Truffaut. If I love him, I also have to assume my distances with some of his ideas. If I want to carry Ford’s flag, I can carry it while still accepting there are movies that didn’t move me. What I mean is, love can sometimes be selfish and demanding. It can be unsettling to not feel what I expected towards a Ford movie, but admitting my unsettlement doesn’t have to mean I love him or defend him any less. I understand and I admire Truffaut’s conviction and need to defend certain auteurs. His texts, at a point in my life, were essential to me as way of validating my film tastes. Nevertheless, as I get older, I insist on veering off radicalisms to, precisely, allow myself to keep changing and growing. You will notice I have said very little about The Quiet Man. I wouldn’t know how. My impulse would be to write about How Green Was My Valley, which has never stopped moving me. I cannot write about a movie that doesn’t move me, or one that doesn’t anger me. How can I express what’s in the middle? I could be a hypocrite and praise what many see as a great film. Or I could dissect every single thing that drives me away from it, but those specifics are still a mystery to me.
I want to end on this: in a chapter of My Travels with Charley, Steinbeck goes back to the town where he was born and where his parents grew up. Hurt, he realizes those that are still there would rather not see him again — they would rather stay with the ghost of his memory, the one that never changes. Before leaving, Steinbeck climbs a hill with his poodle Charley and, from there, they observe the town and the surrounding landscapes. He points the valley to Charley, where his mother caught her first wild cat, and the three in which his father carved the name of his first love. He captures it all for one last time in his mind, leaving his ghosts where they belong: in the landscape that evoked them. There, the valley will always be green, and the horses will continue their steady movement through Monument Valley. Henry Fonda is keeping his promise, “I’ll be there”, and he’s still there, observing the river that ties him to his first love, or reclining his boots on the railing of a small hotel. John Wayne will forever carry a child through the desert, he will continue walking away, framed by the door of the woman he loved, and he will return, time and time again, to the rolling hills of the town where his parents grew up. We will always come back to those places, through cinema, the only place in which it is actually possible to go back home, and where I will continue loving Ford.