John Ford Goes to War… July 16, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, About John Ford, War Films , trackbackJohn Ford’s love affair with the military possibly hit the heights with They Were Expendable, a ’from the heart’ view of the war in the Pacific.
Produced just as the war was coming to an end (and released after the conflict had ended - which proved its undoing at the box office), it’s a downbeat film in many ways, ’sacrifice’ the running thread throughout. In the Navy’s ‘Field Photo Unit’ Ford had served, had seen colleagues killed, and, as their commanding officer, had written letters to the families of the dead, the responsibility weighing heavily on him. Ford was on first name terms with ’sacrifice’.
‘Expendable’ was his homage not only to those that had served their country, but to those that had made that ultimate sacrifice, to those that would never come home.
Ford’s brilliant documentary style gives the film a grittiness that is founded in reality. His hero ‘John Brickley’ is based on his friend John Bulkeley’s experiences as a PT boat commander in the Philippines. There’s a vérité here that is rarely found in other contemporary war films; a deliberate stylistic decision from Ford, but also helped in the casting. As ‘Brick’ Brickley, Robert Montgomery’s service was on board PT boats (ironically his time in the service is thought to have fatally damaged his Hollywood status). Ford also went to great pains not to demonise the Japanese (they are never on screen), and it is to his credit, as news filters through of the attack on Pearl Harbour, Asian faces are amongst those seen reacting with horror
There’s no faux sentiment here; even the reverential treatment - usually meted out for such figures as Lincoln - granted his unnamed ‘General’ (obvious to all as Douglas MacArthur), is heartfelt and somehow right - young men were still dying as the film was in production, a point that the film puts right to the fore.
I can’t add too much more than the views and opinions in Mike Sutton’s DVD Times review. But I do find a couple of lines of dialogue early on interesting. It’s very pointed in the opening credits that everyone of any military rank is credited so; thus the world is told that Ford, Montgomery, writer Frank ‘Spig’ Wead, etc., have served their country. But not John Wayne, who famously did not serve in the armed forces.
Brickley says in the first reel, to his pal ‘Rusty’ Ryan, played by Wayne: ‘What are you aiming at, building a reputation, or playing for the team?’Wayne, in fact, cemented his reputation as a major Hollywood player at Republic during the war years, fighting his nation’s enemy on a soundstage; Ryan eventually becomes that team player the stoic Brickley urges him to become…did Wayne become that ‘Superpatriot’, that cheerleader for the American way, to belie any suggestion that he wasn’t a ‘team player’? Was this the turning point, the trigger?
A beautiful looking film, with truth and genuine emotion showing in every frame.
1957’s The Wings of Eagles, like ‘Expendable’ part of that R1 Ford / Wayne Collection, is the story of the aforementioned Frank ‘Spig’ Wead (who had died 10 years earlier), starring Wayne as Wead, Maureen O’Hara as his wife ‘Min’, and Ward Bond as ‘John Dodge’ a (very) thinly disguised John Ford. Very highly romanticised, it’s far more interesting when viewed not so much the story of Wead, but about Ford himself.
The old man approached the project with great trepidation. Great pals, Ford said he didn’t want to film it, but he didn’t want anyone else to film it either. That was probably down to two factors; Ford was simply too close to Wead, and his story doesn’t make particularly pretty viewing. ’Pappy’ (as Ford was known) could fully identify with a man who had an unhappy family life, who was far more at home with his pals than with his wife and children, but who also treated old friends shamefully.
Ford does little to gloss over this, though his film is still, nonetheless, sympathetic of Wead, a navy flyer and record breaker, who was told he would never walk again after a fall at home. Wead not only succeeded in defeating the surgeon’s dim chances for his recovery, but also became a successful playwright and screenwriter.
Bond, surrounded by set decor from Ford’s own office, must have relished playing the irascible ‘Pappy’; barking at a bemused Wead in typical fashion. O’Hara - no problems with chemistry with her leading man here - is fine as ‘Min’, despite being hamstrung when Wead’s children objected to their mother’s drink problem being highlighted on screen. Those scenes were left on the cutting room floor.
The film does have it’s problems; Wayne is simply too old (despite heaps of soft focus) to play Wead as a young and impetuous flyer and the film’s knockabout opening reel doesn’t sit well as a result.
But as the middle-aged Wead, Wayne comes into his own, playing, if I recall correctly, without a toupee and revealing his balding pate for the first and only time on screen. The final scene, as Wead’s old navy and army pals line the deck to send him into final retirement, is wonderfully played by the Duke, despite the dollops of schmaltz on show.
Presented in anamorphic OAR, this is another very fine presentation of an MGM film, with that Metrocolor shining through, bright, sharp and clean. Not first rank Ford by any means, but interesting nonetheless.
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I could never get over those amazing battle scenes in “expendable” with the flak bursting overhead and enormous geysers of water erupting so close to the PT boats.