"Favorite John Ford Film? Mister Roberts!" Topic

You were asked – TMP link

Favorite John Ford Film?

And in the final round of voting:

19% said "Mister Roberts (1955)"
19% said "Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (1962)"
17% said "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)"

Note that it's not a tie, it just looks that way due to rounding.

Yes, the Western/cavalry vote splintered badly. What can I say? It's a nice film and the only finalist I don't own on DVD.

Not John Ford best work and it ended his friendship with Fonda. My Pick How green was my valley or the Searchers.

The Searchers.

When I was a kid, they didn't show it much on regular TV. If anyone in my family found The Searchers in the TV Guide, everything in our family drew to a narrow focus so we were all together to watch it.

The Searchers is considered one of the best westerners ever made. So could say that was Ford's best film. Never was one of my top westerners.

The Searchers – considered one of the best movies ever made. Any of the Cavalry trilogy is better than Mr. Roberts. Any number of John Ford movies would be above Mr. Roberts for me.
Mr. Roberts was a poor mans The Caine Mutiny. These pretzels are making me thirsty.

Mr. Roberts was a great book. The movie appealed to a generation who lived similar experiences, and their offspring who heard their stories.

My grandfather was a CB, and his best war stories had nothing to do with combat, but instead, the backwaters of the Pacific.

If you'd like to read his cruise book, find a copy of Bitter Bellies about the 573rd CBMU on Banika. It should be available in digital form from the CB Museum in Biloxi.

People like what they can relate to. I can relate to Mr. Roberts.

" That'll be the – day!"

the Searchers.

So many of his pictures are so good it's tempting to say "Whichever one I'm watching at the moment."

Searchers

Searchers

No love for "The Quiet Man?"

Although I will admit I always love the exchange between Henry Fonda and John Wayne in "Fort Apache:"

"We saw some Apache as we were approaching the fort."

"If you saw ‘em, sir, they weren't Apache."

I suspect George Custer and Frederick Benteen had a few like that.

I love John Ford and John Wayne. But I recently saw "The Quiet Man" for the first time.

There's a reason that it didn't get any love. That movie can't decide what it is trying to be – is it going to seriously develop Wayne's character, or is is going to be an Irish version of "The Taming of the Shrew"?

No, but the Irish in America (among whom I number myself) enjoy the depiction of the cultural clash between Ireland and the Irish diaspora. John Ford (and to some extent, John Wayne) was a son of the diaspora, in the same way that Maureen O'Hara was authentically Irish (and yes, I am aware of what went on between them).

Ford could be a nasty man, but I give him credit for taking a bullet at Midway. Howard Hawks was the greater director, and "Rio Bravo" my favorite John Wayne movie, but for all of its over-the-top Oirishness, there are a few things going on in "The Quiet Man" that are interesting. No American can be unconscious of what a strange experience it can be to go among the people from whom his ancestors descended; three or four generations can show a lot of divergence.

Never read Mr Roberts, would like too. Caine Mutiny is a great movie and a fantastic book.

Agreed. "The Caine Mutiny" is a more interesting and important book than it gets credit for being. In addition to being a worthwhile worm's-eye account of one man's WWII, it contains some fascinating insights into the way that war kick-started a whole generation's worth of social change in America. The breaking down of the Protestant-Catholic divide and the ending of the Judge Smails aristocracy are all prefigured in the book, among other changes. Wouk was a serious enough scholar of the Second World War that Thomas Buell consulted him and acknowledged his assistance on Buell's biography of Admiral Spruance.

Playing Captain Queeg against type is one of Humphrey Bogart's great achievements. Bogart was a passionate yachtsman in his own right, and David Niven claims in his memoirs that Bogie could get pretty grouchy when someone mishandled a line- but Lauren Bacall would bring him back to earth by referring to him as "Captain queeg."

No love for "The Quiet Man?"
There was, just didn't make the finals.

I expected the Western vote would split as it did and Mr. Roberts would win.

Worth viewing:

YouTube link