John Ford
167 connections found
Filmography
The Grapes of Wrath 1940 
My Darling Clementine 1946 
The Searchers 1956 
Stagecoach 1939 
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 1962 
Drums Along the Mohawk 1939 
Two Rode Together 1961 
3 Godfathers 1948 
The Informer 1935 
7 Women 1965 
Tobacco Road 1941 
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon 1949 
The Quiet Man 1952 
They Were Expendable 1945 
How the West Was Won 1962 
Sergeant Rutledge 1960 
The Wings of Eagles 1957 
How Green Was My Valley 1941 
Fort Apache 1948 
Wagon Master 1950 
The Battle of Midway 1942 
Young Mr. Lincoln 1939 
The Fugitive 1947 
3 Bad Men 1926 
Cheyenne Autumn 1964 
Rio Grande 1950 
Mister Roberts 1955 View:
Connections, in both directions
With a screenplay by Cory Goodman and directed by Scott Stewart (“Legion”), it’s shamelessly derivative sci-fi, evoking memories of “The Searchers,” “Blade Runner,” “Mad Max,” “The Matrix” and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, among others.
The film shifts from sci-fi-land to a western motif when, a la John Ford's The Searchers, Bettany's niece Lucy (Lily Collins) is kidnapped by the head-honcho vampire, an awfully witty cowboy (Stetson and all) played by Karl Urban.
A sort of futuristic fantasy western with "The Searchers" as its granddad, "Priest" is an action adventure that will attract fans of the graphic novel and folks who like fantasy in general.
The parallels to cowboy movies are both obvious — Bettany’s search is meant, embarrassingly, to evoke “The Searchers” — and vaguely racist.
It appears that turning the John Ford / John Wayne classic "The Searchers" into the church-vs-vampire adventure " Priest " was not an altogether god-awful idea.
If you’ve guessed that the movie plot I’ve described matches The Searchers, you’d be right – and wrong.
The Fabelmans (2022)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced by The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), The Fugitive (1947)
Visuals Characters
Before long 10 years have passed and the older teen Sammy (played by Gabriel LaBelle) is making all sorts of films, using his friends including Westerns inspired after seeing 1962’s John Ford classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Branagh did an homage to that one as well in Belfast), and World War II epics among others.
We then jump in time to a teenage Sammy, who moves with his family to Arizona and casts all his Boy Scout pals in a makeshift Western inspired by John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
Fast forward 10 years, and Sam (now played by an excellent Gabriel LaBelle) is inspired to make a Western after seeing John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
The subsequent, increasingly ambitious projects that Sam takes on—including a mummy picture, a western inspired in part by John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , and then a WWII epic titled Escape to Nowhere —all suggest the formation of the kind of showmanship and instinct for popular entertainment that would go on to solidify Spielberg’s legend.
He makes juvenile movies starring his sisters, and moves into short features starring his Boy Scout chums—a western inspired by “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and a war picture called “Escape to Nowhere” (both of which reflect titles actually made by Spielberg).
Admittedly, the specific representatives in question—a hospital administrator (Kim Dixon) and lawyer (David Levine)—glower with the unignorable malevolence of SVU guest-stars (or maybe Jeroen Krabbe’s pharmaceutical rep in The Fugitive ), but the movie’s heart is unquestionably in the right ideological place.
News of the World (2020)
Directed by Paul Greengrass
influenced by The Searchers (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Two Rode Together (1961), Stagecoach (1939), 3 Godfathers (1948)
Themes Visuals Plot
His inherent decency makes "News of the World" work to the extent that it does, and the nature of the quest echoes themes from classic westerns, among them "The Searchers."
Director Paul Greengrass, who directed Hanks in “Captain Phillips,” draws upon the vibe of a lot of Westerns, with “The Searchers,” the classic 1956 John Ford film starring John Wayne, especially prominent.
That same spirit informs Paul Greengrass' News of the World , an epic Western with an intimate gaze that recalls The Searchers and True Grit , providing Tom Hanks with one of his best roles since the same director's Captain Phillips .
The plot is a mashup of two John Wayne westerns, "The Searchers" and "True Grit," that can't match either in emotional impact.
However, “News of the World” borrows more from John Wayne, reimagining “The Searchers” if it didn’t end with Ethan Edwards walking off from an open sunlit doorway.
If we were to conduct a poll of the most trusted actors in America, I’d argue Tom Hanks would be near the top of that list — and Hanks is perfectly cast as an 1870 news anchor of sorts in Paul Greengrass’ gritty and visceral and deeply resonant “News of the World,” a rough-and-tumble Texas road-trip movie that plays like a hybrid of the John Wayne movies “The Searchers” and “True Grit” and even reminded me a little of George Clooney’s recent epic “The Midnight Sky.”
Writer-director Scott Cooper is confident enough to reference Ford’s work — such as framing a doorway in a manner reminiscent of “The Searchers” (1956) — while delivering a tale of racism and redemption that stands on its own.
Grave and somber, Scott Cooper ’s “Hostiles” opens with a scene that recalls John Ford ’s “ The Searchers .”
It's an ambitious film that will remind its fans of John Ford's 1955 classic "The Searchers," and its critics of Michael Cimino's bloated 1980 box-office flop "Heaven's Gate."
With Takayanagi’s help, Cooper recalls the best of John Ford’s The Searchers , and with Bale’s help he rectifies its worst.
Working from an unpublished manuscript by the late Donald Stewart, the filmmaker echoes The Searchers – John Ford's 1956 classic starring John Wayne as a vengeful cowboy – in tackling the way racism and violence seem to be hardwired into the American character.
Dozens more will be butchered to appease the themes of director Scott Cooper’s script: the sin and apparent redemption of the American myth, complete with visual quotations from The Searchers .
Paris, Texas (1984)
Directed by Wim Wenders
influenced by The Searchers (1956), Stagecoach (1939)
Themes Plot Characters
Influenced by the American western as much as anything, German filmmaker Wim Wenders sets out to remake the mythic vision of John Fords The Searchers (1956) as a different kind of family story, reflecting the reality the director found when he set out to see what has become of the American West for himself.
Indeed, the narrative shares something in common with Ford’s 1956 film “The Searchers,” about a cowboy (John Wayne) on a journey to rescue his niece from an Indian tribe.
In this sense, Travis is an intriguing reformulation of the classic Western hero, an essential loner who is crucial to saving a community of which he can never be a part (not surprisingly, some critics have seen shades of John Wayne’s character from The Searchers in Travis).
In his Palm D�Or winning drama Paris, Texas, director Wim Wenders explores, and largely debunks, the macho cowboy myth that powers great Westerns like The Searchers while updating it to a contemporary milieu.
You can find echoes of The Searchers in Travis’ odyssey, right down to his quest to reunite a splintered and separated family and the recognition that there’s no place for him in this family.
The film´s ending, which is often and aptly compared to "The Searchers," witnesses a genuine moving reunion between mother and son but also ends on a note of ambiguity.
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Directed by S. Craig Zahler
influenced by The Searchers (1956), Rio Grande (1950)
Themes Plot
The sudden, queasy lurch into horror isn’t entirely successful: it is as if Zahler has bolted The Hills Have Eyes on to the end of The Searchers.
Winking explicitly to “The Searchers” with its ostensibly classical tale of four mismatched frontiersmen out to rescue abducted townsfolk from the clutches of a savage (and emphatically fictitious) native tribe, “Bone Tomahawk” may seem over-indulgent at 132 minutes, yet it’s the wayward digressions of Zahler’s script — navigated with palpable enjoyment by an expert, Kurt Russell -led ensemble — that are most treasurable in a film that commits wholeheartedly to its own curiosity value.
A tense, absorbing pursuit Western that turns into a Grand Guignol gorefest, Bone Tomahawk is what you might get if you crossbred The Searchers with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, or maybe Cannibal Holocaust.
Picture a modern version of The Searchers being written by Zahler while a series of Quentin Tarentino interviews are playing on low volume in the background.
Descriptions of this gorehound oater as “The Searchers” meets “The Hills Have Eyes” are all too accurate.
Bone Tomahawk is an exploitation western that references old classics such as Rio Bravo and The Searchers.
Belfast (2021)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
influenced by The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Plot
Back home on telly, High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance echo the morality and violence in the streets, while Star Trek suggests a better future.
“Belfast” is unabashedly sentimental, from the plethora of Van Morrison songs on the soundtrack to the parallels drawn to Westerns such as “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and (particularly) “High Noon.”
Excepts from two other films are shown (but those, matching the films, are in b&w): The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and High Noon.
And Buddy, picking up on real-life trauma and archetypal themes from Westerns like “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and “High Noon” on the telly, struggles to make childish sense of it all as Van Morrison songs of the day waft out of radios and well up on the soundtrack.
There are several classic movie references and film clips from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are shown.
And Buddy, hooked on movies like “High Noon” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” sees his father as the hero of the day.
The first act of “War Horse’’ is its most nakedly nostalgic, with camera shots evoking the long, glowing corridors and side-lit doorways of Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley’’ and “The Quiet Man.’’ Silhouettes at sunset, Albert’s sainted mother (Emily Watson), a girl passing through with the red Technicolor hair of Maureen O’Hara - this is the work of an obsessive movie-lover recombining the pieces of his passions.
When the colorful Devon townsfolk lean along a fence, watching as Albert and his thoroughbred struggle to plow a field, the director's more focused on evoking Fordian community (" The Quiet Man ," " How Green Was My Valley ") than Joey's potential laming as the thoroughbred's fragile legs give way.
The first section may remind one of John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952).
There are hints of "How Green was My Valley" and "The Quiet Man" as Spielberg points his lens at majestic skies, rolling hills, farm field fences and colorful townsfolk.
But any resemblance to the real Britain circa 1910 is accidental; this part of “War Horse” is really set in the imaginary version of places like Devon as mythologized by Hollywood, notably in John Ford classics like “How Green Was My Valley” and “The Quiet Man.” (I am aware that those movies are set in Wales and Ireland, respectively; those distinctions are lost on most American viewers, and in the cinematic context they don’t much matter.)
…lighting and cinematography) bring to mind classic films like The Quiet Man and similar pictures of that era.
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Directed by Matt Reeves
influenced by The Searchers (1956)
Characters Plot
"War for the Planet of the Apes" references many films - "The Great Escape," "Apocalypse Now" and "The Searchers" to name a few - but its larger grasp is historical, a new civilization forming as an old one wanes.
Caesar is akin to Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, driven by vengeful hatred of a race/species to an unbecoming brink.
Picking up 15 years after the outbreak of the population-decimating simian flu, the film feels like a primate hybrid of The Searchers, The Great Escape, and Apocalypse Now (with lone human movie star, Woody Harrelson, in the gonzo Kurtz role).
Combining the premises and conceits of two earlier 2017 blockbusters – Kong: Skull Island and Logan – War will also remind viewers of classic tales like The Searchers, Apocalypse Now, The Empire Strikes Back and Spartacus.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Stagecoach (1939), The Searchers (1956), My Darling Clementine (1946), How the West Was Won (1962), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Sergeant Rutledge (1960)
Plot
The template was provided, though, by John Ford’s venerable Stagecoach: Tarantino borrowed and extended its Dry Fork noon station stopover and subverted it every which way.
In a way, it’s somewhat akin to the 1939 western "Stagecoach" and it actually starts in one of those vehicles as a leathery old bounty hunter (an excellent Kurt Russell) is transporting a murderer (a hilariously unladylike Jennifer Jason Leigh) to watch her hang and collect his handsome bounty.
Tarantino's latest, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh, is a twisted combination of John Ford's 'Stagecoach,' Agatha Christie's 'Ten Little Indians' and Jean-Paul Sartre's 'No Exit.'
…celluloid film (Ultra Panavision 70 in 100 theaters) -- is partly a spaghetti Western, partly John Ford's "Stagecoach" and partly Ira Levin's "Death Trap" gushing with bodily fluids.
In his new film, the slow-simmering Western The Hateful Eight, he sets out on a classic adventure right out of John Ford’s Stagecoach and ends up in the caffeinated chaos that closed Reservoir Dogs.
John Ford’s answer, expressed with considerable heartbreak in his classic film Stagecoach and several of his other great Westerns, is No.
I also like the little visual nods to other films: The New York Times highlighted a shot where Thurman is framed in a doorway with the desert outside as a steal from The Searchers, but I preferred the elliptical composition that defines the widescreen frame as The Bride finally confronts Bill at home, which I can imagine as a subtle, almost subliminal reference to the graveyard gunfight at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The new film’s most indelible element is its hokey rear-projected opening, in which The Bride brings us up to date on Vol. 1, which Tarantino follows with a similarly black and white flashback of the events that led up to the massacre that left Thurman’s character for dead — images that evoke John Ford’s The Searchers one minute and Sergio Leone’s funereal-paced Westerns the next.
This sequence is also in black and white and references Ford's "The Searchers" as the heavily pregnant bride (really doing a full dress rehearsal we learn) finds Bill playing the flute on the chapel porch.
The white-clad Bride peers ruefully through the chapel door to the wilderness beyond, no doubt pondering her bartered freedom, and the image reverses Ethan Edwardss looking in at the end of The Searchers.
The movie's crazy-quilt of references includes " Dead Man ," " El Topo ," " Blazing Saddles ," " The Searchers ," "A Man Called Horse," the Man with No Name trilogy, Verbinski's own " Rango ," the cinematic contraptions of Sam Raimi and Tim Burton (check out Bonham-Carter's ivory leg-cannon!), and Keaton's train-crazy "The General."
As for “The Lone Ranger,” Verbinski and his credited writers (Justin Haythe of “Snitch” and “Revolutionary Road,” along with the “Pirates” duo of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio) are trying to do the impossible, or at least the exceptionally difficult: Capture the spirit of an old-timey, square-bear western adventure serial aimed at kids, and also make a dark-hued revisionist western with echoes of “The Searchers,” “Ride the High Country” and “Unforgiven.”
There are likable nods to Once Upon a Time in the West (in particular a railroad subplot and the oscillating dramatic score), Little Big Man, The Searchers, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
The movie is deeply indebted to three great films set during or just after the Civil War: John Ford’s The Searchers (a man’s quest for his brother’s killer in Indian lands), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (the coming of the transcontinental railroad) and Buster Keaton’s The General (the climactic train chase).
Verbinski samples Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, his own animated Rango, The Searchers, Barry Sonnenfeld's version of Wild Wild West, and Little Big Man (the framing device with Tonto and the little buckaroo).
Director Gore Verbinski’s film is at once a throwback to old-timey cowboy movies (“Western” sounds too grand a term for this, as it is best used for movies like “The Searchers”) and a big-budget exercise in overkill.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced by Stagecoach (1939)
Plot Visuals
It’s “The Mortal Remains,” which references John Ford’s classic “Stagecoach” yarn with a definite “Twilight Zone” twist.
In this, the Coens borrow a page from Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight, in the form of a discussion among a group of mismatched stagecoach passengers (both films were influenced by John Ford's Stagecoach.)
The final act is an outright homage to John Ford’s 1939 Western classic Stagecoach , with none of the social impact.
Back before John Ford and Cecil B. DeMille elevated the genre from pulp pablum to legitimate pop-art with their 1939 hits Stagecoach and Union Pacific , many of the most popular Westerns featured clean-cut, smiling do-gooders like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and yes, John Wayne, who were quick with a gun but quicker with a song.
Satoshi Kon follows his meta homage to the movies, Millennium Actress , with a Christmas card to Tokyo’s homeless inspired by John Ford’s religious western 3 Godfathers.
Adapted loosely from John Fords 1948 Western 3 Godfathers, this story of three homeless people a grizzled, world-weary drunk, an over-emotional drag queen, and a headstrong but vulnerable runaway girl who find an abandoned infant on a snowy Christmas Eve and traverse Tokyo in search of her birth parents is an honest and heartfelt parable.
Tokyo Godfathers is what happens when John Ford's sentimental 1948 Western ''3 Godfathers'' is reset in modern-day Tokyo on Christmas Eve by rising Japanese postmodern anime filmmaker Satoshi Kon: John Wayne and his fellow desert bandits are replaced by a homeless alkie, a former drag queen, and a sullen teenage runaway who find an infant girl while scrounging through city trash and band together to find her parents.
Inspired by the 1949 John Ford chestnut "3 Godfathers," in which a troika of cowboy-bandits (including John Wayne) rescues a newborn, "Tokyo Godfathers" unwinds in more straightforward fashion than Kon's earlier features.
Based on an old story by Peter B. Kyne, this material has been made into at least half a dozen Hollywood films, including several during the silent era, and most notably John Ford's 1948 film 3 Godfathers.
While neither as visually nor as thematically intricate as Millennium Actress, Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers – a reimagining of John Ford’s weepy Western 3 Godfathers in which three homeless friends attempt to return an abandoned baby to its parents on Christmas Eve – is nonetheless a delightfully rambunctious holiday fable about the vital importance of family.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Directed by Jane Campion
influenced by The Searchers (1956)
Visuals Characters
Here, imagery eroticizing cowboy iconography mixes with tributes to the great masters of Westerns past: Campion returns again and again to the image of Phil, sometimes with Peter by his side, silhouetted against the doorway of a barn à la John Wayne in The Searchers .
The legendary director constructs a film that is filled with visual queues that harken back to westerns of the past, including John Ford’s The Searchers , while having its own distinctive voice.
Brutalised by his own brutality, Phil is moulded from the same Cain-like clay as the hoodlum (Lee Marvin) who loathes his moll and stubs a cigarette on a barfly’s hand in The Big Heat (1953); Ethan Edward (John Wayne), who covets his sister-in-law and would murder his niece in The Searchers (1956); and the 18th century master-of-arms (Robert Ryan) so disturbed by the beauty of a young sailor (Terence Stamp) that he must destroy him in Billy Budd (1962).
The iconic doorway shot in The Searchers is retooled here as a motif that Campion continually uses to box characters in, despite their expansive surroundings.
But The Nightingale, whose arguably feminist reinvention of the genre culminates with an image lifted straight from The Searchers, is doing something maybe even more philosophically sophisticated: It acknowledges that killing will haunt you, maybe ruin you even, while also wondering aloud if there’s some evil so deep and oppressive and destructive it must be met with violence.
“The Nightingale” bears echoes of other films of struggle in untamed lands: the fervent anti-Australian colonialism of “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,” in which a young 19th-century Aboriginal man goes on a revenge-fueled killing spree; the tracking narrative of “The Searchers,” the stormy male-female bonding of “True Grit,” and the rage-filled survivor’s story of “The Revenant” (though we can be thankful there are no bears in Tasmania).
Despite the best efforts from ace cinematographer Radek Ladczuk, who makes this a visually stunning film, especially influenced by American Westerns, especially John Ford’s “The Searchers,” the showy naturalism and dreamy sequences ring false.
People are going to argue up and down about whether the extremes Kent goes to were really needed, but her film is evocative of other, similarly themed movies like The Searchers or Come and See in its depiction of vengeance's depressingly widening gyre.
Wild Mountain Thyme (2020)
Directed by John Patrick Shanley
influenced by The Quiet Man (1952)
Plot Dialogue Visuals
“Wild Mountain Thyme” has some parallels to the John Ford classic “The Quiet Man” with its much locally debated marriage and an American looking to buy into his birthright, but with the exception of the strong female determining its outcome, it’s better to stick with the old ways.
When the trailer for “Wild Mountain Thyme” hit a few weeks ago, it was largely derided as looking like nothing more than a cartoonish portrayal of Irish lives with all the actors sporting ridiculously unconvincing accents (even co-star Jamie Dornan, who actually is Irish) while spouting blather that made “The Quiet Man” looks restrained by comparison.
“Wild Mountain Thyme” is John Ford’s “The Quiet Man” re-imagined as an even more cliched and sentimental Gaelic rom-com.
That is until Emily — who’s damned tired of his wishy-washy vacillations — pushes him into a corner (during a fierce rainstorm that mimics the one in “The Quiet Man”) and demands that he reveal his feelings for her.
A remote farming community congregates around the church, a cemetery and a pub where you almost expect The Quiet Man ’s Victor McLaglen to be ordering a pint.
At the Kendall and available on demand, the film is set in an Ireland so green your eyes may bleed – it was shot in the County Mayo countryside with an opening flyover along the Cliffs of Moher – and in general has a blarney quotient to make “The Quiet Man” look like a documentary.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by The Searchers (1956)
Visuals
Now, when he borrows and name-drops, he often does so with a sense of mischief and fun: Watching “Inglourious Basterds,” longtime movie enthusiasts will be able to spot the visual nods to “The Searchers”; if they’ve seen any ’70s Giallo starring the Algerian-born actress Edwige Fenech, they’ll giggle when they note that the character Mike Myers plays, in a tiny role, is named Gen.
Violence explodes—fabulously, yes, but without trivializing the value of human life—and as a girl escapes into the distance, in a perfect stylistic and thematic homage to The Searchers , a revenge plot is set into stunning motion.
In a farmhouse set-designed to replicate the effect of the cabin in John Ford’s The Searchers , Tarantino stages a patient scene that is Inglourious Basterds at its best.
Interstellar (2014)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
influenced by The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Themes Visuals
The first hour is a prairie home exposition, a soft combination of "The Road" and "The Grapes of Wrath."
Astronauts Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway journey to a distant galaxy on a desperate mission to save humanity in this brainy, heartfelt, gorgeous and flawlessly acted sci-fi epic — inspired by “2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ “Close Encounters of the Third Kind’’ and less likely sources such as “The Grapes of Wrath.’’
Often, Christopher Nolan’s ambitious film, which looks like the Dust Bowl evacuation scenes in “The Grapes of Wrath” one minute and the eerily blank vistas of “2001: A Space Odyssey” the next, also seems to be trying to reconcile competing impulses.
Juggling the ricocheting notions of the theory of relativity, the metaphysical meditations of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the symphonic connectivity of The Tree of Life, and the Dust Bowl doom of The Grapes of Wrath, and filming it with a giant Imax camera - Nolan's Interstellar is a feat not to be taken lightly.
Many of Interstellar's finest moments are familiar; visual allusions to The Grapes of Wrath and Field of Dreams, and of course Kubrick's 2001, including TARS, a robot shaped like a walking monolith, with Bill Irwin wisecracking about ejecting someone through an airlock.
Ambitious and grand in scope, it is, in a way, a modern version of "The Grapes of Wrath" in which the dust bowlers go into outer space rather than to California - with comparable disappointment.
This is unashamedly heroic film-making in the mold of the John Ford of "The Grapes of Wrath" and "My Darling Clementine," with perhaps a taste of Sergio Leone.
The three films it suggests most consistently are “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Salt of the Earth” and the 1963 Italian film “The Organizer”; the last shot of “Matewan"--consciously or not--almost directly echoes “The Organizer’s” final shot.
It`s myth without the mythic lift that John Ford brought to ''The Grapes of Wrath,'' or King Vidor to ''Our Daily Bread.''