The Hurricane

#32 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. This was really not what I had expected. Pretty much anything written about this film puts the titular hurricane first and foremost, an exercise in special effects that is really quite impressive. However, it's really just the final twenty minutes or so of the hundred minute film,…

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Wee Willie Winkie

#50 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. I'm pretty sure this is the first Shirley Temple movie I've seen where she was her iconic child self, and I can see the easy appeal she must have had on the masses in the 30s. She was a precocious, adorable child with a surprising amount of…

The Plough and the Stars

#22 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. I think this is another movie like Seas Beneath where John Ford's time making it was so bad that he couldn't see the movie itself anymore. Based on a play by Sean O'Casey, The Plough and the Stars was supposed to be a cinematic adaptation of the…

Mary of Scotland

#66 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. By all accounts, John Ford got bored of this historical costume drama while he made it. It has a professional stamp, but there's nothing that seems to have engaged him. It's an adaptation of a play by Maxwell Anderson of the same name, and it's the kind…

The Prisoner of Shark Island

#38 in my ranking of John Ford's filmography. Abraham Lincoln has been on the edge of a few of John Ford's work, most notably The Iron Horse where he was the impetus for the overall action of building a transcontinental railroad (Ulysses S. Grant deserved no mention, apparently). Here, Ford tells the story of a…