John Ford and the American West

by Peter Cowie

Description by OLDIES.com:

"My name's John Ford. I make Westerns." As his 1950 comment indicates - with excessive modesty - the legendary filmmaker directed some fifty Westerns during a prolific career that lasted more than half a century. Ford's films are in fact exceptionally varied, but he seems to have been most at ease when shooting in the great outdoors. In addition, Ford was inspired by the primal beauty of the American landscape; so many of his films are set against the untamed wilderness of Arizona's Monument Valley and southeastern Utah that the area came to be known as "Ford country."

Author Peter Cowie, a highly respected historian of the cinema, discusses these films in detail - aided by film stills, reproductions of artwork, and photographs of these landscapes as they look today - to show how this master filmmaker used a wide range of sources to create his idealized view of frontier life, crafting films that capture the enduring essence of the national character and epitomize the mythology of the American West.