TCM Pick O’ The Day: Monday, January 26th
by John Nolte
11:30am PST – Fugitive, The (1947) – A revolutionary priest flees a Central American dictatorship. Cast: Henry Fonda, Pedro Armendariz, J. Carrol Naish, Leo Carrillo Dir: John Ford BW-100 mins, TV-PG
The star of John Ford’s most personal film is Gabriel Figueroa’s inexpressibly beautiful photography. The Mexican cinematographer painstakingly paints each and every shot with black and white and contrast and hushed stillness. Like his masterpiece, “Young Mr. Lincoln” (which also stars Henry Fonda), Ford isn’t interested in story as much as myth-making and emotional atmosphere.
By some reports, Ford considered this rumination on liberty and Christianity his only “perfect” film, but he paid a price for it. “The Fugitive” failed at the box office, forcing Ford to go back to the profitably reliable Westerns which postponed for five years Ford’s other labor of love, “The Quiet Man” (1952).
Good thing, too. Those “reliable” Westerns ended up being Ford’s epic cavalry trilogy.
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9 Comments
Alas, NetFlix doesn’t have it.
Yeah, this movie is one big bore. Ford went all artsy on it, but the art was a bunch of movie and photographic cliches by the time he got to use them.
Of course, that didn’t stop Bergman, either, from recycling all the tired straining for iconic shots.
Just tell the damn story, and quit trying to be profound about it.
I read about scriptwriters who lard their scenes with shots of objects meant to be symbolic on a “deep level” of the action or allegory.
To hell with that pointing fingers saying – See! See! There’s a cross. There’s a dove! get it? get it? Look! Flowing water. Isn’t that great?
A story sets up its own symbolic content unconsciously. You don’t have to get all deliberate and artsy about it.
That’s an amazing movie. I keep catching only the last thirty or forty-five minutes, and it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck every time.
JOHNMARK7:
… scenes with shots of objects meant to be symbolic on a “deep level” of the action or allegory … there’s a cross. There’s a dove! get it? get it? Look! Flowing water. Isn’t that great?
I saw that Bergman movie.
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