Post by petrolino on Apr 7, 2018 21:53:09 GMT
'3 Godfathers' is a western based on the novelette 'The Three Godfathers' (1918) by Peter B. Kyne. Cattle rustlers Bob Hightower (John Wayne), Pedro Roca Fuerte (Pedro Armendariz) and William Kearney (Harry Carey Jr.) ride into Welcome, Arizona with the intent of robbing a bank. They meet appointed lawman Perley 'Buck' Sweet (Ward Bond) and his wife Mrs. Sweet (Mae Marsh), a former dancer. The outlaws escape into the desert with no water and the threat of a posse coming up behind them. Somehow, the three men stumble upon a baby in need of care.
'3 Godfathers' is a western adventure that becomes a nativity play. Bob Hightower, Pedro Roca Fuerte and William Kearney find redemption in the desert at a heavy price. They endure intense suffering and heat exhaustion, while fasting teaches them to appreciate what they've got and resist the urge for instant gratification. They also learn to be reasonably selfless while looking after a tiny baby.
The scenery in '3 Godfathers' is my favourite aspect. It's beautifully photographed by Winton Hoch, an experimental cameraman from Iowa who contributed to the development of Technicolor and was later elected President of the American Society Of Cinematographers. In a film full of fantastic desert imagery, my favourite moment comes when sand is seen running up dunes during a wind storm, recalling the time when director John Ford tamed one of nature's greatest winds for 'The Hurricane' (1937).
If you watch the basic bank job set-piece filmed for '3 Godfathers' side to side with the big bank job in 'The Long Riders' you'll see several small ideas borrowed by Walter Hill to create what is, in my opinion, the greatest western set-piece of the 1980s. Hill drew ideas from Ford's 'The Lost Patrol' (1934) when making his next picture, the survivalist swamp adventure 'Southern Comfort' (1981). The Coen Brothers' hair-raising comedy 'Raising Arizona' (1987) tilts a 10-gallon hat the way of '3 Godfathers', there's a sentimental nod to the horse riding trio in 'Three Amigos' (1986) and some of the humour is echoed in 'Three Men And A Baby' (1987) and 'Three Fugitives' (1989).
'3 Godfathers' is a spiritual western all the family can enjoy. It's dedicated to actor Harry Carey; as a personal homage, John Wayne held his right elbow with his left hand when filming the closing shot for 'The Searchers' (1956) as this was a famous stance held by Carey on the big screen. Satoshi Kon's Japanese animated feature 'Tokyo Godfathers' (2003) is loosely based on the story 'Three Godfathers'.
'Every John is just the same
I'm sick of their city games
I crave a real wild man
I'm strung out on John Wayne ...'
- Lady Gaga
I'm sick of their city games
I crave a real wild man
I'm strung out on John Wayne ...'
- Lady Gaga
3 Godfathers : Pedro Armendariz, Harry Carey Jr. & John Wayne
'3 Godfathers' is a western adventure that becomes a nativity play. Bob Hightower, Pedro Roca Fuerte and William Kearney find redemption in the desert at a heavy price. They endure intense suffering and heat exhaustion, while fasting teaches them to appreciate what they've got and resist the urge for instant gratification. They also learn to be reasonably selfless while looking after a tiny baby.
"If one were asked to name a Christmas western, 3 Godfathers would be the first that came to mind. One might also add the made-for-television Jericho. The official title of this version appears to have the numeral 3, instead of spelling out Three Godfathers. This was at least the sixth remake of this story, including two previous silent versions by John Ford and a 1929 talkie directed by William Wyler. Audiences at the time this was released probably thought it was better than current audiences would. In fact, this is probably among the least-watched of Ford’s post-WW II work. It seems old-fashioned, and it was not the first time that Ford had told this story. It was made during the last period when not only was the reformed-badman theme in vogue but so was a kind of overtly sentimental religious outlook that was part of society’s general consensus. That consensus has since disappeared. For purposes of comparison, look at Wayne’s Angel and the Badman and Joel McCrea in Four Faces West, both from about the same time. If we can’t exactly share those sentiments in our more cynical time, we shouldn’t lose the ability to appreciate the stories, since they were part of life in the American west, too."
- Nicholas Chennault, 'Westerns Worth Watching'
"Fatherly" isn’t one of the first words one thinks of to describe John Wayne’s onscreen persona, but he plays the part of daddy with relish in the John Ford classic '3 Godfathers' (1948). Of course, he starts out a desperado, one of three on the run from the law when the water-starved outlaws stumble upon a dying woman giving birth in the desert. She delivers a son, and makes the three promise to deliver him to safety. It’s Christmastime, and the trio head for New Jerusalem, promised child in tow, across a desolate and unforgiving (and beautifully lensed) desert, toward redemption."
- Barbara Vandenbergh, The Indianapolis Star
- Nicholas Chennault, 'Westerns Worth Watching'
"Fatherly" isn’t one of the first words one thinks of to describe John Wayne’s onscreen persona, but he plays the part of daddy with relish in the John Ford classic '3 Godfathers' (1948). Of course, he starts out a desperado, one of three on the run from the law when the water-starved outlaws stumble upon a dying woman giving birth in the desert. She delivers a son, and makes the three promise to deliver him to safety. It’s Christmastime, and the trio head for New Jerusalem, promised child in tow, across a desolate and unforgiving (and beautifully lensed) desert, toward redemption."
- Barbara Vandenbergh, The Indianapolis Star
John Wayne
'Estimated Prophet' - Grateful Dead
'Estimated Prophet' - Grateful Dead
The scenery in '3 Godfathers' is my favourite aspect. It's beautifully photographed by Winton Hoch, an experimental cameraman from Iowa who contributed to the development of Technicolor and was later elected President of the American Society Of Cinematographers. In a film full of fantastic desert imagery, my favourite moment comes when sand is seen running up dunes during a wind storm, recalling the time when director John Ford tamed one of nature's greatest winds for 'The Hurricane' (1937).
"It's true that John Ford owes a great deal to western illustrators - after all, Frederic Remington died in 1909; Ford made 'The Iron Horse' just 15 years later. There is no great chronological gap between 19th-century painting and the first silent westerns. But Ford is a far greater artist than Remington or Schreyvogel. His real genius is for landscape and his true tradition is that of the Hudson river school and, behind that, the European romantics JMW Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.
In Remington's painting 'The Alert', the cowboy has stopped on a dusty, nondescript plain. You never see dusty, nondescript plains in Ford's films. When he repeats this figure in 'My Darling Clementine' we see, looming behind Henry Fonda, the awesome outcrops of a lunar landscape: ancient surreal rock formations sculpted when the only Americans were dinosaurs. It's an unreal, phantasmagoric place, Ford's America: an unashamedly sublime, romantic, sinister spectacle. Above all, it is empty. Only the rocky pinnacles really seem to belong; both the whites and their native American enemies are just specks on the wilderness.
Once, the Catskills represented wilderness. For John Ford, the place that mythically epitomised frontier life was Monument Valley, Arizona. This sandstone landscape is now, and was when Ford filmed there, a Navajo reservation. He employed the Navajo as extras, and was proud that he paid them good rates; he also helped them with food supplies in times of crisis and became a blood-brother of the Navajo nation. In his films almost all the "Indians" - be they Comanche, Apache, Sioux - are local Navajo.
Monument Valley is far too wild ever to have been part of the history of American interior colonisation - it is barren, untamable; that's why it was made into a reservation. But Ford filmed there again and again, insisting that this lunar nowhere was the true America. He built temporary towns here, forts, homesteads. In 'My Darling Clementine', the town of Tombstone is unreally set against the sandstone fingers; the OK Corral is surrounded by cacti and space. In 'The Searchers', we are told repeatedly that Monument Valley is Texas. It all makes Ford's films a magnificent series of artworks, anticipating the sculptors of the 1960s and 70s who made earthworks and lightning conductors in the desert. Ford's insistence that Monument Valley is America is one of the greatest imaginative feats of his culture. But this is a harsh, empty, violent, tragic land-scape."
- Jonathan Jones, 'John Ford's Galaxy'
"I had driven through Monument Valley, and I thought it would be a good place to shoot a Western. I used it for the first time in Stagecoach. There was a dry lake that was perfect for the Indian attack. We didn't have any camera cars in those days; we just put the camera on an automobile and shot on the run. It was fast. I asked the driver how fast we had gone, and he said 40 to 42 miles per hour. You wouldn't think that horses could go that fast, but they did.
That chase... every half-*ssed critic says, "Why did it go on so long? Why didn't the Indians just shoot the horses?" I tell them, "If the Indians had done that, they would have stopped the picture." The shoot-out at the end was something I had done once before with Harry Carey - I had done a lot of silent Westerns with Carey and with Tom Mix, but never a talkie. I used the same idea again in My Darling Clementine. It went back to what Wyatt Earp had told me. Wyatt was a friend of mine - in fact, I still have his rifle in the corner of my bedroom. He told me: "I'm not a dead shot. I always walked up pretty close to the other fellow before I fired. I shot people in the shoulder or in the leg, but I never killed them. I left that to my partner."
- John Ford, The Directors Guild Of America
"Stagecoach was my first picture after five years under contract to Fox. What a pleasure it was! Most of the pictures I had made at Fox were pretty dreary. I went from one to another, and we always worked long hours. Then to make a picture with John Ford! Not only did we quit every day at five or six, John stopped shooting every afternoon so we could have tea! I did the [screen] test with Duke Wayne, whom I had never met before. He was testing, not me. Ford had us do the scene after the birth of the baby, about the only real scene we had together. The idea was that he was very respectful of me. He didn't know I was a hooker.
Ford had us play the scene standing against a fence. At one point, Ford took Duke by the chin and shook him. "What are you doing with your mouth?" Ford demanded. "Why are you moving your mouth so much? Don't you know that you don't act with your mouth in pictures. You act with your eyes." Ford got the most out of all of us. I was absolutely mesmerized by him. One thing I realized during Stagecoach - that most great directors are inarticulate. Ford himself had a kind of radar. He'd say, "You know, Claire... you can't... that fellow isn't..." And I'd reply, "Yeah, I know." It all became very clear to me. During our own scenes, the actors didn't get any feeling of great drama; the scenes were too fragmentary. But it was all shaping up in Ford's mind. He knew how all the pieces were going together."
- Claire Trevor, The Directors Guild Of America
In Remington's painting 'The Alert', the cowboy has stopped on a dusty, nondescript plain. You never see dusty, nondescript plains in Ford's films. When he repeats this figure in 'My Darling Clementine' we see, looming behind Henry Fonda, the awesome outcrops of a lunar landscape: ancient surreal rock formations sculpted when the only Americans were dinosaurs. It's an unreal, phantasmagoric place, Ford's America: an unashamedly sublime, romantic, sinister spectacle. Above all, it is empty. Only the rocky pinnacles really seem to belong; both the whites and their native American enemies are just specks on the wilderness.
Once, the Catskills represented wilderness. For John Ford, the place that mythically epitomised frontier life was Monument Valley, Arizona. This sandstone landscape is now, and was when Ford filmed there, a Navajo reservation. He employed the Navajo as extras, and was proud that he paid them good rates; he also helped them with food supplies in times of crisis and became a blood-brother of the Navajo nation. In his films almost all the "Indians" - be they Comanche, Apache, Sioux - are local Navajo.
Monument Valley is far too wild ever to have been part of the history of American interior colonisation - it is barren, untamable; that's why it was made into a reservation. But Ford filmed there again and again, insisting that this lunar nowhere was the true America. He built temporary towns here, forts, homesteads. In 'My Darling Clementine', the town of Tombstone is unreally set against the sandstone fingers; the OK Corral is surrounded by cacti and space. In 'The Searchers', we are told repeatedly that Monument Valley is Texas. It all makes Ford's films a magnificent series of artworks, anticipating the sculptors of the 1960s and 70s who made earthworks and lightning conductors in the desert. Ford's insistence that Monument Valley is America is one of the greatest imaginative feats of his culture. But this is a harsh, empty, violent, tragic land-scape."
- Jonathan Jones, 'John Ford's Galaxy'
"I had driven through Monument Valley, and I thought it would be a good place to shoot a Western. I used it for the first time in Stagecoach. There was a dry lake that was perfect for the Indian attack. We didn't have any camera cars in those days; we just put the camera on an automobile and shot on the run. It was fast. I asked the driver how fast we had gone, and he said 40 to 42 miles per hour. You wouldn't think that horses could go that fast, but they did.
That chase... every half-*ssed critic says, "Why did it go on so long? Why didn't the Indians just shoot the horses?" I tell them, "If the Indians had done that, they would have stopped the picture." The shoot-out at the end was something I had done once before with Harry Carey - I had done a lot of silent Westerns with Carey and with Tom Mix, but never a talkie. I used the same idea again in My Darling Clementine. It went back to what Wyatt Earp had told me. Wyatt was a friend of mine - in fact, I still have his rifle in the corner of my bedroom. He told me: "I'm not a dead shot. I always walked up pretty close to the other fellow before I fired. I shot people in the shoulder or in the leg, but I never killed them. I left that to my partner."
- John Ford, The Directors Guild Of America
"Stagecoach was my first picture after five years under contract to Fox. What a pleasure it was! Most of the pictures I had made at Fox were pretty dreary. I went from one to another, and we always worked long hours. Then to make a picture with John Ford! Not only did we quit every day at five or six, John stopped shooting every afternoon so we could have tea! I did the [screen] test with Duke Wayne, whom I had never met before. He was testing, not me. Ford had us do the scene after the birth of the baby, about the only real scene we had together. The idea was that he was very respectful of me. He didn't know I was a hooker.
Ford had us play the scene standing against a fence. At one point, Ford took Duke by the chin and shook him. "What are you doing with your mouth?" Ford demanded. "Why are you moving your mouth so much? Don't you know that you don't act with your mouth in pictures. You act with your eyes." Ford got the most out of all of us. I was absolutely mesmerized by him. One thing I realized during Stagecoach - that most great directors are inarticulate. Ford himself had a kind of radar. He'd say, "You know, Claire... you can't... that fellow isn't..." And I'd reply, "Yeah, I know." It all became very clear to me. During our own scenes, the actors didn't get any feeling of great drama; the scenes were too fragmentary. But it was all shaping up in Ford's mind. He knew how all the pieces were going together."
- Claire Trevor, The Directors Guild Of America
Pedro Armendariz
'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)' - Sly And The Family Stone
'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)' - Sly And The Family Stone
If you watch the basic bank job set-piece filmed for '3 Godfathers' side to side with the big bank job in 'The Long Riders' you'll see several small ideas borrowed by Walter Hill to create what is, in my opinion, the greatest western set-piece of the 1980s. Hill drew ideas from Ford's 'The Lost Patrol' (1934) when making his next picture, the survivalist swamp adventure 'Southern Comfort' (1981). The Coen Brothers' hair-raising comedy 'Raising Arizona' (1987) tilts a 10-gallon hat the way of '3 Godfathers', there's a sentimental nod to the horse riding trio in 'Three Amigos' (1986) and some of the humour is echoed in 'Three Men And A Baby' (1987) and 'Three Fugitives' (1989).
"We see now, 60 and 70 years later, that John Ford and Howard Hawks are beyond genres. Even so, I always felt that genre film-making was going to be my home, but I also understood that you couldn't go on making them the way they used to do – there's no challenge. If you were just gonna go at it the way the old guys did, then you were going to run up against the fact that they did it better than you ever could – not surprising, since they had invented the genres themselves. My generation found you had to use the old genres in new ways, pull them inside out."
- Walter Hill, The Guardian
"Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry — director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford."
- James Wilson, 'The History Of John Ford : 3 Godfathers'
- Walter Hill, The Guardian
"Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry — director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford."
- James Wilson, 'The History Of John Ford : 3 Godfathers'
Harry Carey Jr.
'Hope You're Feeling Better' - Santana
Walter Hill remembers John Ford at the Autry Museum of the American West
'Hope You're Feeling Better' - Santana
Walter Hill remembers John Ford at the Autry Museum of the American West
'3 Godfathers' is a spiritual western all the family can enjoy. It's dedicated to actor Harry Carey; as a personal homage, John Wayne held his right elbow with his left hand when filming the closing shot for 'The Searchers' (1956) as this was a famous stance held by Carey on the big screen. Satoshi Kon's Japanese animated feature 'Tokyo Godfathers' (2003) is loosely based on the story 'Three Godfathers'.
