The Quiet Man

The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)

A retired American boxer returns to the village where he was born in Ireland, where he finds love.

The most celebrated director of all time, John Ford, had to find a studio ready to finance the project he cherished the most: The Quiet Man. Having to direct a box office sure shot in 1950, Rio Grande for Republic Pictures, Ford brought his casts of regulars (John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, Francis Ford) in Ireland the land of his ancestors. Shot in a sheer Technicolor giving to O’Hara’s red hairs a beautiful look and letting the wonderful sceneries of Ireland execute its charm on the screen.

Coming from America, Sean Thornton (Wayne) is an ex-Boxer with a secret wants to buy back the house where he was born. It doesn’t take much time for him to fall in love with soon enemy Red Danaher’s(McLaglen) sister Mary Kate (O’Hara), his neighbours. Since, he left America to turn his back on boxing he decided to be a passive man and let the violence away from his life. However, his marriage with Mary Kate will suffer from this way of thinking.

Ford realizes his dream film filled with many personal elements, the tone set between the visual comedy, the melodrama, and the Fordian film isn’t always very clear. Ford is an Irishman and being able to go back his roots in a film like he did with How Green Was My Valley was in some level his way to attain heaven just like Thornton says in the first half of the film. His vision of a small community, Catholicism, fighting Irishmen, drunk men, and many other elements already omnipresent in his films are fully exposed as the epicentre of the movie. And the theme of the man who must understand and pass over his own pride to be able to fully achieve himself just like Wayne’s character in The Searchers is pretty obvious too.

A surprise is the aesthetic flashback of boxing that probably inspired Martin Scorsese for his Raging Bull. Even if there are moments of pure bliss in The Quiet Man, it is an uneven movie that entertains and also still connect with Irish people but that lacks the lustre of the aforementioned The Searchers. A final comment would be to paraphrase Martin Scorsese and Richard Schickel on the fact that there is too much Irishmen drinking and fighting in this film that cannot be considered a comedy or a melodrama completely. Recommended but not a must see even if it a film that has been praised for sixty years.

Ikiru

Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)

A bureaucrat tries to find a meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer.

Takashi Shimura is an actor I’ve already bragged about in my recent review of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Well, be prepared to read some more in this new review. They collaborated together eleven times and while Kurosawa was 42 at the time they did Ikiru, Shimura was 47. Of the three most celebrated Kurosawa films you have the aforementioned Seven Samurai, Rashômon, and finally Ikiru or if you prefer translated as To Live. Out of the samurai genre, Kurosawa made some of his most interesting stories and the most philosophically charged ones too.  As a Kurosawa enthusiast, I pretty much rank the three film in this particular order. However, with the time and multiple viewings, Ikiru seems like a film that grows with its viewer and develops into something that age, time, experience, and life brings as one of the forefront runners of the emperor’s filmography.

Watanabe (Shimura) learns that he doesn’t have much time to live, he is dying of a cancer. Just like anyone who gets a similar news, he is shocked and reacts strongly. Knowing that he will die brings to him that he did not even started to live yet. Ikiru portrays a two and a half hour quest to find the meaning of this man’s life and his simple but yet touching passage. This is a very humanist tale of understanding the common life of everyone. It faces our inevitable passage through time, aging, and the facing our own death someday.

Shimura delivers a very solid performance and his ability to be a common man just like James Stewart or Henry Fonda makes him one of the most human faces to deliver such a near perfect act. His presence is almost like the one of a ghost who wanders in the final moments of his own life. Knowing that he is doomed by destiny, his encounters are sublime moments of greatness.

As stated in my review about Seven Samurai and Rashômon, my two favourites Kurosawa, Ikiru stands strongly with the sheer brilliance of Red Beard, the colourful Ran and Kagemusha. However, the film that stands out the most after multiple viewings and that sticks in mind just like a master’s lesser known masterpiece, Ikiru might be one of Kurosawa’s most universal film. Released worldwide circa 1960, because it was considered too Japanese, just like Yasujiro Ozu’s films, Ikiru should have deserved its spot on the Sight and Sound Top 25. Highly recommended.

High Noon

High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)

A marshall, personally compelled to face a returning deadly enemy, finds that his own town refuses to help him.

Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is on his way to retire from his duties and get married to the love of his life Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), but he learns that his worst enemy is returning on the noon train. The soon to be married couple has to wait to leave and Kane must stay and face his enemy Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald). The Marshall goes out and asks for help from his fellow citizens but got no help at all. He must go against Miller and his gang alone.

Fred Zinnemann’s film is a beautiful black and white Western that launched the revisionist Westerns with a more social oriented approach than the traditional paternal Westerns of John Wayne. High Noon also fuelled a debate about how a man of courage, a marshall in this case, should take care of his duties like a professional and not ask help from non-professionals. The nay-sayers of High Noon were John Wayne and Howard Hawks who hated the film and even remade it with their own interpretation of the story with great success with Rio Bravo.

Despite the controversy from the right-wing of Hollywood of the 1950’s, the pace and the action of High Noon are well handled and there is no low moment in the film. The storytelling is pretty classic and the technique of Zinnemann has never been so good. It is no surprise that it got seven Oscar nominations and won four most notably for Gary Cooper as the Best Actor in a Leading Performance.

As a matter of fact, High Noon written by Carl Foreman (screenplay) is a metaphor on the current blacklist and “witch hunt” of Senator McCarthy. Foreman was a blacklisted screenwriter and the tale of the marshall of asks for assistance to the people is how the American people were ready to give away any mark men in the 1950’s just to not get involved with people completely innocent. This also might be one of the main reasons why Wayne and Hawks were strongly disapproving the films’ themes.

However, this is one of the Westerns that proved to pass the test of time with great brio. The pacing, the cinematography, and the presence of Gary Cooper justifies my rating of five stars. Every Western enthusiast should discover this wonderful masterpiece.

Bend of the River (1952)

TSPDT Greatest Films #912 Bend of the River (Anthony Mann, 1952)

Another amazing collaboration between James Stewart and Anthony Mann. A Western that made me think a lot about the themes exploited in The Far Country by the same Director/actor duo. The two films feel like if they were made at the same time which was approximately the case, only two years separate them. The lead character has once again to fight against the power in place that is corrupted.
However, both Bend of the River and The Far Country are about the West and how the better men must have given all they had in order to keep moral and humanity. The similarities between the two films will make this review pretty short but I promess to watch again both films and get back with more meat that deserves those classic Westerns.