| Summary: | "John Ford was a legend in his own time, a monumental figure not only in Hollywood but throughout world cinema. Even the larger-than-life Orson Welles admitted to learning from Ford, the director he referred to in artistic terms as the 'Old Master'."
"Ford was one of a select number of film directors who was a master of both silent and sound movies. He was extraordinarily prolific, directing around 150 films spanning almost fifty years of film-making in which The Iron Horse (1924), Stagecoach (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) are classics of cinema. Ford was also a great technical virtuoso and innovator. Stylistically he was instrumental in developing new camera techniques, atmospheric lighting and diverse narrative devices."
"This book explores the major movies through discussion of their themes and techniques and reveals how much Ford was concerned with the very issues that are central to us today: gender, race, the treatment of ethnic minorities and social outcasts, the nature of history and the relationship between myth and reality. Unlike most books on Ford, which approach the man and his work chronologically, this one is designed around a collection of ideas which provide a better sense of the coherence of the great director's thinking and creative output, highlighting his enormous contribution to the development of film-making through the exploration of specific films."--Jacket.
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