1] The ensemble actors that John Ford assembled. Some great character actors. My favorite is George O'Brien who plays Captain Collingwood. He makes Collingwood a dignified and even tragic figure. Watch him when he is in the background, such as when just before before the charge Thursday sends Wayne's character to the rear. Collingwood sits wordlessly beside him, saying nothing. He failed long ago, but he will go to his final destiny this time. Great acting!
And the four sergeants are wonderful. Comic in their characters, they are also the guys you would want on your side in a pinch. Pedro Armandez is my particular favorite.
And don't forget the wives. They are like a Greek chorus, largely silent and in the background. But you know they see everything.
Well, what
Fort Apache is really all about is the community and its warm human values. Collingwood is key to it, the sergeants are also important part of it, and especially the women are so essential to the formation and maintenance of that community. Ford is of course known for his capacity in reconstructing and representing the wholeness of lives in his films, but
Fort Apache is perhaps the most successful one in this regard. So much screen-time is spared to depict the daily rituals such as dances, dinners (and even serenades!) and to depict the details of everyday-life, like how to maintain a home in such an outer-post in the west. So the women are obviously key--indeed, a perfect example to refute the complaints that Ford was a masculine director not very interested in women.
Indeed, Ford depicted only certain kind of women, but as long as these women are concerned, he is among the best filmmakers to represent them in cinema. The only filmmakers who can compete with him are the Japanese masters, Ozu or Naruse.
The main conflict in the dramatic structure of the film differs from the main conflict in the plot. The plot is about the Apache revolt and a loose adaptation of Custer's last charge, but the real dramatic conflict is between that community and the menacing outsider Thursday, who brings in bureaucratic modern formality of the military to the warmth of the perhaps old-style and obsolete but still human and gracious, and indeed realistic attitudes that community has been forming for years. It is really the conflict of these two values. Ford clearly favors one of the two values, but at the same time he recognizes that the one he favors will be extinct soon. In many ways,
Fort Apache marks the beginning of the so-called "the later Ford," which turns more and more melancholic and ambiguous.
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gus00
15 years ago
The horses. No movies to my knowledge ever caught the beauty of horses in action as well as John Ford's and his cameraman. Just one scene for example: when in the final charge the bugler is shot off his horse, it charges on alone, beautiful in its gallop.
Many more superb horses in action throughout this and the other two in the trilogy.
And historically correct also. It was common for cavalry horses who's trooper may be on sick-call, or otherwise not available, to escape their stable or picket line and fall into place riderless during long marches, drills or parades.
Gus
"It needs more cow-bell"
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