By the time of his death in 1973, John Ford was probably the most celebrated director of Hollywood’s golden age. The winner of four best director Oscars, he was the first filmmaker to be awarded his country’s highest civilian honour, the Medal of Freedom, and the man chosen by the American Film Institute to receive its first life achievement award.

In his work, Ford returned regularly to the same themes, employed the same actors and had a visual style that was personal and distinctive. This volume explores his preoccupations throughout his long, garlanded career, showing how he attempted to come to terms with American history, with how America kept changing its relationship with history and with how many of the myths of the ‘West’ were just that – myths.

' The book explores notions of family, community, and nation and the struggle of social outcasts to find a place within those worlds... Ford’s problematic representation of Black people and Native Americans is weighed against his more sympathetic treatments of these communities in films made later in his career, such as Sergeant Rutledge (1960) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964), not to mention films like The Searchers (1956) that foregrounded and exposed white racism.'
Choice
Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association

Jeffrey Richards is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at Lancaster University