John Ford is a filmmaker so well known for a handful of genuine classics, most of them westerns, that the fact that he made over 140 films in a wide range of genres over the course of his 60-year career as a director is too rarely acknowledged. Many were made in the silent era, some were documentaries, a few were short films, and the vast majority will probably never be seen by any but the most devoted of Ford fans (even then, many of his silent films have since been lost).
Hoping to remind us of some of these anomalies in Ford’s career, Indicator are releasing a set of largely forgotten gems from the legendary director. The set, dubbed ‘John Ford at Columbia, 1935-1958’, includes the films The Whole Town’s Talking, The Long Gray Line, Gideon’s Day and The Last Hurrah.
The four films in this collection were all directed by Ford during his time working for Columbia Studios, and none of them are westerns – The Whole Town's Talking is a mistaken identity comedy-crime movie; The Long Gray Line is a large scale life story biopic; Gideon's Day is a British character study dressed up as a police procedural; and The Last Hurrah is a drama about an old-school town mayor's final campaign. All are fascinating for varying reasons and all are absolutely worth seeing, and while some will enthusiastically embrace all four, others will find themselves preferring one or two titles over the others.
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