The Cavalry Trilogy

John Ford made monumental pictures - clever pun there from your correspondent, you know because Ford so often shot his films in Monument Valley. No? Oh well, a man's got to try.

Ford's alleged Cavalry Trilogy may very well have been regarded as nothing of the sort by this most reluctant of auteurs. He and his frequent star, John Wayne, have both been reconsidered by their critics in the decades since their artistic primes. Quite right too. Wayne, whatever one might make of his unpleasant politics (perhaps best judged from the laughable The Green Berets), remains a great presence on screen, monumental in fact. As for Ford, he is a major figure - how could one say anything different about the man responsible for both The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The three films that comprise the after-designated Cavalry Trilogy were made in 1948, 1949, and 1950 respectively. They share no common characters (though manifestly they share character types) but do all deal with the morality and mores of the U.S. Cavalry. These films are a sympathetic and mildly regretful take on the realities of Manifest Destiny. 

Fort Apache is the first and best of the three movies. For collectors of film trivia there is a rare appearance from the adult Shirley Temple, but more seriously there is a nicely nuanced conflict between Wayne's pragmatic cavalry officer and his martinet commanding officer, played by Henry Fonda. The ending is particularly good and foreshadows the conclusion that Ford would hammer home even more tellingly in Liberty Valance some fourteen years later. There is also perhaps a veiled condemnation of the flawed heroism of a difficult American icon, George Armstrong Custer, not that Custer is naned and not that Ford would be anything other than subtle when treading such ground. 70/100.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is the only clour film of the three. It is shot in fabulous Technicolor and won its sole Oscar for cinematography. Ravishing to look at but rather more sentimental than Fort Apache, it does nevertheless pick-up on the themes of battle-ravaged machismo that Wayne's features were best deployed in tracing. 68/100. 

Last of all comes Rio Grande. Again lighter in tone than Fort Apache, this might be described as a romantic Western with Maureen O'Hara warming-up nicely for her more famous stint alongside Wayne (again under Ford's direction) in 1952's The Quiet Man. Away from the romance and some comedy the questions of male stubbornness and unpremeditated heroism are never forgotten. 69/100.

That Ford could make three such films in as many years is telling. He may not have recognised himself as auteur but he was unquestionably  a master craftsman who wrung every ounce of filmic virtue from his cast and material.