The Long Voyage Home (1940)

Dir.: John Ford
Plot: A crew of merchant sailors try to stay sane and alive in dangerous waters, while personal catastrophe plagues their ranks.

The Long Voyage Home may sound like pleasantly forgettable studio fare – a troop of rowdy merchant sailors played by a familiar array of folksy character actors and a plot revolving around suspected spies, enemy-infested waters and the occasional mass brawl. In reality, it strives for a higher plane, thanks to original author Eugene O’Neill’s poignant examination of the loneliness of the seafaring life and the inner demons that drive a man to seek such an existence and prevent him from leaving it.

Yasujiro Ozu Special: The Only Son (1936)/An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

A couple of weeks back, I was lucky enough to catch a mini Ozu retrospective at the Filmothéque du Quartier Latin, one of Paris’ many terrific little arthouse cinemas in the district around the Sorbonne. Even better, alongside two of Ozu’s best-known films - Tokyo Story and An Autumn Afternoon -the management had decided to include one of the director’s lesser-known works: his first talkie, The Only Son. Having seen Tokyo Story fairly recently, I skipped it this time round to focus on the other films in the series, which I was watching for the first time, and in doing so gained a fresh appreciation of an auteur who only seems to get better with age. Nonetheless, although one of Ozu’s hallmarks is the consistency and continuity which links all of his films together, by juxtaposing his first talking picture and his last we can clearly see that a journey of tremendous aesthetic and an emotional refinement separates the early effort and the final masterpiece.

Rio Grande (1950)

Dir.: John Ford
Plot: A cavalry officer's dangerous task of protecting settlers from rebellious Apache is made more complicated by the arrival of his estranged wife and son.

If you happen to come across any of those unreconstructed heathens who insist against all reason that John Wayne couldn't act, this is the film to show them (either of the two previous entries in the Cavalry trilogy can be used to hammer the point home if needed). The fact that he could act doesn’t mean he always did, of course, and there are plenty of phoned-in performances amongst a filmography so long you could hang your hat on it - Wayne never gave more than he was asked to give, and very frequently he was asked to give next to nothing. John Ford was the only director who consistently pushed for something deeper than a ‘John Wayne’ cowboy archetype from his leading man, and in the Cavalry Trilogy (Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande) he got it.