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.

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.

The Shepherd of the Hills (1941)

Dir.: Henry Hathaway
Plot: The arrival of a stranger in an Ozark mountain village changes the lives of its residents, especially that of a young man out for revenge.


Let me start by saying that I've always got a huge kick out of seeing pre-50s colour films, simply because many wonderful actors were rarely (and sometimes never) shot in colour, and were usually past their prime when they finally got around to it. So it was an especial joy to catch this early John Wayne picture because wow, does the boy look good in Technicolor! He had the most beautiful eyes, and being able to appreciate them in colour changes his whole aspect. He plays second fiddle, however, to the Ozark mountains (or, as is rather more likely, rural California), which fills the screen with resplendent forest scenery for the duration of this utterly bizarre melodrama-cum-parable-cum-Western.