John Ford: The Man Who Invented America

Pearl Harbor was December 7, 1941, not 1942. Who's doing the research on this Documentary, I think they were drunk at the time

How sadly disappointing this is. Why is it so many feel that EVERYthing has to be politicized today? I didn't tune into this in order to view and listen to the same sort of tripe one can find on any cable news channel 24 hours a day. If this is a biography or documentary of John Ford new definitions are needed for each in the dictionary. Call me naïve if you will, but the last thing I expected when anxiously tuning into this was political drivel and sour grapes more than three years after the 2016 election. Twenty minutes in and my wife and I, enormous John Ford appreciators, can't take any more. Sadly it is not even worth staying tuned in for the potential nugget of John Ford information because it is laced with far too much current politics and far too little content about the supposed subject. If you genuinely want to know something about John Ford I recommend you skip this and read one of the number of biographies readily available.

As others have posted, I eagerly sat down to watch this bio of Ford.

As others have also posted, what we saw was a hodgepodge of left wing academia and for some odd reason, multiple French eggheads, put their modern day spin on Fords work.

The worst part was someone claiming Ford put manly men on film because he was afraid of his own feminine side. Where they dreamed up this gem is beyond me, and of course they don't provide any proof of their weird claim. Another gem was claiming the Searchers only shows the savagery of the American Cavalry, because of the devastation left behind in a village of Indians, while completely ignoring the reason for Ethan Edwards search, which arose from the Indians savagery of his family. But the most laughable part was telling us about Ford having failed cataract surgery in his right eye, causing him to wear a patch on his right eye. While showing him in closeup wearing his eye patch on his left eye.

This is not a true bio of a great American director, but an exercise in pushing a set of beliefs disguised as a documentary.

Like other reviewers, I was disappointed with this documentary in many ways. As some have already pointed out, it gets several basic facts wrong: John Wayne was a star before "Stagecoach" (albeit mostly in B westerns), there were complex characters in silent westerns (just take a look at the 1916 William S. Hart movie "Hell's Hinges"), the United States was drawn into WWII at the end of 1941 (not in 1942 as implied by the narrator), and Ford won either four or six Academy Awards depending on whether you count the two he won for his war-time documentaries (this movie apparently forgets about "December 7th" and claims just five). Heck, if Wikipedia is to be believed, recent documents indicate that Ford didn't even attack Cecil B. DeMille at the DGA meeting in quite the way we've been led to believe all these years....

However, I was much less bothered by this movie's focus on Ford's politics than the other reviewers have been. I can understand why some people turn to TCM to escape current politics, but Ford's shifting political views have been a major question for biographers, critics, and fans for decades. So I think the topic is fair game, especially when you consider that several of Ford's own movies were extremely political: the pro-IRA "The Informer," the pro-civil rights (in the general sense) "The Prisoner of Shark Island," the pro-New Deal "The Grapes of Wrath," the implicitly pro-union "How Green Was My Valley," etc. "What made Ford shift to the right in his later years?" this documentary asks. Or perhaps more accurately, what makes us think that Ford shifted to the right when perhaps he didn't after all?

Personally, I think this movie's chief interest is that it spends quite a bit of time toward the end examining "Sergeant Rutledge" (1960) and "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964), two Ford films that never seem to attract much attention but that tackled minority rights head on during the turbulent '60s. This documentary actually made some smart points about both of those movies and enriched my appreciation for them. I suppose that's why I ultimately consider this relatively short documentary worthwhile. That said, it's puzzling that, apart from Chale Nafus, the filmmaker didn't turn to critics of color to discuss these two movies. What does, for example, Donald Bogle have to say about "Sergeant Rutledge" or Angelo Baca (who actually appears in this documentary but doesn't talk about Ford's films directly) have to say about "Cheyenne Autumn"? How perceptive, or not, was Ford's treatment of the Buffalo Soldiers or the Cheyenne?

If you're looking for a good overview of Ford's career, you're better off seeking out one of several book-length biographies or Peter Bogdanovich's still-excellent "This Is John Ford" (1971). If you're a hard-core Ford fan, this documentary's more narrow focus is worth an hour of your time as long as its inaccuracies don't distract you too much -- or you don't mind its explicitly political angle.

Horrible example of leftist media suckering you in with an interesting topic/subject then filling it with their own political agenda that has nothing to do with the life and times of John Ford.

I'm a huge John Ford film fan; However and I was born after most of his classic Westerns were made, I know little about the man. Only from snippets from the TCM Hosts do I know a few things So I was very interested when I stumbled upon this documentary Well, They tease you with glorious images of Monument Valley; but spend time bashing Trump -right in the middle of a documentary about a legendary field director who made 'Stagecoach in 1939 and The Searchers in '56 They got some clown bashing Trump ?

Also what's with the interviewing of some French people without ever establishing their credentials.

What an epic waste of time.