11:30am PST – Fugitive, The (1947) – A revolutionary priest flees a Central American dictatorship. Cast: Henry Fonda, Pedro Armendariz, J. Carrol Naish, Leo Carrillo Dir: John Ford BW-100 mins, TV-PG
The star of John Ford’s most personal film is Gabriel Figueroa’s inexpressibly beautiful photography. The Mexican cinematographer painstakingly paints each and every shot with black and white and contrast and hushed stillness. Like his masterpiece, “Young Mr. Lincoln” (which also stars Henry Fonda), Ford isn’t interested in story as much as myth-making and emotional atmosphere.
By some reports, Ford considered this rumination on liberty and Christianity his only “perfect” film, but he paid a price for it. “The Fugitive” failed at the box office, forcing Ford to go back to the profitably reliable Westerns which postponed for five years Ford’s other labor of love, “The Quiet Man” (1952).
Good thing, too. Those “reliable” Westerns ended up being Ford’s epic cavalry trilogy.
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