John Ford month on TCM

Cafe Society
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Probly shoulda mentioned this earlier, but TCM’s featured director this month, November, is the greatest American director, John Ford. If it’s not too late, set your TiVo’s to catch the very rarely seen (but worth tracking down on bootleg . . . hypothetically) Peter Bogdanovich documentary Directed by John Ford, newly updated for this presentation. It’s on now, as I type, and is being shown again in a couple hours (8.30PT/11.30ET), with Stagecoach–one of the most influential films of all time–shown in between. Afterwards is They Were Expendable, one of the greatest, most thoughtful war movies ever made, followed by The Wings of Eagles, a great, unsentimental biography of Ford’s flawed but outsize friend, Spig Wead.

And there are many more Ford gems being shown this month, although I’m still not going to be able to catch The Iron Horse on my DVR. One film surely not be missed is Seven Women, Ford’s final film. Consigned by the critics of the day to perpetual unavailability, it’s nonetheless one of my favorite Ford masterpieces.

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Oh, I hope the Bogdanovich doc will replay. Thanks for the heads-up.

This link goes directly to the Featured Director page for Ford.

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Apparently the reason (says Robert Osborne) that Bogdanovich’s doc was unavailable for 35 years is that not all of the rights were cleared for the clips he used. This new expanded version has enough new material–interviews with Scorsese, Spielberg, Eastwood, et al.–to be deemed a “TCM Original” and not be, in fact, the 1971 documentary at all (though it includes the original Orson Welles narration). It played at this year’s Telluride Film Festival. All of the clips have been updated too, to include restored footage. And, one assumes, Bogdanovich can now afford enough interns to nail down the rights.

So one assumes it will be made available on disc at some future date.

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It will rerun November 21.