Film Forum

U.S., 1956
Directed by John Ford
Written by Frank S. Nugent
Based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May
Starring John Wayne, Natalie Wood, Jeffrey Hunter
Approx. 119 min. DCP.

“That’ll be the day.” John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter’s multi-year quest to rescue kidnapped Natalie Wood from the Comanche begins and ends with Wayne framed in a doorway. Arguably Ford’s greatest work, and subject of imitations and homages in a multiplicity of genres. 

A WARNER BROS. RELEASE

Reviews

“Ford’s poetic landmark of the West has shaped us and haunts us still as both history and myth.” 
– Peter Bogdanovich

“Pictorially, Ford’s masterpiece; for panoramic compositions it has no equal.”
– Brian Garfield, Western Films

“We may still be waiting for the Great American Novel, but John Ford gave us the Great American Film in 1956.  Through the central image of the frontier, the meeting point of wilderness and civilization, Ford explores the divisions of our national character, with its search for order and its need for violence, its spirit of community and its quest for independence.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“In truly great films — the ones that people need to make, the ones that start speaking through them, the ones that keep moving into territory that is more and more unfathomable and uncomfortable — nothing’s ever simple or neatly resolved. You’re left with a mystery.”
– Martin Scorsese