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John Ford: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers)

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John Ford was one of the most elusive of men, as creative in inventing his life and thwarting efforts to know it as he was in making films. For the Ford entry in the University Press of Mississippi's Conversations with Filmmakers series, editor Gerald Peary has collected a slew of interviews, from a 1920 profile in the Cleveland News to a 1973 postmortem by Walter Wagner. Peary's introduction sets the stage for what's to come in an anecdote, all too typical, about a 1970 attempt by Joseph McBride to talk to a director he idolized and would later profile in several books. "Ford, almost immediately testy, pushed his interviewer off-stride by a seating at his deaf ear, forcing McBride to sacrifice momentum repeating questions." Ford's responses to queries about specific films were perverse and dismissive: Seven Women was "just a job of work"; The Searchers "a good picture." As for the interviews themselves, they're mostly dodgy efforts, battles-of-wills that Ford could easily win by pretending deafness, repeating a rehearsed anecdote, or simply ending the interview early. The poetry in Ford's nature came out in his work, not in his life, if these interviews are any indication. Even in the 1920 article, he discusses mostly the production circumstances of his recent film Marked Man. It may be more than simply because of the Cleveland News' word-count policy that this article runs a scant two pages, despite the author's daylong visit with Ford. Later interviews further this strange portrait of a man who insisted on calling himself, both ironically and as protective camouflage, a "peasant." Ford is most comfortable recounting anecdotes about the films and actors. While it's useful to have all these interviews in one place, Ford's evasiveness may frustrate the casual reader.