Product Details

• Actors: Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff, Katharine Hepburn
• Directors: John Ford, Leslie Goodwins
• Writers: Dudley Nichols, Garrett Fort, Howard Fast, James R. Webb, James Warner Bellah
• Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 5
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: June 6, 2006
• Run Time: 554 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000F0UUHS
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,426 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #19 in	Movies & TV > Westerns > Biography
  #22 in	Movies & TV > Westerns > Western Directors > John Ford
  #24 in	Movies & TV > Classics > Classic Directors > Ford, John

• For more information about "The John Ford Film Collection (The Informer / Mary of Scotland / The Lost Patrol / Cheyenne Autumn / Sergeant Rutledge)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

John Ford remains the consensus choice as America's greatest director, and his critical eminence dates from two films in this set. By 1934 he had been directing for 17 years, building a solid reputation as a Hollywood professional with maybe the best eye in the movie business. With The Lost Patrol (1934) and The Informer (1935)--made for RKO rather than his accustomed studio base, Fox--he took a decisive step toward establishing himself as a personal, at least semi-independent artist. Both films were stark dramas free of box-office compromise, glib heroics, or any expectation of facile happy endings. They were also more relentlessly stylized than anything Ford had done before ... which both distinguished them in their day and left them vulnerable to dating when some of their experimentation proved rather dead-ended.

The Lost Patrol began Ford's association with producer Merian C. Cooper, a partnership that would lead to the independent production company Argosy and the making of such fine, ultrapersonal films as The Quiet Man, The Searchers, and Ford's celebrated cavalry trilogy. The story, by Philip MacDonald, concerns a handful of British soldiers cornered at an oasis in the Mesopotamian Desert (now Iraq) during World War I and slowly decimated by an unseen enemy. The strong visuals--baking sun, the undulating vastness of the dunes, the drift of ghostly mirages--befit a crucible of character-testing, with an unnamed Sergeant (Victor McLaglen) striving to keep at least one man alive as desperation, madness, and implacable Arab snipers take their toll. This DVD release restores six minutes of footage cut for a 1949 rerelease and rarely seen since.

Ford won the first of his four best-director Oscars for The Informer, an intense tale of "one night in strife-torn Dublin, 1922" when a slow-witted I.R.A. strongman named Gypo Nolan sells out his best friend for 20 British pounds. On a budget that obliged him to obscure canvas sets with deep shadows and a persistent fog that underscores Gypo's mental and spiritual confusion, Ford created a visual world akin to the German Expressionist classics of the 1920s. But the film's inventive use of sound and an ambitious music score (by Max Steiner) commingling leitmotifs for half a dozen key characters also encouraged '30s critics to hail it as the first classic of the sound era. That was overstating it (and more than a little amnesiac on the critics' part!). Overstated, too, was Ford's relentless Christ symbolism paralleling Gypo's betrayal to that of Judas. Still, Victor McLaglen's portrayal of the title character remains a triumph (McLaglen won an Oscar as well), and the film abounds in brilliant strokes: the silhouette of a British soldier shining his flashlight on the wanted poster of Gypo's friend, while Gypo lurks just outside the beam; the giant Nolan forever knocking his head on hanging signs or seeming to be crushed by low ceilings; the cacophony of cries and gunfire, and then crashing silence, as the Black and Tan raid the I.R.A. rebel's home. Initially overrated, then relegated to museum status, The Informer awaits rediscovery as a dynamic motion picture.

The John Ford Collection includes one more mid-'30s RKO endeavor, Mary of Scotland (1936). Although handsome, this adaptation of a Maxwell Anderson blank-verse play about Queen Elizabeth's northern rival never finds credible footing as a movie. Andrew Sarris is dead right in lamenting Ford's version of Mary, Queen of Scots, as "a madonna of the Scottish moors"--Katharine Hepburn, inevitably. The most interesting thing about the production is the offscreen story, that Ford and Hepburn fell passionately in love, yet (perhaps) resisted becoming lovers.

From there we leap to the 1960s and two Westerns made under the aegis of Warner Bros. (Warner now owns the RKO library, hence this rather arbitrary set.) Sergeant Rutledge (1960) has markedly improved with age, with what once seemed creaky dramaturgy now playing as bold stylization. Using a jagged flashback structure occasioned by a court-martial at a Southwest outpost, Ford took an unflinching look at the legacy of race in America. The then-unknown black actor Woody Strode has a showcase role as a magnificent "Buffalo soldier" accused of the rape-murder of his commanding officer's blond, white daughter and the murder of the commandant himself. Unfortunately, Ford's once-masterly handling of character actors had grown lax, and he indulged some tedious bombast from Willis Bouchey and Carleton Young as the presiding judge and prosecutor, respectively; and Jeffrey Hunter, however effective in The Searchers, made a weak protagonist as Rutledge's defense counsel. But the veteran cameraman Bert Glennon almost winds things back to Stagecoach days, occasionally turning the film's Technicolor to very nearly black and white.

Another debt to race relations is addressed in Cheyenne Autumn (1964), a beautiful title to grace John Ford's final Western. The film has moments of grandeur as Ford attempts at long last to "tell the story from the Indians' point of view," and it's a pleasure to report that William H. Clothier's majestic Technicolor compositions have been restored to their Panavision dimensions on the DVD. Ford is unambiguously supportive of the Cheyennes' resolve to bolt their reservation in the desert Southwest and trek north to their ancestral lands. By contrast, most of white society, the military, the bureaucracy, and the sensationalist press are portrayed as insensitive, foolish, or hateful. However, the Cheyenne are nobly wooden, with all key roles played by non-Indians: Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Sal Mineo, Victor Jory, and Dolores Del Rio (breathtakingly beautiful as ever). As for point of view, it's sympathetic cavalry officer Richard Widmark and Quaker missionary Carroll Baker through whose eyes most of the epic narrative unfolds. --Richard T. Jameson

Product Description

WHV celebrates on of the true masters of American cinema with the release of The John Ford Collection. Four-time Academy Award?-Winning director John Ford is perhaps best known for his Westerns and collaborations with John Wayne, however, this Ford collection runs the gamut of genres and shows the diversity and genius of John Ford at his most impressive. Featured here will be the DVD debuts of five classic titles - all will be exclusive to the five-disc boxed set.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AMERICA'S GREATEST DIRECTOR!, June 9, 2006

By	Kenneth Kapel "Leftist American" (Chicago,Il, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The John Ford collection is a set of vintage Ford films,without John Wayne while and I would NOT have included Mary of Scotland,and would have preferred either The Plough and the Stars,or The Fugitive (Henry Fonda)or the underrated Two Rode Together,this is still a very good film set.There is a separate Ford-Wayne collection,which I will review latter.The five films,in this collection are: The Lost Patrol;The Informer;Cheyenne Autumn:Mary of Scotland:Sergeant Rutledge: The following are my reviews of each individul film.

1.THE LOST PATROL-TENSE ANTI-WAR CLASSIC!*****
A British army Patrol,during the time of WW1, in the Mesopotamian desert gets lost,after their commander is killed,and he has left no notes or orders,in regard to their mission or exact location.With
their leader dead the small group's command falls to Sergeant Victor McLaglen.After a journey of unknown length,the patrol finds an oasis,and it is here where most of the action takes place as they are pinned down by (mostly unseen) Arab fighters.It is here where we really get to meet the men and get to know their hopes and fears.The other men include J.M.Kerrigan(as Quincannn-probably the most frequently used name in a Ford film!),Reginald Denny (Brown),Wallace Ford( excellent as Moretti),Boris Karloff,(,outstanding as Sanders-a religious fanatic),and Douglas Walton,as callow youth,who when he leaves for the service he relates that that was the ONLY time he saw his mother cry.This is (to me) one of the dramtic highlight so the film,when we see 19 year old Walton(about 25,in real life) pours his heart out to McLaglen.This scene,even more so than others shows the futility of war. Great direction,a great screenplay(Dudley Nichols,Ford's favorote writer,at the time-THE INFORMER-STAGECOACH),a fine Max Steiner score,and an excellent DVD transfer. A GREAT ANTI-WAR AND(mildly) ANTI-IMPERIALIST FILM,AND A MUST SEE!

MARY OF SCOTLAND:KATHERINE HEPBURN-FREDRIC MARCH **1/2
Katherine Hepburn,in her only Ford film,is Mary, Queens of Scots.This motion picture is derived from a Maxwell Anderson Play,and a screenplay by Dudley Nichols.To me of what I've seen of Ford's thirties films,"Mary of Scotland" it is Ford's least-good films of the period.Watchable,but forgettable.Two and one half stars.

THE INFORMER:VICTOR MCLAGLEN'S FINEST HOUR *****
The story of "the troubles",in Ireland, in told in a very somber way in the John Ford classic "The Informer",with Victor McLaglen(a Ford regular)giving an AA winning performance in the title role.McLaglen plays Gypo Nolan,a down and out Dubliner,who is without money,and because of this and having been recently "dismissed" from the IRA(Irish Republican Army'freedom fighters,hoping to obtain a united and totally free Ireland,with no British ties whatsoever) and because he is also in jeopardy of losing his girlfried Margot Grahame,(outstanding)as he is in a greatly strained emotional state,and when wondering the streets comes upon a reward poster for "IRA murderer"Frankie McPhillip(Wallace Ford-no relation to the director).The reward is worth enough so that both Gypo and his girl can get passage to America.A short while latter Gypo accidentally runs into Frankie,an old friend,and they have a short conversion about Frankie being on the run,how Frankes's mother is,and the reasons why Gypo was "sacked" from the(in this coversion a "Quincannon" is mentioned) IRA,after the conversion ends the wheels start to turn in Gypo's head and he wonders over to the "Black and Tans"station(the Black and Tans,so-called becuse of their uniforms,are special British militiary(police)men assigned to Ireland when "the troubles" are at their height,""Up the Irish" or in this film,"Up the Rebels" types may look at the B&T's as THE REAL TERRORISTS,but that's for another discussion)and reluctanly tells the "Brits" that Frankie will be at his mother's.After Frankie is killed in a shoot-out,Gypo is given disdainfully(even the B&T's don"t like Informers) his money and goes.Drinking,fighting,and partying are on the night's program for Gypo,but his drining is only a mask,to hide his emotional breakdown from his wicked deed.The IRA figures out what went on,in regard to Frankie's death, and Gypo is a doomed man!
Other supporting members of the cast are very good to excellent,J.M.Kerrigan,Preston Foster,Donald Meek,Joseph (then Sauers)Sawyer,and Una'Connor as Frankie's mother who is a bite "over the top" early in the film,but comes through poignanly at the coclusion.From a LiamO'Flaherty story,an excellent Dudley Nichols screenplay,with a haunting Max Steiner musical score,and a very crisp and clear DVD transfer.The ONLY MINUS NO DVD COMMETARY-A MUST SEE!!


CHEYENNE AUTUMN-DESPITE FLAWS ALMOST A CLASSIC ****
Ignoring "Fort Apache",and the anti-racism of "The Searchers",many critics (falsely) claim that John Ford set an anti-Native American(Indian) tone in films that increased racism in America.Well, whatever truth there is to either side of the argument is,in this film John Ford,in his last Western,is FIRMLY on the Indians side.But is was still (somewhat justified)critised fom casting,in VERY IMPORTANT roles none-Idians,especially The Victor Jory,Gilbert Roland,Richardo Montalban,Dolores Del Reo,and Sal Mineo(!)roles.
This motion picture tells the true story of the Cheyenne's plight at the hand of "THE GREAT FATHER" and their trek,and persuit(by U.S.troops) back to their Yellowstone homeland.
On the minus side is the appearrance of Carroll Baker(miscast) as a Quaker school marm) and Karl Malden,with an"over the top performance" as a muderous,racist American(German born) General.The screenplay by James Webb(Pork Chop Hill,The Big Country,Cape Fear) is lacklustre,and the comic interlude of Jimmy Stewart(as Wyatt Earp) with Arthur KennedyI"Doc" Holliday) and John Carradine(a dishonest gambler) and a bunch of hooligian ,led by Ken Curtis is out of place,and NOT VERY FUNNYI did lke Elizebeth Allen,was a damsel of ill-repute.This is a heart-felt film by John Ford with good performances by Richard Widmark as a "liberal" U.S. "horse soldier",and LaBaker's love interest,and in a cameo Edward G.Robinson.The musical score by Alex North is OK,but I would have preferred Elmer Bernstein.An An excellent DVD transfer.Despite my misgivings,4 stars.

SERGEANT RUTLEDGE-ANTI RACIST CLASSIC WESTERN *****

In this unheralded John Ford anti-racist Western, set in 1881,Sergeant Braxton Rutledge(Woody Stode) is accussed of rape and murder,and mostly in flashbacks the events of his accusation,his fleeing,and trial are told.The pace is perfect and acting and direction excellent.In his third Ford film Jeffery Hunter proves again that he was a very underrated actor.His performance is excellent,also good are Constance Towers,as Hunter's love interest and Braxton sympathizer,Willis Bouchey(a Ford grouchy regular),Juano Hernandez,Routledge's fellow "Buffalo Soldier",and sort of "father figure".for the rest of the black soldier's,and Charleton Young(another Ford regular) as the intentially racist prosecutor.But it is Strode(a Ford regular,in support roles) who carries the film.His pride and dignity are evident, in every scene in which he appears.There re two ways to look at this film,or more properly to look at Hollywood,either this film was way ahead of its time or Hollywood took to long to look at U.S. race relations,in any meaning manner.The anti-racists films,of Hollywood, did not really start to make an appearance until the late 1940's,with films such as "PINKY" and the 1950 film debut of Sidney Poitier in "NO WAY OUT"(see my review)My opinion is "so-called liberal Hollywood"(remember the blacklist) was and is always interested IN PROFITS,and NOT PREACHING!.
A GREAT FILM by "AMERICA'S GREATEST DIRECTOR!!
Excellent DVD transfer,but no commetary.5-stars!!

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pappy gets a nod , April 10, 2006

By	D. James (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For fans of John Ford this will be a long-awaited set of previously unreleased films made by the great between spanning a period between the 30's till the 60's. Titles included are a great choice, personally I would have liked to see 'The Hurricane' in this one or another title starring Dorothy Lamour with whom he worked on several films, but that's just my opinion!
As usual, the price for the whole collection is reasonable, much more so than just buying the individual titles.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Five from Mr. Fenny aka John Ford, March 20, 2007

By	James J. Cremin (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I agree with one reviewer that "The Hurricane" should have been included. Also, "Three Bad Man" and "The Iron Horse" need to be accessed but they very likely still belong to Fox. My take on the films here:

"The Lost Patrol" Victor McLaglen and Boris Karloff made an odd team indeed. McLaglen has led this patrol to somewhere in North Africa and he has to thankless job to hold his men together to maintain his own sense of sanity. Karloff already lost his and there's really not much anyone can do until the rest of the troops find them. Almost ten years later, Bogart would star with an all male cast in "Sahara", but the outcome would be different. Kurasawa may have been influeneced with the simple graves at the end as he used graves to an even more haunting ending in the "Seven Samurai".

"The Informer" As mentioned in the extras, Ford was very influenced with German Impressionism and loved "Sunrise" that starred George O'Brien, Ford's early star in the above mentioned silent westerns. So, it could be said that this Irish tale is actually a film noir, years before its name was ever invoked. Very sad to watch as the viewer clearly sees that poor Gypo doesn't know what he's doing. This is clearing the best film of this lot and stands as one of the best films Ford has ever done. Very catholic, too, as the poor lad dies forgiven. Kudos to the rest of the cast as well.

"Mary of Scotland" There is actually to lot to like about this movie. After all, this stars Katherine Hepburn who gives great a regal performance not too different from all the other roles she's done. This also costars Fredrick March, who appeared in many high brow movies in this time period. The language is rich but is guilty of being too wordy. It's interesting to compare this to other costume drams that starred actresses of this time period, such as Marlene Dietrich "The Scarlett Empress", (my favorite), Greta Garbo "Queen Christina" (a masterpiece, but it bombed at the time), Norma Shearer "Marie Antoninette" and Bette Davis who got away with several, including two in which she played Elizabeth I.

"Sergeant Rutledge" This is intentionally an umcomfortable film to watch and the same theme was much more sucessful in "To Kill A Mockingbird", made just a year later. It must be said that Woody Strode was a very stiff actor. He was such a demanding presense that he usually was given little or no lines in the movies he appeared. Here, he's the title character, a black man accursed of raping and strangling a white woman. After different viewpoints are shown in flashback, he's called upon to give a speech in which he does say the n word. I actually don't have much problem with Jeffrey Hunter. The guy did what he's supposed to do, but Montgomery Cliff he wasn't. He suffered the same kind of blandness John Agar had. It was the Perry Mason type ending, which was a hit show back then, that I have a problem with. The guilty party confesses only because his conscious bothers him. It's simply not believable.

"Cheyenne Authumn" I actually like this film. True, Gilbert Roland, Ricardo Montaban, Sal Mineo and Dolores del Rio weren't actually native Americans but they wouldn't weren't bad at playing them. Ricard Widmark is between a rock and a hard place when he reluntuntly leads the natives. There's also the Quaker love interest played by Carole Baker. There's tension in every meeting they have. I must commend Ford for having the "got to kill me an Indian" scene. Natives ride up to whites begging for food and one gets murdered and scalped in the process. This is quickly followed with Ford satirizng himself. The killer gets accidently shot, then relunctantly treated by a poker playing Wyatt Earp, played by James Stewart. Then we get the Indians trapped by Karl Marden, who claims he knows all about Indians due to all the books he got about them, most in German. Widmark sneaks off to get Edward G. Robinson and they both get to save the Indians from slaughter for the time being. This is a sad movie to watch but there is much to appreciate here. It was a brave film to make in 1964.