Movie Commentaries – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

But what about Alfred Hitchcock? He loved to talk about his films. We have, fortunately, as near to a film commentary as we’ll get in François Truffaut’s 1967 interview with Hitch, a dialogue that covered many days, a total of fifty hours. There is, still, Ernest Lehman’s accompanying words for North by Northwest, perhaps the quintessential Hitchcock film. What comes through most forcefully is the screenwriter’s joy in working with the director—and those long talks, not always about the project at hand, they were the most joyous of all, he says.

So who is possibly best among this breed of individuals who presume to explore great films, who assume we can stand their voices for two hours or more? Would you believe, after all I’ve said, a critic?! Despite my suspicions about the pedigree of academics, the “award” goes to—Roger Ebert. His commentaries for Citizen Kane and Casablanca are, I think, in a class by themselves. If they are scripted, as, indeed, I believe they are (or, at least, with cue words), his delivery doesn’t sound it, not at all. It all seems so spontaneous: information, details, anecdotes, personal experiences, technical insights—and what seems completely natural for Ebert, a contagious enthusiasm. He’s not only a critic of films, he’s a lover of movies.

As is the next and final entry, as it were, in this possible “contest.” Ebert may be the best, but my favorite is Peter Bogdanovich’s commentary for The Searchers. While John Ford would never talk about his art, Bogdanovich understands it as well as any one. Three essentials quality him: he’s a director himself (The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, Paper Moon), he’s sensitive to every nuance of films and, most important, he knew Ford for the last ten years of his life. In his commentary, Bogdanovich provides many revelations about Ford the artist and the man, but the most memorable for me comes early in the film, when Captain Clayton (Ward Bond) sees, through an open door, Martha Edwards (Dorothy Jordan) caressing the coat of her husband’s brother Ethan (John Wayne); as screen activity bustles behind him, Clayton looks straight ahead as he drinks his coffee, pretending he didn’t see what he saw.

As Bogdanovich points out—and what so many people forget—is that films in the past, certainly John Ford’s, were meant to be seen on a giant theater screen, where subtleties and details wouldn’t be lost, as they are on our current TVs, even the most gargantuan ones. Amen. Another of Bogdanovich’s discerning comments needs repeating: “ . . . close-ups in films by the classic directors . . . were not in abundance. They were saved for when they were important. They weren’t misused.” Amen again!

Bogdanovich has mastered Ford’s laconic voice, which seems to make his authority all the more valid. In a comment Ford once made to him, Bogdanovich mimics the gravelly voice: “I don’t know where I got it, but I always did have an eye for composition. It’s all I ever did have.” Ford worked without storyboards, carrying an entire film in his head. In The Searchers during a letter-reading scene among Ethan and the husband and wife Jorgensen (John Qualen and Olive Carey), Bogdanovich perceptively observes, “Every angle you’re seeing, every setup, every camera position was shot to be used the way it’s used. There was no additional footage that’s been cut out, that wasn’t used, no alternative angles, moments. . . . Many of the great classical directors worked that way. No one cut in the camera more than Ford.” Unless it was Hitchcock.

[Be sure and read HERE our review of Scott Eyman’s Print the Legend, The Life and Times of John Ford, perhaps the best biography to date of the unconventional film maker.]

Toward the end of Ford’s life, Bogdanovich confided to the old man that he was planning to give John Wayne a book for his birthday. In his usual contentious, irascible manner, Ford pretended not to hear and said, “What?” Several times Bogdanovich repeated himself, always getting the same response. Finally, after the fourth repetition of the statement, Ford replied, “He’s got a book.”

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