The Essential John Ford Collection
By: Henry Cabot Beck 02/01/2008
(Fox Home Video; $49.98.) Those who look hungrily at the massive Ford at Fox DVD box set, which lists at $299, but are hesitant to pony up that kind of cash for the films, the book of photographs and the other extras, you may want to consider buying the best of the splinter collections: The Essential John Ford.
This six-disc box can be picked up here and there for around $25, and it is indispensable for those who love this particular handful of John Ford's very best movies. The set also contains a special picture which was not directed by Ford and which is not included in the larger collection.
Fox has added, for purposes of comparison, the movie that inspired John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), Frontier Marshal, which was directed by Allen Dwan and is a virtual sketchbook version of Clementine.
The movie also claims the honor of being the first film to portray Wyatt Earp by name: Randolph Scott plays Earp, Cesar Romero is Doc Holliday. While this film is nowhere near as elegant as Clementine, it's still a solid piece of work, one which belongs in that handful of ambitious adult Westerns that were all released in 1939, including Jesse James, Destry Rides Again and Stagecoach.
This box set offers two cuts of Clementine (Ford's earlier version and producer Darryl F. Zanuck's re-edit), and presents a handful of Ford's greatest and most beloved non-Western films, including Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), Oscar winners The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941).
This six-disc box can be picked up here and there for around $25, and it is indispensable for those who love this particular handful of John Ford's very best movies. The set also contains a special picture which was not directed by Ford and which is not included in the larger collection.
Fox has added, for purposes of comparison, the movie that inspired John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), Frontier Marshal, which was directed by Allen Dwan and is a virtual sketchbook version of Clementine.
The movie also claims the honor of being the first film to portray Wyatt Earp by name: Randolph Scott plays Earp, Cesar Romero is Doc Holliday. While this film is nowhere near as elegant as Clementine, it's still a solid piece of work, one which belongs in that handful of ambitious adult Westerns that were all released in 1939, including Jesse James, Destry Rides Again and Stagecoach.
This box set offers two cuts of Clementine (Ford's earlier version and producer Darryl F. Zanuck's re-edit), and presents a handful of Ford's greatest and most beloved non-Western films, including Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), Oscar winners The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941).
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