In his effort to distinguish his book, McBride has blurred the lines between biography and criticism to the advantage of neither. "What has been lacking in previous books about Ford," he writes, a bit too self-servingly, "has been a real understanding of how his life and work are interconnected. Discovering how Ford's great films emerged from his jealously guarded inner life is the object of this biographical search."

But of course such an effort is doomed to failure, since no amount of research or psychological analysis can ever tell you why Ford and not a dozen other directors could take B-movie material like "Stagecoach" and make it into one of the most watchable movies ever made. The idea that anyone's life and work are "interconnected," at least to the degree that the life can explain the quality of the work, has long been discredited in literature. (Does anyone still believe that knowing the real-life counterpart of every character in a Fitzgerald or Faulkner novel really leads to a greater sense of artistic appreciation?) And it doesn't help that McBride's critical analyses of the films often end not in illumination but in hyperbole, as when he calls Ford "the closest equivalent we have had to a homegrown Shakespeare" or when he claims that Ford constructed scenes "in a quasi-Brechtian fashion," a phrase that should surely be struck down any and every place it appears.

If McBride sometimes lurches precariously between roles as biographer and critic, he fails completely to appreciate the line between critic and fan. For instance, in defending the appalling "Irish humor" interludes in Ford's films (invariably involving Victor McLaglen), McBride argues that "the same kind of humor" is accepted in Shakespeare's comic relief, so why not Ford's? The critic in him should have answered: "Because in Shakespeare it's funny," or, at the very least, "We love Shakespeare in spite of such things and not because of them." (Every time I see an example of Ford's "Irish humor" I remember Flann O'Brien's remark about "a virulent outbreak of Paddyism.")

And McBride, like all Ford apologists, wastes entirely too much time struggling with the question of how a man who could "use" Indians to terrify viewers in "Stagecoach" could then have been so sympathetic to them in "Cheyenne Autumn." "There is, in fact," he writes, "no simple answer to this question." I'm not so sure about that, and I'd like a crack at it. I think when Ford wanted to excite people with a spectacular chase scene he was happy to use Indians or anyone else without a qualm, and when he gave himself over to sincerity he was simplistic and sentimental about Indians and other minorities. I should also add that the exploitative Ford made much better movies than the "fair" one.

In the end, if we are going to read and try to enjoy books on filmmakers such as John Ford we must do so for what their scholarship can tell us about the nuts and bolts of how the movies were made and for the fun of glancing behind the scenes of films we've seen dozens of times. On that score McBride does quite well indeed, showing, say, how the unrelenting give-and-take between Ford and producer Darryl F. Zanuck, lovingly recounted in "Searching for John Ford," probably produced greater films than either man made separately.

"Searching For John Ford" would be a much better book, though, if McBride didn't try so relentlessly to reconcile and explain the seemingly contradictory forces in John Ford's character and work. Better to simply adopt a Whitmanesque attitude towards the man. Did he contradict himself? Very well, then, he contradicted himself. So we cringe, and we watch. But we watch.

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