{"id":1810,"date":"2020-07-08T07:52:36","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T11:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/?p=1810"},"modified":"2020-07-08T07:52:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T11:52:36","slug":"the-catholic-imagination-of-john-ford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/the-catholic-imagination-of-john-ford\/","title":{"rendered":"The Catholic Imagination of John Ford"},"content":{"rendered":"

The richness of any religion is that it is more than a set of doctrines, beliefs, and practices; it also provides a cultural framework by which we can view and make sense of the world.\u00a0 How we make this sense manifests itself in a variety of ways, including through art.\u00a0 In fact, the cultural influence of religion can remain even when one decides to leave its practice or reject its tenants.\u00a0 Scholars refer to it as the religious imagination.\u00a0 In<\/span> American Catholic Arts and Fictions<\/span><\/i> Paul Giles writes that this imagination serves \u201cas a residual cultural determinant and one aspect of the social context within which various \u2026 artists \u2026 have been working\u201d (1).\u00a0 Thus, in the 1990s American film director John Sayles listed his religion as \u201cCatholic atheist\u201d in his entry in <\/span>Contemporary Theatre, Film and Television<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 By this he meant, \u201cWe were raised Catholic, which is definitely an influence.\u00a0 We went to church every Sunday.\u00a0 It\u2019s a belief system, a mythology that you\u2019re given. . . . I still think of myself as a Catholic, as an ethnicity\u201d (<\/span>Sayles on Sayles<\/span><\/i>, 1).\u00a0 In Sayles\u2019 case, he is referring to what Fr. Andrew Greely called the Catholic imagination: the contention that Catholicism has provided identifiable culture patterns that have shaped artists and their works, sometimes in spite of their personal relationship to the faith.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Among Catholicism\u2019s several cultural legacies is an affinity for visual culture as a form of storytelling.\u00a0 Thus, we can appreciate one of the many purposes of stained glass windows in cathedrals and churches.\u00a0 They were the world\u2019s first movie theaters.\u00a0 It should come as no surprise, then, that many of the great American film directors are products of his theo-visual heritage: among them are Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcok, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Thomas Anderson, and one other very important figure.\u00a0 In 1912, when the Sisters of Mercy founded Saint Joseph\u2019s College in Portland, Maine, John Martin Feeney, the son of staunch Irish Catholic immigrants living in the working-class neighborhood of Munjoy Hill in Portland, was likely attending Mass at his home parish of Saint Dominic\u2019s.\u00a0 In 1914 young John left Portland for Southern California to seek a career in the movies.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>We know him better as John Ford, arguably, America\u2019s greatest filmmaker.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Between 1917 and 1970 he directed over 130 films, and he won the academy award four times for best director: the most of any director in film history.\u00a0 Yet, were we to survey his films for overt expressions of his Catholic upbringing (e.g., portrayals of priests, images of statues, etc.), we would be hard-pressed to find them (although <\/span>3 Godfathers<\/span><\/i> is a fun Western retelling of the biblical magi story).\u00a0 Rather, is it in their recurrent themes, regardless of genre, that we encounter his Irish Catholic imagination.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Irish immigrant experience in America was one of feeling in exile due to circumstances beyond one\u2019s control (e.g., the potato famine).\u00a0 Consequently, for Ford\u2019s parents and his generation there was a strong longing of returning to or finding a sense of home and belonging.\u00a0 For Irish American Catholics, the neighborhood parish provided that sense of home as well as protection from what they felt were hostile Protestant forces that viewed them with suspicion (fittingly, Ford\u2019s own parish now houses the Maine Irish Heritage Center).\u00a0 It is no surprise then that Ford\u2019s films are filled with characters who restlessly wander seeking security and a place to settle.\u00a0 This theme manifests itself in nearly every one of his Westerns.\u00a0 Moreover, it is explicit in Ford\u2019s most popular film, <\/span>The Quiet Man<\/span><\/i>, where an American son of Irish immigrants returns to his ancestral land to escape his past and forge connections with this heritage.\u00a0 What he finds is a community willing to welcome him and provide him the peace he seeks if he is willing to accept their customs and relinquish his destructive self-reliance.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is the theme of community that also betrays Ford\u2019s Catholic imagination.\u00a0 As Fr. Richard Blake writes in <\/span>Afterimage: The Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six American Filmmakers<\/span><\/i>, \u201cThe notion of belonging to a community is crucial to one\u2019s salvation in Catholic thought.\u201d Redemption \u201cis not worked out through a solitary search for God, but in collaboration with others\u201d (14).\u00a0 The \u201cCavalry Trilogy\u201d (<\/span>Fort Apache<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Rio Grande<\/span><\/i>) illustrates this value well by presenting the military as more than a collection of soldiers.\u00a0 It is also a family that provides larger purpose for its members, and those who find themselves apart from it and on their own lose direction and meaning.\u00a0 As the American-born son of Catholic immigrants, Ford would certainly have been sensitive to the tensions between his religion\u2019s focus on community and his country\u2019s emphasis on individualism.\u00a0 Few films in his oeuvre portray this existential struggle better than <\/span>The Searchers<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 In it Ethan Edwards\u2019 (John Wayne) racist thirst for vengeance prevents him from ever fully joining the community he seeks to protect.\u00a0 In the film\u2019s famous final shot, Ethan stands alone with the dark frame of a doorway around him metaphorically (Catholics are also attracted to analogies) emphasizing his isolation from others and, therefore, his inability to be fully human.\u00a0 He turns and walks away into the harsh landscape as the door closes and the scene fades to black.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A<\/span>nother important attribute of the Catholic imagination to appreciate in Ford\u2019s films is what Fr. Blake calls sacramentality.\u00a0 It is a distinctively Catholic worldview that sees the potential for a grace-filled en<\/span>counter with God through the material world just as our liturgical sacraments are rooted in bread, wine, oil, and water.\u00a0 As Fr. Andrew Greeley writes in <\/span>The Catholic Imagination<\/span><\/i>, \u201cAs Catholics, we find our houses and our world haunted by a sense that the objects, the events, and persons of daily life are revelations of grace\u201d (1).\u00a0 Indeed, in Catholic tradition <\/span>both the book of scripture (<\/span>liber scripturae<\/span><\/i>) and the “great book” of nature (<\/span>liber naturae<\/span><\/i>) are sources of God’s self-revelation to humanity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This proclivity toward the sacramental manifests itself in the ways that Catholic directors place objects in the frame to signify \u201cvalue and meaning beyond their immediate material surface\u201d (Blake 13).\u00a0 Thus, the stagecoach in <\/span>Stagecoach<\/span><\/i> comes to mean more to its occupants (and, thereby, to the viewer) than its convenience as a mode of transportation.\u00a0 In a particular way, Ford\u2019s sacramental Catholic imagination most clearly expresses itself in his use of landscapes.\u00a0 They are shot with such careful and loving detail that they serve as characters in their own right.\u00a0 In<\/span>\u00a0Maria Elena de las Carreras Kuntz captures the weight of the visual beauty of Ford\u2019s landscapes, especially Monument Valley which he features in many of his Westerns.\u00a0 She writes that \u201cFord conveys a unique sense of beauty and mystery, establishing a sacramental relationship between man and landscape. Ford turns it into a primordial space where the children of God are faced with the basic issues of life: family, community, justice, solidarity, repentance, forgiveness, and mercy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At public events Ford was fond of introducing himself in the following\u00a0 manner, <\/span>\u201cMy name’s John Ford. I make Westerns.\u201d\u00a0 It was his self-deprecating way of claiming that his work amounted to little more than entertainment, and his entire career was directing Hollywood studio films for popular consumption.\u00a0 However, repeated viewings of his many and various movies reveals a body of work much deeper than what appears at first glance.\u00a0 In their exploration of the themes of belonging, community, and sacramentality, Ford\u2019s films reveal an artist indebted to his Irish Catholic imagination, and the world of cinema is richer for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Christopher Fuller, Ph.D.<\/strong>, is the Vice President, Chief Sponsorship and Mission Integration Officer at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine.\u00a0 Prior to coming to Saint Joseph’s, he was an Associate Professor of Theology at Carroll College in Montana for fifteen years.\u00a0 While there he taught courses in scripture, Catholic Social Teaching, and film, including “American Cinema and the Catholic Imagination.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The richness of any religion is that it is more than a set of doctrines, beliefs, and practices; it also provides a cultural framework by which we can view and make sense of the world.\u00a0 How we make this sense … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,11,14,1],"tags":[325,326],"class_list":["post-1810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-media","category-new-evangelization","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic-imagination","tag-john-ford"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}