Print the Legend

As a huge fan of John Ford's work, I appreciated Eyman's biography for offering such detailed insight into the director's life. John Ford was a very strange man, closed off to almost everyone in his life, and capable of very bizarre moments ‘bullying', usually directed towards his actors. His life was centered around films and the film industry, and Eyman's work provides details about Ford's mindset and lifestyle heading into almost all of the dozens of films he directed. Ford would intentionally mislead others about his true beliefs and values, making the work of a biographer difficult, but Eyman is able to offer enough testimonial from those closest to him and enough quotes from movie sets and letters that the reader is able to piece together an image of a brilliant but unpleasant man who was capable of great kindness and was able to stand up for his convictions (which generally seem to have aligned with what seems ‘morally right' to a modern reader) when it mattered. Despite his strangeness, his political and moral understanding of the world seems to have been able to be boiled down to a strikingly simple dichotomy that motivated much of his artistic expression–that the British Empire were imperialistic bullies who dominated decent peoples, his beloved Irish, who represented a pastoral, working class, more egalitarian society. Through this prism a great number of Ford's films can be better understood: who represents the British and who represents the Irish. Thanks to Eyman's book I feel that I have at least a basic grasp of the great director's personality and a good outline of the course of his life.