A Companion to John Ford

John Ford is a major American director, famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach and The Searchers, as well as all-American yarns like The Grapes of Wrath. His four Best Director Academy Awards (1935, 1940, 1941, 1952) is a record still unmatched, although only one of those films, How Green Was My Valley, won Best Picture. He worked with a number of actors: Henry Fonda, John Carradine, and Maureen O'Hara. Ford made more than 24 films with John Wayne and to some extent can be credited with launching the latter's acting career.

Ford's style of film-making has been tremendously influential, leading colleagues such as Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles to name him as one of the greatest directors of all time. In particular, Ford is a pioneer of location shooting and the extreme long shot which frames his characters against a vast, harsh and rugged natural terrain. Ford has influenced directors as diverse as Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Peter Bogdanovich, Sergio Leone, Wim Wenders, David Lean, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, and