Christmas Godfathers
by Spencer Warren
Issue 122 - December 17, 2008

In the canon of the best Westerns directed by our greatest director of Westerns, also the man generally regarded as our greatest of all directors, John Ford’s 1948 “3 Godfathers” is rarely included.  This is unfortunate, because the film illustrates Ford’s poetic genius and how he infused his Westerns, as well as many of his non-Westerns made between 1935 and the end of his career in the mid-1960s, with the themes and images that inspired his art. 

3 Godfathers is based on a 1913 magazine story by Peter B. Kyne.  Its story of three outlaws who come upon a dying woman and her newborn stranded in the desert, and who endure hardship and even death in rescuing the child, thereby finding redemption, is so compelling that it was filmed several times, including two other times by Ford:  his silents Marked Men (1919) and a looser adaptation, Three Bad Men (1926).  In addition, the 1990 Tom Selleck movie Three Men and a Little Lady adopts the basic plot for a contemporary story, if without the moral depth.

But this 1948 version is entirely different from the others in how Ford deals with the material.  In the opening scene, three outlaws (John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey, Jr.) enter the quiet town of Welcome intending to hold-up the bank.  Needing directions, they ride up to a gentleman tending his garden, Buck Sweet (Ward Bond) and become engaged in a friendly conversation.  One example of Ford’s subtlety as a director – and the essentially visual, rather than literal, quality of his films -- is how he directs the gentleman’s movements and easy manner, as he looks up from his gardening to greet the strangers, thus suggesting the domesticity that Ford so loved to portray in his films.  The “Boss,” Mrs. Sweet (Mae Marsh) joins them and brings out some hot coffee, inquiring in a motherly way about the youngest, William (Carey). Then Buck Sweet just happens to pull back his vest, which had hidden his gleaming sheriff’s badge.

Buck now is suspicious because William had identified himself as the “Abilene Kid.”  Thumbing through Wanted posters, he finds his man.  But now the trio holds up the bank (lots of shooting but no one is hurt except the Kid, shot in the side), and they escape Buck and his makeshift posse, seeking refuge in the vast southwestern desert.

At this point they come upon an abandoned Conestoga wagon and are astonished to find inside a woman (Mildred Natwick) in labor, but no husband to be found anywhere.  Pedro reluctantly volunteers to act as mid-wife.  The birth scene as directed by Ford is holy.  Inside the wagon is relatively dark; Ford shoots the canvas at the open rear-end of the wagon, from the point of view of the woman, as if she is looking up at the arch of a church.  All is quiet as Pedro (Armendariz) slowly climbs in to succor the poor mother in painful labor.  We then hear the little newborn crying out, but the mother is dying.  She asks the trio to be her son’s godfathers and bring him to safety and take care of him.  They bury her on a hill nearby, Robert ( Wayne) speaks over the grave, and the Kid sings a Ford favorite, “Shall We Gather at the River.”  (He forgets the final verses, a device Ford uses to cut down on the sentimental nature of the scene.)  Ford shoots the burial scene looking up from down the hill, creating one of his countless dramatic, noble compositions.

Now, their horses having run off in a sandstorm, the trio’s ordeal begins, with a real posse led by Sheriff Buck in pursuit.  Shrewdly, he judges correctly which water tank along the rail line his prey will go for, and has it emptied before they can reach it.  They suffer severe thirst as they struggle to conserve what water they have for little Robert Pedro William, as they have named him.  Now crossing totally barren desert, first the wounded Abilene Kid succumbs to a frightful death (filmed in Death Valley), then Pedro, until only Robert is left carrying the child, dragging his emaciated body toward the mountains beyond, and thence to the town of New Jerusalem.  Collapsing in a cave, he struggles with his demons, who urge him to give up, it’s no use.  But the Bible he had taken from the wagon falls to the ground and magically (!) turns to a page that inspires him to go on.  He drags himself up, still tenderly holding the little one, swathed in a blanket.  Just outside the cave, in the star-lit night, he comes upon a donkey, which supports him, exhausted, as he heads for the town.  It is Christmas Eve.

This scene, and perhaps the birth scene as well, may sound corny, but anyone with knowledge of our artistic heritage should appreciate Ford’s genius for careful composition, camera angle and lighting for dramatic effect.  (This film is in color.)  Indeed, the care and thought that has obviously gone into his direction (his visual sense has been compared to the painter Renoir) itself gives proof how deeply this curmudgeon with the often exceedingly gruff exterior felt about his themes and images.  This is the personal involvement with his material that distinguishes an artist from a craftsman (or a hack).

Readers should also be mindful that seeing films of the greatest directors on DVD or cable television – whatever the size – gives the viewer only an approximation of the film.  The films of Ford, Hitchcock, Vidor, Stevens, Minnelli, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir and others are so visual that they must be seen as they were intended, on a big screen in a big theater (not a multi-plex ).  Of course, this is difficult to arrange, unless your city has a repertory theater or museum.  Last year I had the good fortune to view three Ford Westerns – Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande-- which I had seen many times on television, at the restored 1930s theater of the American Film Institute outside Washington, D.C.  These are contemporaneous with 3 Godfathers, having been made between 1947 and 1950.  It was one of the must stunning and memorable movie-going experiences of my life.  Fort Apache, in black and white and, like the others, filmed in the more square, less rectangular ratio that arrived in the 1950s and still is the standard, demonstrates how Ford did not need wide-screen or color to create as spectacular a cavalry-Indian battle as has ever been filmed.  The formal compositions of the cavalry forming up for attack and, by modern standards, the epic distance of Ford’s camera, just bowled me over.  Such qualities are miniaturized on DVD, losing much of their impact.  Also, the sound (gunshots, whooping Indians, thundering hooves, grand orchestral music score) on a 35 mm. print ringing out in a big theater also is essential to experiencing a film like this.

Entering the saloon, where the piano player is playing “ Holy City” and “Silent Night,” Robert collapses.  Soon thereafter, Sheriff Buck arrives.  No longer the amiable man-at-home, he thinks the bank robbers are responsible for what we now learn was his sister-in law’s death, and he is consumed by vengeance, even daring Robert to draw in front of the bar.  But Robert is too weak.  “Ya got me,” he says, collapsing to the floor from exhaustion.

Well, later Buck learns the truth.  He is grateful to Robert and now they are friends, though of course Robert is still his prisoner.  They play chess through the bars of Robert’s cell and Robert is getting fat on the “Boss’s” home cooking.  (Comic relief, sometimes overdone, is another Ford staple.)  The trial is held in one of Ford’s favorite settings, the saloon.  Sitting high behind the bar, the judge (Guy Kibbee) tells Robert that if he gives up the child to Buck and his wife, he’ll go very easy on the sentence, which otherwise will be very stiff.  To this, Robert responds (in the inimitable John Wayne drawl), “I ain’t gonna break a promise to a dyin’ woman.”  He wants to raise the boy as he promised, “teachin’ him right from wrong” and “how to say ‘Yes, sir’ when spoken to.”  Gleefully, the judge responds, “I thought you’d say that.”  He gives Robert a light sentence and orders that in the meantime Buck and the Mrs. are to have custody.

The final scene is truly vintage John Ford.  Robert, headed for the state “pen,” is escorted to the train station by Buck and his deputy (Hank Worden).  As they arrive, they are greeted by the women of New Jerusalem, all decked out in their finest, singing as a chorus “Bringing in the Sheaves.”  Their husbands, mounted on their horses in a neat column, stand alongside.  Sheriff Buck earnestly asks Robert to make sure the deputy gets back on the train in good order after they reach the state pen because the deputy has never been on such a long journey before.  And just as they are about to board, a winsome young lady presents Robert with a cake, her favorite which she baked herself.  Then she asks, shyly, “Can I write you?”  “Can I call you . . .  Bob?”  “I’d be rightly pleased, ma’am,” Robert replies, bowing and elaborately tipping his cowboy hat.   He departs, and, in the final shot, is seen from a great distance, waving.

Thus, Ford has transformed what in other hands would be a basic ending into a celebration of Christian brotherhood.  The redeemed Robert has reminded the good sheriff the pitfalls of hatred and rushing to judgment.  Unlike most contemporary films, Ford’s themes are not presented literally with lots of dialogue, but, building on the plot, figuratively, with metaphor and imagery.   Only a director who felt deeply about his work and had the confidence in his ability to pull it off would film the final scene with the chorus of ladies singing “Bringing in the Sheaves.” (Music and song as ritual play an important part in many of Ford’s movies.)  Another example is Frank Capra’s device in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) of George Bailey (James Stewart) being shown by his Guardian Angel (Henry Travers) how bad life in Bedford Falls would have been had he been granted his wish never to have been born.  (For examples in Ford’s work how in several films he presented his view of the inseparable loving bond of the living and the dead, as well as his use of music, see here.)

Ford’s employment of metaphor and imagery is typical of the best directors of pre-1960s movies.  Such techniques, in art and literature, have long been used by the artist to give voice to his or her personal expression.  And what can be more effective in engaging the spirit of the audience, particularly if one is trying to give expression to truths beyond words, to the transcendent?  One reason these artful techniques are rare today in movies is that few directors have anything to say about the transcendent.  So their movies rely on talk and more talk, or they assault the sensibilities of the audience.

Spencer Warren is ConservativeBattleline's media critic.