Fort Apache and the Fordian Container
By Dan Sallitt

If asked to imagine a typical John Ford film, many people would conjure up the storytelling style that first found full expression in Fort Apache (1948).  The central principle of this style is that the prevailing mood of the film is set, not by the story's dramatic qualities, but rather by an authorial "container" for the story.  The work of creating this container inevitably begins with the opening credits and is accomplished with theme music, montage, and scenic photography.  When the movie proper begins, the tone established under the credits is carried into the drama — not pervasively, but judiciously — by the continued use of the above devices, and also through acting tone and theatrical modes of performance and scene staging.

Fort Apache makes it particularly easy to spot the separation of story and container, because its story is so dark: this is a film in which most of the people we get to know will be senselessly massacred.  And yet I doubt that many viewers are depressed by the film.  The credits are driven by a medley of musical themes that evoke various scenes in the upcoming movie: cavalry songs and bugle calls, the motif associated with the Apache, the music from the march at the non-commissioned officers' ball.  The first dialogue scene already suggests the tragic nature of the story, as Colonel Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda) reveals his wounded pride and carelessly hurts the feelings of his daughter, Philadelphia (Shirley Temple).  But Thursday's bitter sentiments are set off by broad frontier humor from the cantankerous stagecoach drivers, and underscored with nostalgic theme music that swells again over vistas of Monument Valley when the dialogue is over.  In most other films, Thursday's powerful presence would immediately create a sense of impending doom; but Ford contains this foreshadowing in an attractive evocation of a distant time and place.

Much, though not all, of Fort Apache is infused with the tone of the credits.  This tone contains an element of sadness for the passing of a valued era, but it also comprehends a great deal of pleasure in the recreation of that era.  Not unusually for entertainment filmmaking, the characteristic Fordian tone is strongly inflected by a sense of the idyllic: life in these remote parts is visually beautiful in a variety of ways, nurtured by a close family and community life, and served by a social order that balances group and individual needs.  Ford does not restrict himself to this kind of idealization, but he characteristically lays it down early and often.

Once the idyllic tone is established with music and photography, it joins forces with other elements of the storytelling that are not organic to the tragic drama, elements such as exaggerated oomedy routines and artificial, choreographed staging for humorous effect.  These tendencies have always been present in Ford, but they seem to be liberated by the "container" approach to storytelling, which firmly establishes an authorial presence that dictates mood independent of story.  Many have objected to the broadness of the comedy in Fort Apache — I find it funny, myself, especially when the underrated craftsman Victor McLaglen is in charge.  But the goofy humor, sometimes so mannered that it would be at home in a musical (i.e., the chorus of army wives calling "Mrs. O'Rourke!"), makes more sense as an adjunct to the container than to the tragic drama.  Like the villainy of the sutler Meacham (Grant Withers), which exists to unify the rest of the cast and the audience in triumph and superiority, the unrestrained comic interludes in Ford are part of the presentation of an ideal society, which Ford organizes to provide a comprehensive and varied array of pleasures to the audience.

As the dark story approaches its climax, Ford lets some of the attributes of the container slip away.  In particular, the theme music that is strongly associated with the nostalgic, idyllic tone of the container begins to vanish from the film for periods of time.  Strikingly, it is often replaced with an unusually stark sound design that uses silence to emphasize the emptiness of the desert, with natural sounds put in relief by the silence and off-mike recording of voices to emphasize distance.  The first scenes that make extensive use of this sparse sound design show Captain York (John Wayne) and Sergeant Beaufort (Pedro Armendáriz) on their dangerous mission to meet with Cochise (Miguel Inclan).  From this point in the film on, theme music becomes more intermittent, alternating with a background of silence.  The transitions are managed artfully: for instance, the waltz at the non-commissioned officers' ball, amplified into full orchestration on the soundtrack, is terminated abruptly by the return of York and Beaufort from their mission.  The film's long, climactic encounter between the cavalry and the Apache switches between scoring and natural sound, leading up to a decisive, reflexive event: the cavalry's charge is accompanied by a bugler's call, orchestrated on the soundtrack, until the bugler is shot out of his saddle, plunging the film into the more minimal sound design.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Fort Apache constitutes an alternation between two films, one with a container and the other uncontained.  Certainly the use of the container for such a somber story would be too radical a gesture to fit the needs of an entertainment industry if Ford did not relax the container's tone at key moments to acknowledge the gravity of what is being shown.  But the excitement of Fort Apache is largely a result of the way that the terrible denouement of the story is depicted in stark terms and yet is also subtly rhymed with the overarching, historical tone of the container.  The Monument Valley vistas that are such an important part of the container are carried through to the uncontained sections, but are now filmed to create a balance between a personal story and a memorial perspective.  Typically, the climactic scenes alternate between medium or medium-long shots of the characters, and extreme long shots of action suspended in desert vistas.  The closer shots, though they often emphasize the individual with low angles and forced perspectives, nearly always contain the desert skyline in the background, so that the expanses of Monument Valley are shown to us continuously.  And the most intense emotional moments are often saved for extreme long shots — the discovery of the charred remains of the cavalry scouts, York's farewells to the regiment ("Good luck B Troop!") and to Lieutenant O'Rourke (John Agar) ("And marry that girl!"), the final moments of the last stand, Cochise's bitter farewell to York after the massacre — that impose a distinctly Fordian sense of cosmic serenity on the turbulent emotions of the moment.

So the scenes in which Ford abandons the idyllic tone of the container are not a complete about-face: they share with the container a sense of perspective, of visual continuity, of a holding context for the violent emotions of the story.  Without Ford's skill at sustaining this emotional throughline across tonal shifts, the use of a container would be a risky proposition at best.

Finally, the container is used to create a famous moment of perplexity: York's assimilation of Thursday's spirit via the "Questions, gentlemen?" motif and the Havelock cap.  The film has already made York's ambivalent position completely clear by conventional means: the close-ups of York during the press conference indicate that he is painfully aware of his role in whitewashing Thursday's reputation; but the dialogue also tells us that York acknowledges that Thursday's legacy is partly beneficial.  In a conventional drama, we would expect to see similar clues to help us interpret the donning of the cap.  But just before that action, Ford begins the final surge of nostalgic theme music, gradually reassembling the signifiers of the container for a stirring, memorial ending, and we cease to receive the stream of dramatic data that would orient us to an unusual personal gesture.

My opinion is that we are barking up the wrong tree if we try to interpret this moment in order to determine the filmmakers' stand on the Thursday issue.  The film's divided position on Thursday has already been expressed plainly via the sympathetic York, speaking ex cathedra with stirring musical accompaniment.  Ford chooses to bring the curtain down, not with a clear pro- or anti-cavalry signal, but with a disturbing dissonance, as is his prerogative as an artist.

Dan Sallitt
© FIPRESCI 2009

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