The Iron Horse

This film is not currently available on DVD. Film Description A beautifully-photographed early classic from the man who gave definition to the Western genre's key motifs. As America's frontier rolls westward, a railroad to span the contintent is commissioned. Unfortunately this means ploughing straight through lands held by hostile tribes. A great film with epic intent, it also features some lovely intertitle cards.

Film Details Director John Ford Starring George O Brien, Madge Bellamy   Country USA Language SILENT   Year 1924

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Review by Roma on 22nd May 2002

Ford directed The Iron Horse, his first great box office success and the epic silent Western, when he was 30. Its theme of enterprise and achievement, its open-air locations and setting in a vigorous and pioneering past proved just the subject to stimulate the young director’s talent. Made as Fox’s response to Paramount’s 1923 The Covered Wagon, the sheer scale of the film surpassed all other Westerns of the silent era, and established Ford as one of the leading directors in the industry.

The Iron Horse combines a conventional tale of double-dealing, vengeance and romance with a poetic sense of history, and an epic theme – uniting a nation by building a transcontinental railroad, and a great man’s dream realized by the courage, skill and labour of ordinary folk. Taking in huge swathes of American history – the Civil War, Lincoln’s Presidency, westward expansion, the Indian wars, Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok – Ford succeeds in combining the epic and the intimate, with a wealth of human detail. By the time The Iron Horse was made, what were to become familiar Fordian motifs - broad comedy, drinking and saloon brawls, ethnic rivalry – were firmly established, and his breathtaking visual style – camera usually stationary, actors carefully choreographed around it, use of shadow, extreme long shots, and shots framed by doorways - highly developed.

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