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John Ford

June 2026

  • Killary Fjord winds between brown Connemara hills and green patches under a cloudy sky, a road visible along the bank

    West Ireland’s magical landscape: where limestone rivers, Hollywood legend and Irish myth converge

    The newly designated Joyce Country and Western Lakes Unesco Geopark in Galway and Mayo celebrates a 700-million-year geological history that has produced a unique terrain and rich cultural heritage

May 2025

  • black and white film still of man, woman and horse walking in field

    My feelgood movie
    ‘A plea for tolerance’: why Wagon Master is my feelgood movie

    The latest in our series of comfort movie picks is an ode to John Ford’s surprisingly gentle and laidback western

August 2024

  • Dashing … George O'Brien in The Iron Horse.

    ‘It made him an A-lister’: John Ford’s breakthrough film The Iron Horse at 100

    Filmed in the freezing Nevada desert under studio pressure, Ford’s 1924 epic was a huge hit. It was the springboard for the director’s astounding career of westerns, idealism and high drama

October 2023

  • From left: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai in Reservation Dogs; Leonard DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon; Wes Studi (right) in Geronimo.

    Guy Lodge's streaming and DVDs
    Streaming: Native American representation on screen before Killers of the Flower Moon

    Ahead of Scorsese’s Osage Nation epic hitting cinemas this month, we look at the evolution of Indigenous life in film and TV, from The Searchers to Reservation Dogs

May 2020

  • John Wayne in The Searchers.

    The classic film I've never seen
    I've never seen … The Searchers

    I’ve always imagined John Wayne as the epitome of gun-toting American racism. And I didn’t expect this white-supremacy parable to change my mind …

November 2018

  • Roy Hargrove performing in Karlsruhe, Germany, last year.

    Roy Hargrove obituary

    Gifted American trumpeter and flugelhornist who made it his mission to spread the jazz message

July 2018

  • A new Jeff Goldblum statue near Tower Bridge.

    Does the 25ft, topless Jeff Goldblum tower over similar statues?

    How does the new statue depicting Goldblum in character as Jurassic Park’s smouldering scientist compare to other public art immortalising movie stars?
    Gallery14

March 2018

  • Double Indemnity - 1944<br>No Merchandising. Editorial Use Only. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Everett Collection / Rex Features ( 993756a ) 'Double Indemnity' - Fred MacMurray Double Indemnity - 1944

    My favourite film decade
    From The Naked City to Double Indemnity – why the 1940s is my favourite film decade

    War changed everything, destroying whole film industries and heralding a new era of realism, grit and shoots on location

November 2017

  • No ordinary auteur … Takashi Miike, right, with actor Hana Sugisaki, publicising Blade of the Immortal.

    Film blog
    100 not out: Takashi Miike joins the world's most prolific directors

    The Japanese director is known in the west for ultraviolence and boundary-pushing gore, but he has honed his craft in genres including family films to reach this career landmark

October 2017

  • My Pure Land - film still Nazo

    Under fire: how cinema's new breed of cowboys are taking aim at the old west

    They can be set anywhere from Australia to Pakistan – and increasingly it’s women who are shooting from the hip. With new westerns such as My Pure Land and Brimstone, the gunslinger genre continues to reinvent itselfin

June 2017

  • Karl Malden and Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks, 1961.

    From the Guardian archive
    Western legend: Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks – archive, 1961

    22 June 1961: Brando’s directorial debut brings back to the western genre a sense of period and a sense of community

March 2017

  • Five Came Back Season 1 Pictured John Ford shooting WWII propaganda

    Five Came Back review – riveting Netflix history of how Hollywood took on Hitler

  • he eponymous hero of Scott Derrickson’s

    Guy Lodge's streaming and DVDs
    Doctor Strange; Endless Poetry; The Young Offenders and more – review

October 2015

  • Maureen O'Hara in 1955.

    Maureen O’Hara obituary

  • On the set of the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with James Stewart, director John Ford and John Wayne

    Hollywood to remake The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as 80s mob thriller

September 2015

  • 1946, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE

    Philip French's classic DVD
    My Darling Clementine review – making myths of American west into poetry

    John Ford’s first postwar western is wildly inaccurate as historical document, but on the money if you want a magical, human vision of frontier land

March 2014

  • Five Came Back review – great Hollywood directors and the second world war

    Mark Harris's study of the interwoven war careers of Ford, Wyler, Capra, Stevens and Huston impresses Philip French

December 2013

  • JOHN WAYNE

    Film blog
    Why we need to re-evaluate the films we once called great

    Nobody wants to rock the boat when it comes to reassessing the classics, but face facts: Gregory's Girl is clunky, 2001: A Space Odyssey is never-ending, while Dirty Dancing is still brilliant, writes Joe Queenan

November 2013

  • John Wayne in The searchers

    Film blog
    Top 10 westerns

    It's the most all-American of film genres, filled with he-men and black hats. But the western has given us some great movies: the Guardian and Observer's critics pick the 10 best

July 2013

  • John Wayne

    Readers suggest the 10 best …
    Readers suggest the 10 best ... westerns

    Last week we brought you Philip French's 10 best westerns. Here we present your thoughts on which films really should have made the list

    Gallery10
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