John Ford was a filmmaker whose name became synonymous with John Wayne, who did his best work for Ford, one of the most immaculate craftsman of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Anyone worth his film studies’ salt knows of such Ford/Wayne (Or John squared, as I like to say) critical and/or commercial successes as Stagecoach, The Searchers, Fort Apache, The Quiet Man, Rio Grande and so forth.

But what of the films Ford made without his tough-talking surrogate? Aside from the Henry Fonda vehicles (Such as The Grapes of Wrath and Young Mr. Lincoln), this is an area of the director’s catalog that has yet to be fully explored. But the recent release of Warner Home Video’s five-movie John Ford Collection — none of which star John Wayne — it’s high time these films get the attention they deserve.

It’s easy to dismiss a work like Sergeant Rutledge or The Lost Patrol (both in the box set) as a minor Ford film when their previously limited availability prohibited viewers from seeing and thus re-evaluating them with the passage of time. After all, The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are films that only improve with age, and were generally not accepted as art upon initial release. Now, of course, they’re both tremendously entertaining pictures and film-theory staples.

What’s most striking about The Lost Patrol and Rutledge today is their modernism. The Lost Patrol is ostensibly a quickie b-picture, clocking in at 72 minutes and made on the cheap with a small cast. While most early talkies were studio- and stage-bound affairs so taken up with the novelty of hearing people talk that visual significance was all but forgotten, Ford’s poetic cinema eye is on full display. Ford is able to elevate the b-movie well beyond its primitive roots, showing the hopes and despair of a lost British patrol unite wandering aimlessly in an immense, unforgiving desert, all the while under attack from ubiquitous Arabs, the movie’s catch-all evil.

There are even a couple of subjective-camera POV shots Ford borrowed from ’20s German expression, particularly Murnau’s The Last Laugh. All of the cinematography is so striking and composed, particularly for a Depression-era film, that it may well have been silent. Indeed, it might have been a better film if it were — as it stands, the poor audio of the transfer renders much of the dialogue unintelligible, and the English accents don’t help.

The movie is also interesting for casting Boris Karloff against type as a religious fanatic, with only the scriptures to guide him through the turbulent conditions (Who’d have thought Dracula was a Bible-thumper!). Victor McLaglen plays the patrol’s sympathetic but often misguided captain, on whose burden the guilt of the entire unit weighs.

As the casualties mount and hope is gradually lost, both Karloff and McLaglen’s characters plummet into total psychosis, negating the romantic, wistful tone of the opening act (and the tone Ford is most known for). The best part of all is the treatment of the Arabs - up until the final five minutes, they are an unseen terror. This places the spectator completely in the minds of the sitting-duck soldiers, whose desperate charges through the never-ending desert suggest an unknown, existential demise.

Sergeant Rutledge, made four years after The Searchers and in the prime of the director’s epic, Monument Valley Western period, is an even greater feast for the eyes, for this time Ford was working with color and widescreen. It’s also an even more cynical and realistic film, never shying away from its bold probing of bigotry, rape and pedophilia.

The setting is 1866, and the character of the title is among the legendary 9th regiment of all-black “Buffalo Soldiers.” The troupe’s Sergeant Rutlegde (Woody Strode, one of Ford’s repertory players) is on trial, court-martialed for the rape and murder of an adolescent (white) girl.

The story follows the now familiar courtroom drama formula, told in flashback in tandem with each witness’s testimony. Originally, I thought the narrative would follow a Rashoman-like pattern, but the flashbacks are all shown chronologically with no overlap.

One witness, a white woman (Constance Towers), claims Rutledge saved her life from an Apache Indian attack and is a hero, not a villain. But more evidence begins to pile up against the sergeant, whose attorney, Lt. Cantrell (Jeffrey Hunter), has a personal stake in the result.

Like The Searchers, Sergeant Rutledge is one of Ford’s most painterly films. A great use of smoke adds a sense of mystery to the superb compositions, with often frame its title character iconically in doorways or by windows in the spirit of Anthony Mann and Vincente Minnelli.

The middle portion is the film’s most exciting. Witnesses attest to Rutledge’s heroism, which we see first-hand on the battlefield against Indians. The Apaches may be the physical villains in this film, but Ford was really going after racism, in the form of the prosecuting attorney.

Sergeant Rutledge is a film that further conflates Ford’s socio-political affiliations, which have always been rather ambiguous. He was a celebrator of the mythic West and traditional American values, but I’ve always thought his views were predominantly liberal, always sticking up for the downtrodden (He made They Were Expendable and The Grapes of Wrath, after all). I think it was mostly his friendship with Wayne, something of a blind patriot and a jingoist, that accounts for his supposed Republican bent.

At any rate, these are both great films, worthy of a second (and for many, like myself, first) look.

More reviews from this box set to come later.