The Critics' Corner on FORT APACHE

Fort Apache (1948) proved to be a tremendous hit for John Ford and producer Merian C. Cooper. It made almost half a million dollars in profits above its approximately $2 million budget. Of that, Ford made a flat $150,000 while John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Shirley Temple were each paid $10,000 a week.

Frank Nugent received a Writers Guild of America nomination for his screenplay.

"A vigorous, sweeping western adventure drama...shocking dramatic effects and spectacular action sequences." - Hollywood Reporter, 1948

"Film captures the flavor of the early west, and whams over high-pitched, stirring scenes, of U.S. Cavalry and Indians in action. ... Mass action, humorous byplay in the western cavalry outpost, deadly suspense, and romance are masterfully combined...to stir the greatest number of filmgoers." - Variety, March 10, 1948

"Folks who are looking for action in the oldest tradition of the screen, observed through a genuine artist's camera, will find plenty of it here...In his rich blend of personality, of the gorgeously picturesque outdoor western scenery, plus his new comprehension of frontier history, Mr. Ford here again fires keen hope that he will soon turn his unsurpassed talents to a great and sweeping drama of the west." - Bosley Crowther, New York Times, June 26, 1948

"This is one of Ford's beautiful but irritating epic Westerns. The fights and dances and other big scenes are triumphs of staging, but the coy love interest...and the Irish horseplay are infantile. And the whole picture is bathed in a special form of patriotic sentimentality: scenes are held so that we cannot fail to appreciate the beauty of the American past." - Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies

"From Fort Apache on, Ford's films seemed to have abandoned the Tradition of Quality for the Cult of Personality. Ford seemed to let everything hang out, and especially his boozy, misty-eyed Irishness. ... The iconographical tension alone makes Fort Apache one of Ford's most absorbing entertainments..." Andrew Sarris, The John Ford Movie Mystery (Indiana University Press, 1983)

"The film's ending makes an interesting statement - later echoed in Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance [1962] - about the importance of preserving heroic myths even when they are contradicted by facts. Rio Grande [1950] is lustier and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949] more mature but Fort Apache, the first of Ford's cavalry trilogy, is grand entertainment, justly regarded as a classic Western." - Brian Garfield, Western Films

"It is more interesting in its conception and for its implications than as a realized work of art." - Lindsay Anderson, About John Ford (McGraw-Hill, 1983)

"An intriguing development of questions of leadership, responsibility, heroism, and legend.... Not for the last time, Ford gives us telling evidence of tragic ambiguity, but none the less decides to 'print the legend.'" - Paul Taylor, Time Out Film Guide (Penguin Books, 2000)

"Ford detractors won't like his sentiment, Irish humor, chaste romance, and musical interludes, but it you're a Ford fan you'll love it all and be inexplicably choked up by such things as Bond smiling as he dances with Temple, the cavalry singing as they ride off, and the wives and lovers watching solemnly as their men disappear into the sunset." - Danny Peary, Guide For the Film Fanatic

The film's warm depiction of daily life among the military has won it acclaim as more than just a routine action Western. Film historian Michael Goodwin has noted, "Ford invites us to join the men and women of the 7th Cavalry, to share their time and place in history, to dance with them, drink with them, die with them."

"Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Fort Apache. I think it is a wonderful American picture and the direction is great. I was thrilled by the picture from start to finish, and my only regret was that it wasn't in Technicolor." - producer Walter Wanger in a 1948 letter to Ford