Fort Apache

(1948)

The narrative traditionally associated with John Ford’s westerns is one of an initial capitulation to myth that later evolved into revisionist historical fiction. The consensus is that by at least THE SEARCHERS in the mid-1950s and unquestionably by THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE in the early 1960s, the director was confronting frontier falsehoods about race and memory. Such discourse makes FORT APACHE doubly valuable in his canon. In the late 1940s, with the specter of World War Two still looming large over the American psyche, and the majority of Ford’s own filmmaking throughout the decade having been dedicated by documenting and supporting the war effort, the director makes a cavalry western brimming with disillusion about military heroism and conformity. It is as if Ford’s complicity in producing Allied propaganda compels him to make films recognizing the disparity between reality and rhetoric. The joyless uniformity of a formal dance on the fort choreographed and performed as a dispassionate army maneuver hardly seems a celebration of the institution. The Custer-like Lieutenant Colonel Thursday, played by Henry Fonda who, like James Stewart, is more often the anti-hero than not despite his reputation, begins his command by waging a war on his men’s self-expression. These sequences are played for comedy and variety, but they also point out a glaring contradiction between the American ethos of individuality and its military system. The complexity and ambiguity of the ending is likely overlooked since it is posed as a question for the audience rather than diatribe.