Sadly Over-hyped

People are voting emotionally.

As Good As It Gets

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

An Argosy Picture, dedicated to Harry Carey, "the bright star of the early Western sky." Copyright 17 November 1948 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release. New York opening at the Capitol: 3 March 1949. U.S. release: 14 January 1949. U.K. release: 2 May 1949. Australian release: 22 September 1949. 9,551 feet. 106 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Three badmen make their getaway in a hail of bullets after robbing the bank in the frontier town of Welcome, Arizona. Heading into the desert, the fugitives make for Terrapin Wells. En route, they come upon a surprising sight: a covered wagon stalled in the wilderness. Inside the wagon, they find a newborn baby. NOTES: Previously filmed as Three Godfathers (1916) starring Harry Carey, directed by Edward J. LeSaint; Marked Men (1919) again with Harry Carey, this time directed by John Ford; Hell's Heroes (1930) with Charles Bickford, directed by William Wyler; and Three Godfathers (1936) with Chester Morris, directed by Richard Boleslawski... Location scenes filmed in Death Valley, California.COMMENT: Not one of my favorite Fords; but I don't want to fill IMDb just with my favorites. And this edition of Three Godfathers certainly has its admirers, not least of all Bosley Crowther of The New York Times who commends the film in his supplementary list of the Best Films of 1949. (Incidentally, in his actual review, Crowther correctly points out that the script is based not so much on Kyne's novelette as on Bret Harte's extremely similar short story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp", with all its Biblical parallels). Frankly, I thought it a banal allegory of the Nativity in which the Three Wise Men are turned into three foolish but well-meaning bandits. The trite lines which Wayne, Armendariz and the junior Carey are called upon to deliver are only rivalled by the plot's unconvincing situations and gross sentimentality. Not even the Ford Stock Company of seasoned players like John Wayne, Ward Bond, Mae Marsh, Hank Worden, Jack Pennick, Jane Darwell, Ben Johnson and Francis Ford can wholly save this one, though it must be admitted the picture is not half bad when it gets away from its fatuous Biblical transformations and its rustic antics of what-to-do-with-the-baby.And of course there is always the beautifully-hued color photography of Winton C. Hoch and Charles Boyle.OTHER VIEWS: The film was finely shot with some remarkable scenes set in the Mojave Desert, but the script's sentimentality and rather clumsy Biblical parallels made the picture's total impression lifeless and disappointing. (Lindsay Anderson).

There is something extremely unnerving about watching three sweaty, grown men in cowboy hats laughing so hard while greasing up a newborn baby.

Wonderful, sensitive, emotional, intelligent and vastly underrated western. (The middle three qualities might explain the first and last ones).Certainly not your average western. Starts conventionally enough, with three cowboys robbing a bank and then being on the run from the law. However, from then the depth and intelligence of the plot, and John Ford's direction, start to show. The movie doesn't become a straightforward good guys-chasing-the bad guys action drama, it becomes a cat-and-mouse between the law and the outlaws. Each in turn tries to outsmart the other, in very plausible fashion.It is also, by this point, a survival movie, with the three outlaws having to fight the harsh desert as well as keep ahead of the law.Then Ford adds another layer, a human drama, with the introduction of a woman and, later, her baby.The baby, and how the three outlaws try to cope with it and look after it, also provides many funny and poignant moments.This layering and depth is incredibly revolutionary for a western, and makes the movie incredibly engaging. Also revolutionary for the time was the addition of a Mexican (Pedro Armendáriz) among the lead characters, alongside John Wayne and Harry Carey Jr.Good performances by all three. John Wayne shows a rare sensitive side here, and does so very convincingly. Good work too by Ward Bond as the Marshall.

Nice to watch this hoary old (Christmas) chestnut at Yuletide, almost exactly 60 years after its original release. And yes, while it is guilty of a number of sins by way of corniness, improbability and sentimentality, it still works for me and proves you don't need tinsel and snow to evoke the Christmas spirit. Here old Papa Ford relates his Christmas parable against the background of the searing heat of the Arizona desert as Duke Wayne struggles against the odds to deliver orphan child Robert William Pedro to safety, bang on, wouldn't you know it, Christmas Day. All the usual Ford staples are here, the panoramic scenery, male camaraderie, bawdy humour and of course big John Wayne himself in yet another barnstorming lead role. I'm not the biggest Wayne fan going, but Ford invariably got the best out of the big lunk and he certainly carries the film (and the baby!) manfully. His two confederates, the youthful Harry Carey Jr and TexMex Pedro Armendariz both of whom sadly expire along the way, offer effective and humorous counterpoint to big John's proselytising. Ford cleverly doesn't reveal his hand too quickly with only the odd Biblical reference alluded to early on but by the time the three amigos are spotlit gazing out at the camera having just accepted the dying mother's infant child into their care, it piles on from there. Along the way the humour and sentimentality are mixed up lightly with a little (not too much) dramatic tension as Wayne completes his epic journey (like he was ever going to fail!), spurred on by the ghosts of his fallen colleagues and completes his own spiritual regeneration in accepting with good grace his jail sentence at the end in exchange for a guarantee that he'll be reunited with his infant charge once his sentence is complete. Noting that the film is Ford's own remake of his earlier silent movie production of the same story would help explain why some of the scenes are somewhat static and staged tableau-style. Wayne gets to walk more than he talks, no bad thing, and the rest of the cast are all at home under the director's loving eye. All told, then a colourful (check the blue filter shot Ford employs to evoke the desert at night) and festive treat. But surely this child wasn't the Son of God...?!