Word: fording
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...FORD'S LAST pre-war film shows the disintegration of a family and a way of life in coal-mining Wales. It also represents the passing of an art. In How Green Was My Valley a certain type of American film reached its height--only to end. Ford's most intense melodrama brought the art of Griffith to an indescribable climax. Ford made many great films after World War II, but they are less intimate in subject, broader in pacing and lighting...
...Ford's films of the 'thirties forcefully present the emotions of individuals. Lighting idealizes the actors' faces and bodies to yield the essence of a sentiment. Different kinds of shots (dynamic severely-lit low-angle, balanced light-flooded eye-level) are used moment by moment to change the film's emotional emphasis. As in Birth of a Nation, even single shots are given several emotional directions by the placement and movement of the several characters. The subject of this drama is individual sentiment; its type, melodrama, whether historical (Mary of Scotland), social (Tobacco Road), or familial (How Green). Society exists...
...rapid montage of sentiment in How Green Was My Valley threatens society's solidity each moment that these sentiments create society. In one scene a Morgan boy leads other townsfolk in song. Singing scenes, like fight and dance scenes, in Ford show group activity in which each person's behavior is laid down by tradition. A fight scene in The Searchers (1956), for example, gives participants and spectators secure roles. The tension generated when one man picks up a stick of wood turns into warmth and humor when he sets it as a boundary marker. No such security comes from...
...even see most of its dearest rituals until they are challenged. When Mr. Evans, the mine-owner, comes to ask Mr. Morgan for his daughter's hand, the class difference between them gives the scene a sort of tension and humor different from those in later Ford. The humor is directed at the awkwardness of persons, not at customs. The tension comes from their insecure situation, the failure of traditional behavior in a new situation. Indeed, every character's place in How Green is tenuous...
...Dean Ford said Wednesday that scholarships will be increased to cover part of the $60 increase, but, as usual, the scholarship increase will "not match dollar for dollar" the increase in fees...