alr

The Iron Horse

Live Piano Accompaniment by Rob Humphreville
Screening on Film
$12 Special Event Tickets
Directed by John Ford.
With George O’Brien, Madge Bellamy, Fred Kohler.
US, 1924, 35mm, black & white, silent, 120 min.
Print source: 20th Century Fox

The success of James Cruze’s epic Western The Covered Wagon (1923) inspired William Fox’s ambition to top it by sending John Ford to Nevada to film the story of the 1869 completion of the transcontinental railroad. The first of Ford’s American history films, The Iron Horse unfurls its historical tapestry as backdrop to a driving melodrama of a tense love triangle and a son avenging his father’s murder. The film’s gripping action sequences display Ford’s strong command of kinetic cinema with intensely rhythmic sequences of laying the railroad tracks and dramatic battles with “Indians.” While the Native Americans exist as near caricatures in the film, Ford is nevertheless careful to acknowledge the importance of immigrant labor in the completion of the railroad.

Part of film series

Read more

Classic Ford.
A John Ford Retrospective, Part I

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque

Read more

Albert Serra, or Cinematic Time Regained

Read more

Wang Bing’s Youth Trilogy

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection

Read more

Planet at 50

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction Continues!

Read more

Theo Anthony, Subject to Review

Read more

The Ideal Cinematheque of the Outskirts of the World

Read more

From the collection – Satyajit Ray