Ford’s late films, which are generally – and unfairly – overlooked in favor of his early work, see him critically reassessing his own cinematic legacy and refining and reexamining the themes – personal honor and morality versus the contradictions of man-made laws, the complex balance between individual freedom and civilization – that preoccupied him throughout his long career. While the late works share a notably ruminative, philosophical quality, they are also vibrant and exciting, full of visual experimentation, evocative Fordian imagery rich in painterly and historical references and jolts of bright humor. Far from being the work of a man past his prime, which was the curt dismissal that met so many of his last films upon their initial release, the late works reveal a deeply engaged master intent on reopening and reinventing some of the more difficult themes raised by his oeuvre - particularly the representations of race and racism.