Between 1928 and 1962, the two Johns made twenty movies together. Story goes that Ford discovered Wayne on a movie lot when the younger man was a college student, delivering furniture. It would be a while before the two worked together, but that instance would be Stagecoach which is arguably one of the best western movies ever made (it certainly has become archetypal) and firmly established Wayne as a major movie star.
In my mind, although both men did some great work independently (it was Raoul Walsh who directed Wayne in Rio Bravo, for sure one of my favorite movies of all time, Western or not) they may have done their best work together. The poster above is of course The Searchers another archetypal western. This movie has not aged particularly well and like too many classic westerns, the depiction of aboriginal peoples is pretty shocking. But, still, it's a great movie and Ford gets from Wayne one of his most moving, complex and affecting performances. Uncle Ethan is not a nice guy, there are a lot of hard edges to him and Wayne is not afraid to show them. It also contains some of Ford's finest colour work and those beautiful, quaint little details of frontier life.
There are many more of course, The Quiet Man (perhaps Wayne's best non Western film), The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance, The 3 Godfathers and some of the best movies ever made about the US Calvary, including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Ford Apache.
I think the two men made a perfect pairing, mostly because they were both so understated in their own rights. Wayne does not always get the acting cred he deserves but watch movies like The Sands of Iwo Jima and the tight close ups of his face (The Searchers as well) that showed how expressive he could be without saying a word. Ford was very much the same way. He was not one for a lot of camera movement, just perfectly framed shots designed to let the action within them tell the story.
In My Darling Clementine, the climax of which is the gunfight at the OK Corral, Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp, is walking down the street toward his destiny. Ford frames the shot with Fonda down at the far end of the shot, very small against the backdrop of frontier town. He walks forward, in his black suit, his pistol held casually in one hand, as if it was some prosaic tool such as a hammer. As he moves forward, his walk becomes more deliberate and he puts the gun in his shooting hand, holding it as it was intended .. and you realize the shot has been perfectly framed for this medium close up, Fonda's body centered, his face clearly defined .. before he continues to come forward, filling the shot. It's so good it gives me goosebumps.
AKIRA KUROSAWA AND TOISHURO MIFUNE:Like Ford and Wayne, this director and actor have become pretty synonymous with one another. They had a lengthy partnership, making sixteen movies over several decades. And although both made great movies without the other (Kurosawa's "Ran" and Mifune's "Samurai Trilogy" made with director Hiroshi Inagaki that may feature his strongest acting) the films they made together are considered classics, and some of my all time favorites.
The Seven Samurai and Rashomon are two movies that everyone should see. Really. Go see them. I'll wait. (It's ok, it will take you a while but I have other things to do) For me, the two "samurai with no name" movies, Yojimbo and Sanjuro are among my favorites of the collaboration.
These two movies, I think are very representative of what the two artists could bring to the table. These are samurai movies, and their best movies together took place in the samurai era, though their film Drunken Angel is a contemporary gangster movie and often credited as the first yakuza film. But the samurai mythology, like Ford and Wayne's cowboy mythos, was really where they shone. What I particularly like about Yojimbo and Sanjuro, though, is that, for all the action, they are almost comedies of manners. In the prim, ordered, anal universe of the samurai here comes Mifune's ronin; dirty, rumpled, rough, unmannered and uncultured, constantly picking at his clothing, scratching his scruffy beard, squinting and mumbling as he physically and mentally dissembles whatever world he stumbles into. These movies were of course be the inspiration for Sergio Leone's "Man with no Name" films with Clint Eastwood, and they certainly have the tang of anarchy about them. An anarchy even more pronounced in the world of bushido and samurai sensibilities. Contrast this to Mifune's character in the Samurai Trilogy and as great as these movies are, what he and Kurosawa brought to the table was something unique.
DAVID MAMET & JOE MATEGNA: This writer/director and actor certainly don't have the kind of history as the first two pairs, but I think their impact on one another is pretty significant and I just think it's a really successful collaboration.
Mantegna appeared in Mamet's first film, House of Games as well as Things Change and Homicide, and a supporting role in Red Belt. What I love about all these movies is how different they are, united mostly by Mamet's deft, lyrical dialogue and Mantegna's ability to find the humanity in any character, even underneath the famous Mamet prose.
Perhaps a common theme through these three movies is the street ... no, Joe doesn't play an incredibly verbose road paver. But in all three films he plays street level guys with some connection to crime, that suits the actor's persona very well. In House of Games he plays a con artist, in Things Change a low level gangster, in Homicide a cop. The combination of Mantegna's earthy, blue collar persona and Mamet's rarefied dialogue seems to work perfectly There's an odd rhythm to Mamet's scripts and I think Mantegna is the best actor at making it seem fluid and natural
SIDE NOTE: There is another actor who has had a successful collaboration with David Mamet. Ricky Jay is a sleight of hand magician who first appeared in House of Games (Mamet's directorial debut) and has appeared in virtually every movie since then, including the TV Series The Unit, which Mamet produced. Jay is always a supporting role but over time, has become as adept as Mantegna at letting that stylized dialogue roll off his tongue
DON SIEGAL & CLINT EASTWOOD: I know, I know, you want Sergio Leone there instead of Siegal. The two of them made the three Man with No Name Movies (Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More and The Good The Bad and The Ugly) and it was a great collaboration, no doubt, but I think Siegal and Eastwood is actually more significant.
It was Siegal who directed Dirty Harry and clearly, that is the one role Eastwood will always be associated with. Siegal got Eastwood out of the western genre with Harry and Coogan's Bluff and The Beguiled (a civil war era movie but certainly not a western) and Escape From Alcatraz. Though he did direct Two Mules For Sister Sarah, one of my fave Eastwood westerns.
Beginning in the mid fifties, Budd and Scott teamed up to make six westerns that stand as some of the best "B" westerns ever made. Scott, a fairly major star who, although known primarily for westerns, had also had great success in movies off his horse. But at that point, for reasons that still aren't clear to me, he decided the only movies he had any interest in making, were westerns.Producer Harry Brown led Scott to Boettcher, who was lost on various backlots making one unmemorable western after another. Screenwriter Burt Kennedy (who went on to become a fairly decent B movie western director in his right) came on board and the team went on to produce these austere, deftly written, well acted westerns with Scott perfectly inhabiting essentially the same character; a retired gunslinger of some sort brought back into the fray to ride the vengeance trail. What distinguishes these films is that the act of vengeance is not so clear cut. And they all feature Scott as the world weary gunman teamed with a younger, more aggressive version of himself (portrayed by actors such as Lee Marvin, Claude Atkins, Lee Van Cleef, James Coburn and many others) leading to the inevitable showdown.
I never really thought that much of Scott's acting chops but Budd was able to bring something out in him, this kind of sadness almost, particularly in the scenes where the violence became inevitable; he was older, he'd been through it, he knew what was coming but for all his experience and wisdom, he wouldn't be able to stop it.
ANYTHONY MANN & JAMES STEWART: Oh what the hell, let's finish it off with more westerns .. I'm beginning to wonder how Mamet worked his way into this list (Kurosawa makes sense, his ronin movies not only inspired many western movies, they were inspired by them in turn). Can you imagine a Mamet western? Black Hat and White Hat stand off in the dusty street, the sun starting to set behind them:
White Hat: "You're wearing your gun, Billy"
Black Hat: "Yes, it's the gun I wore, didn't you want me to wear it, you knew I would have to wear it"
White Hat: "My happiness has nothing to do with your gun, my happiness is like the bullet you left at home, it's cold and independent and it's covered in dust"
Black Hat: "I brought that bullet, it's in my gun, it's clean and hollow and it's filled with the charge of my hatred and .."
Oh for fuck sake, somebody shoot somebody!!!
Sorry ... I digress .. but you knew that I would, didn't you?
Anyway .. Anthony Mann & Jimmy Stewart. They made eight movies together but the five westerns they made together certainly defined Mann as a director and re-defined Stewart as an actor.
This is the post-war Jimmy Stewart. A leaner, meaner, driven Stewart, more likely to resort to violence than in any of his previous films. This is Stewart on the edge, his motivations more grey than black and white, and likely to erupt in a sudden paroxysm of violence that can be quite shocking.The Man From Laramie gives us Stewart as a man falsely accused, the underdog if you will but even so, his actions seem frenetic, even shocking. Post war indeed. Even when on the vengeance trail, Stewart does so with cold, hardcore sense of purpose that makes you squirm in your seat a bit. You don't often see this side of Stewart and you never see it with the intensity that Mann is able to bring out of him. And you don't see this degree of focus and passion in Mann's earlier films, so it's a successful collaboration, each artist pulling out something bigger from the other.
This post has probably gone on long enough so I'll end it there. You may have noticed there are no females on the list. Well, I have lots of favorite female actors but I can't associate any of them with a particular director. Doesn't mean there weren't collaborations, not just by anyone I watch. If you have a match up between and actress and a director, I would love to hear it.
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