The Steven Spielberg movie that channelled the spirit of John Wayne and John Ford: “It’s kind of fun”
Being compared to one of the greatest directors in cinema history can become a burden to any filmmaker, never mind being compared to several of them. Fortunately, Steven Spielberg is also one of the greatest directors in cinema history, so he’s never let those lofty claims weigh him down.
While the legend behind Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, and countless more made his own indelible mark in the industry and developed a signature set of motifs and techniques that are entirely his own, two names clearly inspired him more than most.
Spielberg’s innate understanding of how to tell stories on an epic canvas, the sense of grandeur that’s defined his biggest productions, and the delicate balance between character-driven narratives told against a sweeping backdrop are essentially a distillation of John Ford and David Lean, two titans who’ve been towering influences on the three-time Academy Award winner since his earliest days.
Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia affected Spielberg so much that he was convinced he’d never be able to make it as a director because there was no chance he’d ever be able to compete with the 1962 masterpiece, and his filmography has been constantly peppered with homages to Ford’s magnum opus, The Searchers, a film he rewatches religiously before he starts every feature.
Those two titles have left heavy fingerprints all over Spielberg’s back catalogue dating back to the 1970s, but there was one movie where he could fully indulge his love of not only Ford but his most famous onscreen collaborator. When the eye patch-wearing auteur teamed up with John Wayne, the end result was usually a grandiose tale that captured stunning vistas and painted whatever character ‘The Duke’ played as an everyman aiming to overcome insurmountable odds.
Taking to the battlefield to adapt Michael Morpungo’s novel War Horse for the screen, Spielberg saw it as the perfect opportunity to indulge one of his earliest touchstones. The British countryside was a million miles away from America’s wide-open plains, but the director saw the story of a man and his horse as the ideal conduit to go full Ford and Wayne in the way he captured the imagery.
Acknowledging that he’d enlisted regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski to do just that, Spielberg confessed to The Skinny that one Ford flick, above all others, was constantly at the forefront of his thinking. “In The Quiet Man, he included the land as part of his storytelling; the land was a character,” he said. “It’s kind of fun to put a wide-angle lens on and not be shooting close-ups all the time.”
Much like Ford utilised the Irish landscape in The Quiet Man to make it feel like an integral part of the narrative, Spielberg sought to do the same with both rural Devon and French battlefields in War Horse. It’s not an obvious connection nor a shock to discover Spielberg was deliberately challenging one of his filmic heroes. However, that reverence might explain why War Horse often felt too heavy-handed and cloying for its own good.
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