The irrepressible French have scored again. Film experts in Paris have discovered and restored a long-lost John Ford western and plan to show it on television this week, the Guardian reports. The many ironies of this turn of events need no explanation:

This discovery is piquant. A lost film by John Ford (1895-1973) is rescued by Parisian film scholars in the heart of Old Europe. Ford - the author of compelling legends of the American West and still a touchstone for modern US conservatism - was one of the generation of hard-working, prolific directors of the Hollywood Golden Age. Not for him the luxury, or perhaps the burden, of waiting for projects to get the green light.

He made 145 features, enough for some to have fallen through the cracks. But to find one of his silent westerns - a film from the dawn of the cinema age by a director who celebrated and even helped to define the modern American epoch - for some, it will be akin to discovering a lost verse from the book of Genesis.

Quel formidable!


John Ford, born
Portland, Me.

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