3 Godfathers - 1948 - DVD

Sunday, December 3, 2006

The picture at right is not from the film, though it captures John Wayne in a pose simultaneously filled with vulnerability and grit, the perfect point of entry into the film, 3 Godfathers, directed by John Ford in 1948. And when you get right down to it, 3 Godfathers is essentially about John Wayne, and the evolution of his on-screen character as he and Ford redefine what the West means to America. Wayne plays Robert Marmaduke Hightower (a handsome name if there ever was one) who is in a kind of transition between the hopeful days of the Western and the defeatist West that begins to surface in later years, a clear marker being Ford's The Searchers (1956), where Wayne's Ethan Edwards practically rejects God and anticipates a fruitless future. Hightower hasn't lost respect for ceremony, unlike Ethan stomping through his family's funeral in The Searchers, but he has an ambivalent relationship with the God. One minute he stands over a cross at a funeral, the next he tosses the bible to the dust, letting its pages wither in the wind. Hightower is a bad guy, but he has his moments of sensitivity that reassure us that he has a conscience.

The film is dedicated to Harry Carey, who starred in the original 1916 version, The Three Godfathers. Carey and Ford were long-time friends who had a working relationship together, making roughly twenty "Cheyenne Harry" serials in 1919, two films in 1918, and their first film together, The Fighting Gringo in 1917. Carey died in 1947, a year after the release of 3 Godfathers, but has a credited role in another 1948 film, Howard Hawks' Red River. On the set of 3 Godfathers Wayne told Carey's son, Harry Carey, Jr. that his father was the one who taught him how to act, how to talk, and how to walk. The film is almost in the presence of Carey's ghost with the amount of influence he extends to the plot, acting style and subtext.

I'm prone to point out the credit sequences in Ford's films, and 3 Godfathers is no exception to that habit. The "directed by" credit appears as the credits music crescendos; the title fades, but the music lingers on as the narrative begins. This musical superimposition of Ford's credit extends his role directly into the narrative—his presence is known, and is in fact undeniable, as the story begins even if he is not a visible character in the narrative. Within the first few shots Ford gives us the basic outline of the story: the first image is a train puffing across the plains (which represents Wayne's antagonist, as we learn later), and just before the credits there is a three-shot of the protagonists, Wayne, Carey, Jr., and Pedro Armendariz, the "three godfathers" on horseback trotting into town. Without an ounce of dialogue and two simple shots we already have a representation of what this story is about; a perfect example of tight, efficient narrative structure.


The three horsemen are bandits that rob the town bank where Ward Bond's Perley "Buck" Sweet is sheriff. The bandits swiftly escape, but though they get out of town unscathed, their water canteen does not. Surrounded by miles of desert, Buck blasts a hole through it, guaranteed to make the three stop at watering holes in neighboring towns. Now that Buck has them on the map, he and his crew set off via train to cuff Wayne and his posse on the spot. Along the way we meet characters played by Jane Darwell (famously known for her role in Ford's The Grapes of Wrath [1939]), Ben Johnson (who plays his best role in Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949]), and Mae Marsh and Hank Worden.

Hightower catches on to Buck's game and uses his cowboy skills to outlast him. Hightower and William (Carey, Jr.) are shown, in an almost documentary style, taking machetes to cactus plants, and squeezing their liquid as sustenance. It's almost as if these guys are real cowboys, real men outside of their filmed characters who know how to manipulate the land to their advantage.

Finally they meet an abandoned wagon, inside of which is a woman on the verge of death and about to give birth. At this point Wayne could have left the woman to perish, but like I said, this crude cowboy still has his conscience.
Pedro (Armendariz) delivers the baby, the woman dies, and the three bandits are now the three godfathers by virtue of the woman's last wish.

Watching how the three rough and tumble men care for the newborn are some of the funniest moments in Ford film history. Hightower, William and Pedro debate technique on how to bathe a baby, which is apparently by smearing it with axle grease in place of olive oil (and they actually rub the baby with grease--such lengths for realism) and what to name him, which they all reluctantly decide it is "Robert William Pedro," a combination of the three of their names, are the heart of the movie. There are close-ups of Hightower with the baby, his thick, leathery man hands patting the baby's back so awkwardly as to make him cry. He yells, "Don't leave me out here all alone!" as the boys walk away momentarily, and spits lines calling the kid "a drunkard at a 4th of Ju-ly barbie" when it takes its bottle.

For anyone who's not a fan of John Wayne, for those who think he simply can't act (I too was once included in this population) I encourage you to see this movie—I encourage you to see it in conjunction with a few of his other films (Stagecoach [1939] and The Searchers, et. al), but 3 Godfathers in particular. In one scene early on in the film he delivers a speech to William and Pedro. For the duration of his talk the camera doesn't cut away; he talks the entire time with altering emotions and changing facial expressions. It is a gorgeous performance, delicate and genuine.