Perfect Storm

In praise of John Ford

2007

This essay starts with Joseph Conrad and Lord Jim (book and film), and how a storm at sea can test ‘the edge of a man’s temper and the fibre of his stuff’. It then examines how three films deal with this idea: The Perfect Storm (2000), Master and Commander (2003) and The Long Voyage Home (1940). The Perfect Storm is a fine example of the cinema of hyperbole, where more is less. Master and Commander is a good piece of story telling, including the death of young Warley in a gale and a funeral (Book of Common Prayer) for dead crew members after battle. The Long Voyage Home, John Ford’s weaving together of four playlets by Eugene O’Neill, has a 13-minute episode which O’Neill entitled ‘The death of Yank’. Yank is an American sailor on a tramp steamer who is fatally wounded when a huge wave sweeps him off the f’c’s’le. The film graphically shows the storm, Yank’s death and his perfunctory funeral, revealing Ford at the height of his powers, the story being told more in pictures than in words and with great economy, while the storm has a convincing power to it: less is more. The essay ends with a reflection on the way this episode in The Long Voyage Home influenced Ford’s approach to the desert funeral in The Searchers.

The essay was published in the online journal, 'Senses of Cinema', and can be reached here. [Go to 'features' and click 5th item down.]

 Yank on his deathbed blowing smoke rings in Long Voyage Home.