Thursday, July 12, 2007

3 GODFATHERS


3 GODFATHERS (1948, USA, John Ford, Laurence Stallings / Frank S. Nugent screenplay from Peter B. Kyne story)
Set 'em up, mister. Milk for the infant and a cold beer for me.

Nothing to do with Francis Ford Coppola. A young woman dies in childbirth in the desert, and John Wayne and a couple other outlaws who help deliver the child must now risk their freedom to get the child safely to New Jerusalem. Ford coached one of his actors "You're one tough son-of-a-bitch who becomes a half-decent guy after the baby's born," but most viewers will find too much half-decent and not enough tough: it's a sentimental adaptation of Kyne's explicitly religious novella of the same name, very much on the "light dessert" section of the soul food menu – sort of THREE MEN AND A BABY GO WEST with Christmas trimmings. Ford's putative Catholicism comes through in abundant Bible references, but it's mostly just for fun.

THE INFORMER, THE FUGITIVE


Available at Videomatica

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