John Ford in a whole new light

Kristin here Last year at the Le Giornate del Cinema Muto film festival in Pordenone, Italy, attendees had the first opportunity to purchase Lea Jacobs’ fresh-off-the-presses book, John Ford at Work: Production Histories from 1927 to 1939. It was also given away as one of the perks for higher-level donors. The title says “Production Histories,” but Jacobs covers more than that phrase might seem to suggest. She has drawn on the strengths of the film-studies area of the Department of Communication Arts here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. One of those is the academic study of the film industry, established by Prof. Tino Balio with his United Artists: The Studio Built by the Stars (University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), the first of his string of books on the industry. I think it’s safe to say that David and his colleagues favored an aesthetic approach to film analysis, as in David’s books The Films of Carl-Theodor Dreyer (University of California Press, 1981) and Narration in the…