Ford and Capra

John Ford's personal pilgrimage of faith and belief as represented in The Searchers was not an unusual quest for someone of his era and place. He had considerable company. Most of the directors in what I call the Hollywood Renaissance were involved in similar searches in their work and in their lives. During this era of great transition and turmoil, these directors as a group sought to rediscover and represent American values and beliefs. The result of their efforts was an extraordinary flowering of cinematic and cultural creativity. In this group of directors, the journey of Frank Capra seems especially remarkable considering his impoverished origins in Sicily. Given such humble beginnings, his subsequent fame and achievements are the material of the American myth of success. Looking back to his childhood journey of immigration – crossing the ocean in steerage, traversing the country by train in filthy underclothes to struggling relatives in California – Capra could claim truly to have lived the American dream of triumph over great difficulties and challenges. Although he recalled these events with a powerful awareness of his misery and loneliness at the time – “I hated America” – he never underestimated their importance in transforming his life. As biographer Joseph McBride writes: