The Long Gray Line is pleasant but mostly routine, minor, John Ford. It is actually the first full film he made just before The Searchers in 1956 (the weird designation here is because he was famously fired off of Mister Roberts (also 1955) after punching star Henry Fonda).
Technicolor, a breezy 138 minutes
Ford’s romanticism of the military (he was a Navy man himself) and Irish immigrants shines through. So, this is perfect material for him. West Point location shooting, singing, plenty of extras here help give the film scope.
The story the life of Martin ‘Marty’ Maher played by Tyrone Power (a Marine himself, his parents Irish immigrants). It is a biopic told in an elongated flashback looking at fifty years of life lived in the military. Maher is actually talking with the president telling his story (who is facing away from the camera). This is certainly made in the mode of Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942, Curtiz). That film is also about a patriotic Irish American (we even get the song “Over There” here in The Long Gray Line during the scene about World War I). It had to kill Ford that he didn’t get to make Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Ford was loyal to his stable of actors- Ward Bond, Maureen O’Hara here (both are excellent). It doesn’t always work out though, the terribly stiff Patrick Wayne (John’s son) is here in a smaller but important role. He just isn’t an actor.
Power is no Cagney, and this is no Yankee Doodle Dandy
Power was a soldier himself as I said- he died tragically young at 44 from a heart attack in 1958- a heavy smoker.
The jig from The Quiet Man (1952) is used here. And again, this is technicolor so we get the pleasure of Maureen O’Hara in color with her flowing red hair. She prays in Gaelic, cooks, is feisty, gets her behind slapped by her husband- Powell’s character.
Leisurely and light- plenty of Ford’s jovial humor. Maher is a swimming instructor that can’t swim. There’s the yarn about the Notre Dame football game and the invention of the forward pass.
Sentimental and emotional. – Maher is a reluctant hero. The singing Marines give him a Cadet sword to his newborn son.
Ford lazily slaps a voice over really only once after the opening
This isn’t The Searchers but at 83-minutes there is an amazing silhouette at a wedding chapel as the young couple emeries from the shadows in the foreground (above)
O’Hara character (Mary O’Donnell)’s passing at the 120-minute mark is a special frame- a distanced long-shot interior.
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