5. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

“Rapid contemplation is the Ford paradox. It’s impossible to watch his films with a lazy eye, for if we do, we no longer see anything (except stories of romantic soldiers). The eye must be sharp because, in any image of a Ford film, there is likely to be a few tenths of a second of pure contemplation before the action starts. Someone emerges from a wooden shack or leaves the frame, and there are red clouds over a cemetery, a horse abandoned in the bottom right corner of the image, the blue swarming of the cavalry, the distraught faces of two women: things to be seen at the very beginning of a shot, for there won’t be a ‘second time’ (too bad for the sluggish eyes).” – Serge Daney, “John Ford, For Ever,” 1988

John Ford’s films always brought out the best in Serge Daney; from a stellar essay on Ford’s oeuvre when he was just 19, to a brief capsule about She Wore a Yellow Ribbon written two and a half decades later for the film’s television broadcast in 1988. This text not only reflects one of Daney’s frequently revisited auteurist subjects, but it also serves as an example of his late-career coverage of television for the newspaper Libération, where he contemplated the implications of cinema when transmitted through television.

This programme is presented in collaboration with Arta Barzanji and Gerard-Jan Claes, who edited and compiled for Sabzian the issue ‘Serge Daney and the Promise of Cinema, available in English and French, featuring contributions from critics, academics, and translators from around the world.