Donovan's Reef (1963)

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BACKGROUND

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The final collaboration between John Ford and John Wayne might be described as an absurdist comedy born out of a moment of truth finally arriving between two historically significant men. Wayne made his first appearances in a Ford film just before the stock market crash which began the great depression over thirty years earlier. He then spent the next ten years acting in b-westerns while Ford became famous as the world’s foremost cinematic artist. 

 

Ford made little headway toward healing his inner wounds however, and stood little chance of helping Wayne in that department. Just as Othello’s insensitivity to Iago’s pride and emotional turmoil came back to haunt him, so too had the harsh way Ford wielded his moral and artistic superiority triggered all of Wayne’s repressed pain and insecurities. Wayne could not master the art of directing films as he had hoped to do so he mastered the Hollywood power game instead and retaliated against his mentor by flexing his clout in dozens of passive aggressive ways.

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PLOT SUMMARY

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A wealthy Boston heiress travels to the South Pacific to visit her estranged father so she can find a loophole that will deprive him of his rightful inheritance.

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