She Wore A Yellow Ribbon

John Ford - 1949
This neatly straddles the line between evocation of place, with its sympathetic reports of high-jinks and the fear of retirement and leaving 'the boys', with a narrative that is pretty strong until the rather fast extinguishing at the end. Ford gives the Indians here a bit more screen time; they in fact have the same issue as the cavalry, of the old-timers passing on the batton to young warmongers.
Ford's images are more two shots than the earlier huge wide ones. In a couple of ways, I wouldn't be surprised if he had aquatintance with Welles and Eisenstein, looming men. The colours here, reminiscent of 'The Searchers', are dramtic blood reds, the crazy technicolour primaries.
Their are some startlingly beautiful images here, of the plains, of the horse running and the dust they throw up, of the eeries and proud monument valley. On my 'height of the horizon' scale, it goes like this; Dovzhenko- bottom of the frame, Ford- just blow centre, Hawks- just above a centre, Kiarostami- at the top. The idea is, rather vulgarly, this fits in with the evocations of wide infinite expanses (lower) versus localistic circularity (higher).