The fact that this film is from 1924 should have told me it's a silent movie but I wasn't thinking. I'm not a fan of silent movies but my husband got a collection of FORD AT FOX for Christmas and he wanted to start at the beginning.I can't believe how much I love the movie.This was the beginning of John Ford's career, so much so that he is not credited on screen. Even though he isn't credited, it is so clearly a John Ford film. The action, drama and humor intertwine so clearly in his style. Fans of westerns will enjoy this film and I am looking forward to watching the progression of talent over time.

1st watched 10/25/2013 -- 7 out of 10(Dir-John Ford): Epic silent movie about the path to the completion of the transcontinental railroad seen thru the eyes of the son of a dream-filled mid-westerner, played by George O'Brien in adulthood. This movie does a pretty good job of portraying the conflicts in the effort -- while throwing in some romance with a few fist fights. John Ford, the King of the Western, directed this early movie and is not afraid to show men having emotion and being aggressive as males are expected to be. George's character, Dave Brandon, travels with his father to the west in search of helping the railroad get built, but his father is killed by a white man dressed as an Indian and traveling with their tribe. This man becomes the evil character in the film an we find out he also is tight with the railroad executives and owns a lot of land. We believe his intention is to make sure the railroad goes thru his areas so they will thrive and make him money although it is not really dramatized. This piece is somewhat historical in nature with some comedy, romance and violence thrown in coming a lot from the romantic triangle between Brandon, his childhood girlfriend and her new fiancé. The fight scenes are a little corny and sometimes un-necessary but some of the emotions come out due to this and help the film, in my opinion. Ford makes the film entertaining and not just a bland documentary which it could have been. His ability to entertain an audience shines and the film also teaches which is a positive thing as well. Overall -- a worthwhile film although not perfect.

John Ford's breakthrough Western epic blazed a trail for one of American cinema's major figures, so I really wanted to like it. But this is a film less about history than it is history, a dusty collection of tropes and sentimentality that falls well short of Ford's timeless standard.The movie opens in Springfield, Illinois, where we see a man puffing at his pipe as he looks off in the distance. "Having another of your day dreams about rails across the continent?" his neighbor laughs expositionally. Eventually the dreamer is killed by Cheyenne, but not before finding a deep cut in a mountain range that will simplify the building of a national railroad. It's up to his son to see his father's dream become reality.Silent films don't age equally well. Horror films and comedies hold their value, even improving in some instances. Period dramas and mysteries that require a fair amount of talking to move the plot, on the other hand, often do not. Silent films are great at establishing mood, but often struggle at meaning."Iron Horse" is a good example. Because you can't hear people talking, you need their expressions to tip you off on what's going on. Some silent directors struck a good balance; Ford here doesn't. The opening Springfield section is full of over-emoting, whether it's the scoffing neighbor or the icky tears of a lovestruck girl. One creepy tall guy stares intensely at two children for minutes on end, but it's okay because he's not a perv but our 16th president, just a log-cabin lawyer here but one who shares the dreams of an express to California.Poor Abe never had any luck with theatrical presentations. Here he seems to be trotted out as Ford's seal of approval, a leaden figure who moves through the early story like Christ in a Passion Play. The film also has two dedications to Lincoln, and a bas-relief image of the man superimposed between them. I admire the man enormously, but enough already.As an epic Western, "The Iron Horse" gets as much spectacle in as possible. This includes some memorable shots. One I often see in Ford and western retrospectives is of sunlit boxcars suddenly being darkened by the shadows of Indian warriors. Ford also uses perspective to great advantage, like a slight overhead of a Pony Express rider being chased by Indians, or a buffalo herd stampeding into frame.That buffalo herd is part of the problem, too. It's very loosely connected to the rest of the movie, a bit of explanation about how rail-building crews were fed. Otherwise, you need it as much as a cattle run glimpsed later in the film or the seduction of a character we already know is going to turn out bad. Ford liked to futz around in his movies with various ancillary tangents, but there's something about a silent that makes such an approach very slow viewing.The best thing in the movie by far is star George O'Brien, playing Davy, the son of the dreamer all grown up. When he finally arrives in the 45th or 55th minute (depending on whether you are watching the European or longer American version), he provides a natural, affable presence the movie sorely lacks. Before he comes riding in, you are stuck between the eyelash-batting heroine Miriam (Madge Bellamy) and the eyebrow-cocking comic relief of Casey (J. Farrell MacDonald), representing two poles of very bad acting.The central problem with the movie is how ridiculous its story is. The DVD cover quotes Leonard Maltin approvingly: "This movie invented what later became clichés." Without getting into spoilers, I ask you to ponder the real identity of the lead villain, or the goofy way the heroine decides to hold it against Davy for exposing her fiancé as a lying heel. "You promised me and you've broken - your word" she tells him, whereupon he bows his head mutely.If it was a sound film, he could have chewed her ear off making a case for himself. What you are stuck with here instead is an insipid and uninvolving melodrama relieved occasionally by a cool gun battle or a nice horizon line. "Iron Horse" shows Ford starting out with little more than a good eye and a taste for grand spectacle still somewhat beyond his powers to corral.

I'm a very big fan of this great epic, and have been searching on my TIVO for it for some time. I was surprised and super pleased when Turner Classic Movies aired a new 2007 restoration (complete with 20th Century Fox searchlights at the end) at 12 Midnight-2:30a Eastern Time this morning. I was also quite surprised at the quality of the restoration and the cuts, viewing it on and HDTV screen. Following the movie, Robert Osborne was pitching a new Turner Classic Movie collection of some 24 Ford DVDs (and book, "Ford at Fox"). Now . . . if only someone would do Buster Keaton's classic 1965 "The Railrodder" as a remake in DVD (chuckle). 12.25.2007 An additional comment on reading many of the other comments: The film was not done in Arizona as mistakenly stated by Robert Osborne, but mostly in or about Wadsworth, Nevada in the Truckee River canyon East of Sparks/Reno. Ford also used "Beale's Cut" where old CA Hiway 14 entered the Newhall area. This was quite close to the Willam S. Hart Ranch, so it would have probably been well known to most directors of that era (this was that very severe "cut" in the mountain, which I hiked through in the early '50s). There were also scenes indicative of Chatsworth CA area (at the Northwest end of the San Fernando Valley).