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Richard A. Blake, in his book Afterimage, says of Ford's first major work, "His notions of community, salvation, conscience, and life as a journey to a homeland in the hereafter bear the unmistakable marks of his Catholic imagination even in the telling of a good, non-religious adventure story."

Ford's most accessible film—and in some ways more timely than ever—The Grapes of Wrath (1940) shows his alignment with progressive politics (he fought vigorously against McCarthyism in Hollywood), as well as deceptively simple storytelling. Welles would take Wrath's chiaroscuro cinematographer Greg Toland for Kane the following year, and the rest is history.

Ford's sentimentality and piety come to the fore in How Green Was My Valley (1941), a nostalgic elegy of life in a pastoral Welsh mining town as the Industrial Revolution begins.

The pastor, Mr. Gruffydd, proclaims to a crowd, "Fear has brought you here. Horrible, superstitious fear. Fear of divine retribution, a bolt of fire from the skies. The vengeance of the Lord and the justice of God. But you have forgotten the love of Jesus. You disregard His sacrifice."

But Ford's characters rarely sermonize: "One can be a fervent Catholic and hate sermons," Ford told an interviewer. "Biblical stories … I don't know, are pretty dull. They all forget that Christ was a human being. A man." He also turned down religious films because he was a Catholic, saying he would treat the subject too reverentially and that studios should get an atheist or a Jewish director instead.

During World War II, Ford made propaganda films in the Navy, most notably The Battle of Midway (1942). Covering such events as the Normandy Invasion, he rose to the rank of rear admiral. During the liberation of France, since he was Catholic and American, he was asked by a nun to light the first candle of their abbey after being freed, which he told an interviewer was one of the highlights of his life. Having documented some of the war's greatest victories, he returned home to dramatize America's greatest defeat in They Were Expendable (1945), offering Wayne one of his greatest acting turns.

Utah's Monument Valley

Ford excels at period pieces and is cinema's foremost historian of America, depicting stories from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the American West, the Fin de Siecle, the Depression, World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam. Yet he is also a director of the world, setting stories in Ireland, Scotland, India, Samoa and China.

But he is best known for his Westerns set in Monument Valley, a string of which began with My Darling Clementine (1946), a tale of Wyatt Earp in Tombstone. Ford's legendary "Cavalry Trilogy" is an excellent introduction to the director, consisting of Fort Apache (1948), Rio Grande (1949) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1950), in which Wayne's character movingly visits his wife's grave to give her frequent updates on his life, echoing Henry Fonda doing the same in the earlier film about Lincoln.

Returning to his Irish roots, Ford has Wayne's character, a retired boxer, do the same. In The Quiet Man (1952) Wayne's character, a retired boxer, returns to Ireland to get himself a home and a wife.

Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in 'The Quiet Man'

Wayne shows range beyond his drawling cowpoke, and Ford shows some unusual stylistic moves in the boxer's flashbacks that influence later films, most notably Raging Bull.

A tough film that grants its rewards only with repeated visits, The Searchers (1956)—perhaps Wayne's greatest role—shows Ford as a master of suspense, epic, pilgrimage and, above all, Christian forgiveness and agape love., All of Ford's themes are in full play here, as his talent is at its most mature and masterful. Ford earned his trademark eye patch during this film, having ignored doctor's orders after cataract surgery and removed his bandages too early.

Bringing Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne together for the first time, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) highlights the last of Ford's great themes: how a man of law and order, and even peace, must take up his guns once in a while to put down evildoers. It started the anti-myth Westerns, and the postmodern skepticism about history, illustrated by the quip of the newspaper editor in the film, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend," a fitting epitaph to a man who was a legend himself, and who gifted to us the legacy of our own mythology.

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