John Ford is arguably the most important figure in the history of American cinema: a man who directed over 140 films between 1917 and 1970. An influence on filmmakers from Orson Welles to Akira Kurosawa to Martin Scorsese, with many more in-between. And a four-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Direction (a record). While Ford dabbled in various genres throughout his career, including comedies, costume dramas, historical biographies, literature adaptations, and war films, he is best known for his contribution to the Western, and for his long collaboration with actor John Wayne.
She War A Yellow Ribbon is significant in Ford's filmography for the way the narrative takes a backseat to the quiet observation of ritual. Wayne (playing a man much older than himself in what supposedly was his favorite role) is a retiring cavalry officer in the final days of his career, finding himself responsible for upholding a tenuous peace with the nearby Cheyenne Indians. Instead of building to some kind of major conflict, the film plays in a more episodic fashion, highlighting the various duties of Wayne and his men, and can be read as an elegy not only for the Old West portrayed in the story, but for the genre that Ford had explored over the last 30 years.
This was the second in what is now known as Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy"; though they do not share and plot or character elements, the films examine the life of those serving in this branch of the military, each with a different study of the theme of duty. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, the only one in color, is the most sentimental of the three, and widely regarded as the best.
Many of the names in front of and behind the camera were veterans of Ford films, the director known for working with the same people over and over again. The film's breathtaking color cinematography by Winton C. Hoch was modeled after the Old West artwork of painter and sculptor Frederic Remington, and won an Academy Award.
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