Today, John Ford is considered one of the most important film directors. Whenever there is a shot anywhere in another film where a man is filmed from inside a dark house through the doorway against a vast horizon, it can be safely assumed that it is a nod to the film The Searchers (In German it was called “The Black Falcon”, although the Indian chief in it is not called that in the original). In it, Ford shows his lead actor, John Wayne, in one such image at the beginning and end. “The Searchers” has just landed back in the list of the 100 most important films of all time, although it does not correspond to the spirit of the times.

But there was a time when almost nobody thought of Ford’s films as art – at least not the westerns. He only got Oscars for films that weren’t set in the Wild West, such as “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Beating Weather,” “The Traitor,” and “The Victor.” They’re good, too, but it’s not the films that Ford is best remembered for today. Even in the film history of Enno Patalas, which was decisive for Germany, Ford’s films were dismissed as plain Hollywood stuff – just like the works of Hitchcock. However, Patalas later admitted that it was a mistake.

But of course there were people early on who recognized Ford’s genius. One was François Truffaut, who dedicated an essay to Ford in his book The Movies of My Life (edited by Patalas, by the way, which must have given him food for thought). Another is Steven Spielberg. As a very young film enthusiast (he shot his first films with his family as a schoolboy), he managed to be received by the very old John Ford in his office on the Paramount studio lot.

This story is the inspiration for a scene in Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September. A clip is now circulating on YouTube in which Sammy Fabelman (Spielberg’s alter ego in the film) is invited into Ford’s office, but only after a secretary quickly removes the bloody handkerchiefs that the cigar-smoking and already cancer-stricken Ford has coughed up on.

Ford only allows the unknown young man a few minutes and advises him to always show the horizon in a film at the bottom or at the top of the picture. If the horizon is in the middle, that’s “shit”. Then he tells Fabelman-Spielberg: “And now get the fuck out of my office.”

The highlight of the scene is the cast. Since the beginning of 2022 it was known that David Lynch, a directing legend like Spielberg and Ford, would star in “The Fabelmans”. But it wasn’t clear who. Now we know: Lynch (“Twin Peaks”, “Blue Velvet”) plays John Ford with his trademark eye patch over his glasses. And he plays him as a tough, iron-American macho – an image that the very sympathetic Ford consciously cultivated in the rough Hollywood atmosphere.

The idea of ​​Lynch playing Ford came from Mark Harris, the husband of screenwriter Tony Kushner, with whom Spielberg co-wrote The Fabelmans. Laura Dern, who starred in Lynch’s film Wild at Heart, was asked by Spielberg to persuade Lynch to guest star.

During a panel discussion with Martin Scorsese at the Directors Guild Association in New York, Spielberg revealed what Lynch’s most important condition was for taking on the role: “Lynch said, ‘I want the costume two weeks in advance, so I can get in it two weeks can live. I want to wear it out”. When Spielberg asked him if he really wanted to wear the clothes, Lynch replied, “Yes. Daily. Every day. The eye patch, the hat, everything else. Send it to me.” Lynch then showed up on location in a rather tattered costume: “But so was John Ford.” Indeed, he was notorious for his unkemptness, which he almost used to get rid of Hollywood bosses keep.

How Spielberg’s film is as a whole will be seen when it comes to German cinemas in March. The brief Ford scene is already fascinating film aficionados around the world. She is part of a tradition of guest appearances, to which famous directors invited their role models and friends. Well-known examples are the role of the famous American writer Parvulesco, played by Jean-Pierre Melville in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Out of Breath”, the appearance of Fritz Lang in Godard’s “The Contempt” or Sam Fuller’s appearance in “The State of Things”. Wim Wenders.