1950 - THIS IS KOREA, a lost John Ford film that probably should have stayed lost

Only on YouTube would something like this unseen John Ford film show up.

 

In 1950, John Ford traveled to Korea to supervise the filming of a propaganda film for the United States Navy.  Ford had a big success during World War II with his other short documentary film The Battle of Midway.  Ford and his team had filmed the The Battle of Midway, with color 16mm cameras, and at times got so close to the Japanese bombing of Midway Island that the camera film jumped out of the sprocket holes. Then, to avoid the War Department censors, he smuggled the film back to the United States edited it in secret and managed to get the film shown to President Roosevelt.

Released to the general public. The Battle of Midway was corny and very emotional but it also gave the 1940's audience a view of the war in color,  something that hadn't been seen at that time.

Ford during the filming of This Is Korea

By the time of the Korean War, the US Navy had persuaded Ford to make another documentary about our involvement in that conflict. This time Ford meet with a lot less success. Ford attempted to frame the conflict with his usual theme of "victory in defeat."  Ford had a subplot of an American unit surrounded by the North Koreans during the winter.  He actually had the audacity to compare this to George Washington at Valley Forge.  Ford included lots of shots of cute Korean kids being raised by Catholic missionaries, one kid is even renamed Babe Ruth. The film concluded with a Catholic Mass being observed during wartime which  was pretty manipulative.

Ford also loaded up the film with lots of footage of the United States Army shooting heavy weapons into the mountains, while a narrator announces what type of ordnance is being blasted into the hills. The viewer also gets scenes of planes dropping napalm onto houses, the narrator says things like "burn em out." Watching scenes of people being burned to death probably isn't going to advance the cause of
 democracy very much.

  

World War II had been the defining moment in John Ford's life. Ford saw a lot of action during that war and had photographed the Nazi extermination camps. He had to have been deeply affected by what he had been through and it turned him into a super patriot. Unfortunately for Ford, the Korean conflict did not really lend itself to the same film making style he had used on The Battle of Midway.