The Long Gray Line

Marty Maher comes from Ireland to America and takes work as a waiter at the West Point military academy. He breaks dishes, runs into debt, and is nearly dismissed. He stays. Then he moves to athletics instruction and works in the same place for fifty years. Across generations passing through the academy he knows the cadets, sends them off to war, and sees that most do not come back. He and his wife Mary lose their own child, and at some point the young men at the academy take that place. John Ford's film rests on the life of a real person. The narrative exalts the military institution, but that is not the film's real subject; it is how a man's belonging to a place lasts a lifetime and what it costs him. Tyrone Power plays Marty and Maureen O'Hara plays Mary. It was shot at West Point and is among Ford's first films in widescreen. Who it's for: Viewers who like John Ford, classic Hollywood drama, and narratives of life inside an institution. Who it's not for: It runs long and the narrative proceeds in episodes. The view of the military institution is also uncritical.