Upstream

With live accompaniment by the Donald Sosin Ensemble

Print Courtesy of the Academy Film Archive

USA, 1927
Director: John Ford
Screenwriters: Randall H. Faye, Wallace Smith
Cinematographer: Charles G. Clarke
Cast: Nancy Nash, Grant Withers, Earle Foxe
Running Time: 60 minutes

A huge number of classic American films have decayed or been lost, including many early films by great American directors like John Ford. Last year, the exciting news for film buffs was the discovery of a print of Ford’s long-lost Upstream in the New Zealand Film Archive. Even better, as Richard Brody for the New Yorker proclaimed, “It’s a joy to announce that, far from being a mere historical curiosity, the movie is a delight and a wonder — it’s a thoroughgoing John Ford film, one that’s artistically worthy to take its place among his many classics.”

The central focus of the film is a love triangle between a knife thrower (Grant Withers); his “target girl,” Gertie (Nancy Nash); and the egotistical Brashingham (Earle Foxe), a hammy Shakespearean actor. With the action confined mainly to a low-rent boarding house for scuffling vaudevillians, Ford’s skill at effectively defining and depicting characters finds space to flourish, featuring among others a pair of dancers, a squabbling sister-act, a long-suffering landlady and an aging actor long past his prime.

Filmed at a transition point in Ford’s career, Upstream is the last completely silent film Ford made and was filmed at the beginning of what would become a 13-year break from the Western genre that had defined many of his earlier works.

John Ford is one of America’s preeminent filmmakers, known for films that include The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, The Searchers and The Wings of Eagles.