From July 1 to August 5, the PFA business office (daytime) and box office (evening) will offer advance sale tickets at $8.00 per person, which cover admission to the Cavalry Trilogy, and include a Chuck Wagon Supper served during the intermission from 8 to 9:00. The Swallow Cafe is preparing the Duke's Chili, with quesadillas and dessert. Beverages available. For further information call 642-1412.
Please Note: Single, double, or triple-feature tickets for the films alone will be available on the evening of the event, space permitting.
“John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy was never intended to be any such thing. It is really just three impeccable westerns about the U.S. Cavalry during the Indian Wars, shot in Monument Valley and based on stories by James Warner Bellah - a remarkable writer whose work appeared in a number of popular magazines during the '40s and '50s, frequently The Saturday Evening Post. Bellah had a marvelous feeling for martial themes and characters, and his (now hard-to-find) tales still make great reading....
“Although John Ford's ‘art films' - The Informer, The Long Voyage Home, How Green Was My Valley - were long considered his main claim to fame, it has become overwhelmingly clear that the true center of his greatness can be seen in the seemingly effortless, deeply-felt westerns and service films that find their highest expression in the Trilogy. These are more than just great action films. Ford himself told screenwriter Frank Nugent (as quoted in McBride and Wilmington's ‘John Ford'): ‘In all westerns, the Cavalry rides in to the rescue of the beleaguered wagon train or whatever, and then it rides off again. I've been thinking about it - what it was like at a Cavalry post, remote, people with their own personal problems, the threat of Indians, of death....'
“The three films that comprise the Trilogy are seldom screened together, due to their length. We invite you to join us at this rare, joyous tribute to America's foremost film poet, John Ford.” --Michael Goodwin
