John Ford was, in many ways, the...

John Ford was, in many ways, the most American of the great film makers: irascible, brilliant, feisty, adventurous, sly. . . . He embraces a whole range of emotions--some simple, some infernally complex--that mesh in our national self-image. For Bergman, Kurosawa and Welles, Ford was one of the greatest directors. But, interestingly, the ‘50s French critics didn’t embrace his work until 1961, and the release of Two Rode Together (Channel 9 Sunday at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.). In many ways, it’s a curious choice. It seems at times a slapdash rehash of “The Searchers,” with Jimmy Stewart as a wily marshal and Richard Widmark as an upright cavalryman banding together to rescue Comanche captives. But Ford’s style here, loose and masterly, is full of dark touches that prefigure disillusionment. The Dream of the West is already dying in this movie--though Ford, like a good Irishman, gives it a lively, rumbustious wake.

Alex: The Life of a Child (ABC Sunday at 9 p.m.), rebroadcast from 1986, offers the real-life story of sportswriter Frank Deford’s daughter, a victim of cystic fibrosis.

On Monday, Arthur Hiller’s Teachers (Channel 5 at 8 p.m.) supposedly explores today’s blackboard jungles. But the evening’s palm belongs, once again, to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 15 1/2-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz (Channel 28 at 11:05 p.m.), continuing in one-hour Monday through Thursday segments (through June 18). This great, massive adaptation of Alfred Doblin’s novel, with its scathing portrayal of the post-World War I Berlin lower depths, now immerses us in the deadliest entanglement of Franz Biberkopf (Gunther Lamprecht)--as, buffeted by fate and schnapps, he becomes fascinated with amoral low-life Reinhold (Gottfreid John), his angel of death. It was this destructive relationship that most fascinated Fassbinder in the book and it becomes the film’s black core, brilliantly realized by Lamprecht and John.

There’s more John Ford on Tuesday: Mogambo (Channel 13 at 8 p.m.), which he regarded as simply an African diversion but which now retains nostalgic luster through its star cast--Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, repeating the triangle of Gable, Jean Harlow and Mary Astor in the steamy 1932 “Red Dust.”

Stand by Your Man (Channel 5 Wednesday at 8 p.m.) supposedly gives us the lowdown on country classics Tammy Wynette and George Jones. But there’s a more rewarding unhappy marriage in The Purple Rose of Cairo (Channel 13 Wednesday at 8 p.m.), Woody Allen’s superb fantasy-comedy-romance about the high price of dreams-come-true in the Depression’s depths. Mia Farrow, miserably encumbered with loutish Danny Aiello, moons and fantasizes over the dreamy young matinee idol (Jeff Daniels) at the Jewel Movie Theater, only to watch him declare his love, climb off the screen (like Keaton’s Sherlock Jr.) and wreak endless havoc in the “real” world. Allen develops this premise with wonderful wit and agility; the movie’s a jewel.

Revenge! Bloodshed! Retribution! Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris aren’t the only movie actors around itching for vengeance. In Firepower (Channel 11 Thursday at 9 p.m.), the baddies have crossed Sophia Loren once too often; they’re all on the pasta path to perdition. Mamma Mia!

But if bloodshed palls, there’s the Walls of Jericho in Frank Capra’s peerlessly buoyant Oscar-sweeping romantic “road” comedy, It Happened One Night (Channel 13 Thursday at 8 p.m.). Laughs may come, and charm may go, but here, under Frank Capra’s guidance, they always stay irresistible, bright and young. Aboard for the ride: raffish reporter Clark Gable, with his undershirt and tough-guy smirk; daffy heiress Claudette Colbert, with the gams that cars won’t pass; Roscoe Karns as salesman George Shapely (“That’s the way I like them: shapely”); and a host of delightful passengers. It should always happen this way.

Errol Flynn loyalists may disagree, but Richard Lester and James Goldman’s 1976 Robin and Marian (Channel 5 Friday at 8 p.m.) seems an intriguing “20 years after” look at Sherwood Forest: lyrical and sad. The merry men are no longer merry, and Robin Hood (Sean Connery) and Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn) are two romantics grown old--not together, unfortunately. The film, and Ms. Hepburn, look lovely. But there’s frost on the peach; it’s a good complement to a legend ever green.

Liz Taylor’s Oscar-winning performance as a gold-hearted pro in Butterfield 8 (Channel 13 Friday at 8 p.m.) may still be sultry, but the movie itself--extracted like a painful tooth from John O’Hara’s novel--has gone buttery soft. Laurence Harvey and Eddie Fisher provide gloomy contrast to Taylor, whose dashing slip shocked the ‘60s audience even more than Gable’s 1934 sleeveless undershirt. Also available Friday, both at 9 p.m., are Sins of the Past (ABC) and A Vacation in Hell (Channel 11), two movies that sound causally related.

Warner Bros. returns in glory with 1938’s Angels With Dirty Faces (Channel 5 Saturday at 3 p.m.). And some ‘60s low-life seethes through John Schlesinger’s 1969 scorcher, Midnight Cowboy (Channel 13 Saturday at 10 p.m.), all about hapless big-city “gigolo” Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and his ratty little manager, Ratso (Dustin Hoffman)--whose walk on Manhattan’s wild side turns meanly hilarious and wistfully sad. Schlesinger’s film of James Leo Herlihy’s novel--scripted by the late Waldo Salt--is still a model piece of gutty gutter romanticism and reportage.

Two little-shown Jean Renoir classics are on cable this week. The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Z Sunday at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.), scripted by Renoir and Jacques Prevert (“Children of Paradise”), is one of his masterpieces: a dizzily gleaming and eternally rebellious tale of a Parisian publishing cooperative cranking out the Western adventures of the immortal “Arizona Jim.” French Cancan (Z Saturday at 5 p.m.) is Renoir’s blazingly colorful 1955 tribute to the Lautrec heyday of the Moulin Rouge, with Jean Gabin as the head impresario and Edith Piaf among the attractions.

The uncut Orson Welles Touch of Evil (Z Saturday at 3 p.m.) and Roberto Rossellini’s landmark neo-realist tragedy, Open City (Z Sunday at 12:30 p.m.) are other highlights. So is another John Ford Western, Fort Apache (SelecTV Thursday at 7 p.m.).