French find John Ford silent film

“He was the pride of all the cowboys on the ranch. An independent spirit, as were all the cowboys, he fell under the irresistible charm of Helen Clayton.” So reads the first inter-title of a 1917 John Ford film whose recent rediscovery is being compared to the unearthing of a new painting by Cezanne or an unpublished manuscript by Victor Hugo.

“Bucking Broadway,” a 56-minute, sepia-tinted western, turned up in the archives of France’s Centre National de la Cinematographie in May 2002, but it took awhile before it was recognized for the gem that it is. It stars Harry Carey.

The film was broadcast on French public television last month and is slated to be shown at a festival in Italy and in a program sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the fall.

Before this discovery, only seven of Ford’s 70 silent films were known to be still in existence. “Straight Shooting,” Ford’s directorial debut from early 1917, was found a decade ago in a film archive in Prague.