A Very Genre Christmas: 3 Godfathers (Dir John Ford, 1h48m, 1948)

I want you to understand something; finding a fourth film for this season wasn't easy. Anna and the Apocalypse? Easy. Instant classic. Krampus? Christmas is like horror's other major stalking grounds these days, alongside Hallowe'en-there are so many horror Christmas movies that actually finding the correct version of Krampus, given how many riffs there are on the Germanic figure, was a bit of a mission. As for action, well, Violent Night appeared as if on cue, and so masterfully scratches that itch for Christmas Action, with Old Saint Nick wreaking revenge on terrorists, that I'm also covering it wearing my other reviewing hat, on our podcast, "The Thom and Joe Show". Of course, eschewing the obvious Christmas hinterlands of romance, comedy, and animation, all of which tend to be, well, too close to the schmaltz, I decided to set out into the untapped snowy uplands of genre.

But go further afield, and things become a little less easy. Pure sci-fi? Well, unless you want to watch Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Brazil is your only choice. Fantasy fares no better, with A Boy Called Christmas (a fairly solid if by-the-book fantasy movie), and Nutcracker and the Four Realms (review here...) being your only major choices. This, dear reader, was not easy. Kung-Fu? Well, 1984's Aces Go Places III (a Hong Kong action comedy series riffing off Bond), has a gang of motorbiking Santas, but that's about it. War movies? Aside from the excellent Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, you've only really got the utterly bizarre Russian movies The Red Ghost and Santa Claus: Battle of the Magi (yes, that last one is real), to tde you over, both of eaich seem to involve vengeful Christmas folklore figures killing monsters/Nazis. Detective films? There's really only 1934's The Thin Man. Maybe next year...

On we go through genre, and subgenre. Historical Christmas movies? Well, there's a few; mostly involving Charles Dickens', and the writing of "A Christmas Carol", but a great number are either charming but overly saccarine, Dickens' adaptions, or politely, faith movies. Sports movies? Well, we've covered the main one, Rocky IV,  terrible vehicles for WWE stars you've never heard of, or Miracle, about the US men's ice hockey team's victory over the USSR, which isn't even set at Christmas, and has little to do with the season, albeit very heartwarming. Hell, I even considered samurai movies; there's a few set in the snow, most notably the slowly boiling intrigue of Samurai Assassin (1965), but nothing to even tangentially link it to the season but the weather. I was at an impasse, until a friend suggested something

A Western.

Or rather, the genre as a whole. At first, this felt like a complete oxymoron-I'd actually discounted the existence of the genre even having any Christmas films, and the only ones set in snowy surroundings I could think of were The Revenant and The Hateful Eight. Neither of which are set at Christmas, nor really feel like viewing for the season. "Try Christmas Mountain", my friend suggested. Alright...
Christmas Mountain is a 1981 film, starring Slim Pickens, in one of his last roles and directed by Pierre De Moro, a guy who has three films to his name, one of which is Hellhole, a very bad 1985 women in prison film. All of De Moro's films seem to have been at one point (partly) lost, Christmas Mountain (also know as The Story of a Cowboy Angel)'s original negative having disappeared for 20 years before being re-released in 2008. Phew. Now just to find it on a streaming service to wa-.

Ah. Despite the modern conveniences of YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, HBO, etc, it is nowhere to be seen. Amazon have it, but only on a NTSC DVD, which is of not much use to me. Ah well. No Christmas Wester-. Oh. But there is another film. It's a John Ford film? Starring John Wayne? Based on the same novel that would eventually inspire Satoshi Kon to make Tokyo Godfathers? The best animated Christmas movie of all time? Looks like the Western came up trumps. As we were.

3 Godfathers is a 1948 Western directed by John Ford, based on the novel by Peter B. Kyne, previously made into a film three times (1916, 1919 as Marked Men, by Ford himself (now a lost film), and 1936), starring John Wayne as Bob, Pedro Armendáriz as Pete, and Harry Carey Jr (whose late father, to whom the film is dedicated, had appeared in both the 1916 and 1919 versions), as the Abbiline Kid/William. It is a tale in which this mismatched trio of outlaws and cattle rustlers turn latter day Magi to bring an orphaned boy to safety and civilisation, sworn to be the boy's godfathers, and a meditation upon faith and redemption.

By 1947, the past, and "3 Godfathers" were on John Ford's mind; much of this was due to the death of the star of the 1919 film he had directed, Harry Carey, but at least part of it must-in hindsight-have been down to the loss of that original film. Moreover, Ford's career in the intervening thirty year had skyrocketed. This was down to multiple factors; he had been an early advocate and adopter of sound in cinema, a nigh-relentless work ethic that saw him make multiple films a year for much of the 1930s, and revitalised the Western from the late 1930s onwards, including Stagecoach (1939), a film that no less than Orson Welles watched forty times to prepare for Citizen Kane, and becoming an admired and respected director worldwide, and even turned documentarian in the Pacific theatre during World War II. Now, as one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, with his own troup of actors, Monument Valley and beyond was Ford's to survey.

Following a (remarkably touching) tribute over the opening credits to Carey Snr, Bob, Pete and the Kid ride into Welcome, Arizona, on the way to rob a bank. Like many of Ford's westerns, these are familiar figures-Bob is one of the classic Wayne desparados, a charming, but cunning figure, Pete is god-fearing, but equally charming, whilst the Kid is a wet-behind-the-ears, but dutiful, figure, the gentle, and nigh-illiterate figure who believes their eventual calling is a chance at redemption from a higher power. The trio, entering town, quickly meet the sherrif, the amusingly moniquered Sweet, and his wife, who enquire, in a smart bit of foreshadowing, if the trio have met his niece and their husband on the trail, who will soon be arriving for Christmas. They exchange some playful banter, before the trio ride off to their abortive bank raid.

Here, we have our first major break with previous versions-the 1936 version of Bob is far more ruthless, and his gang end up murdering one of the employees, and their general demeanour is far more openly villainous-less lambs led astray by hard lives, but outright wolves-whilst it makes their collective redemption arcs easier to understand, it's also rather more muted-we never get the Damascene moment where three genuinely bad people have to deal with protecting an innocent. There is, as the great Leonard Matin puts it, a "sturdy (and) sentimental" sense to the film, but, even at this point, there is a greater focus on the charming cowboys coming to the aid of a helpless and heavily pregnant woman, and on a kind of redemption, rather than the full-blown absolution that the 1936 film delves into.

Their hapless getaway quickly loses the money, and, as Sweet and his men, who will proceed to track the trio, give chase and shoot out the trio's waterskin, and injure the Kid, leaving them to hurry to the next source of water, only to find, thanks to the trainline, Sweet is ahead of them. Increasingly desperate, and running out of water, the trio turn to the nearby Terrapin Tanks, wrong-footing Sweet, but losing their horses in the subsequent sandstorm. Worse, Terrapin Tanks has been drained by the actions of a hapless tenderfoot, who has blown up the waterhole, and poisoned it by cattle grazing, and worse still, he has left his heavily pregnant wife in their wagon. It is here, thus, these these men come face to face-or-face, via a superbly framed shot, face-to-POV shot, with the woman (played by Mildred Natwick) who will change their lives-it's a pity that the film moves away from this remarkably striking shot after the second or third time of using it, because its effectiveness in stripping away the levels of abstraction whilst calling back to religious icons in the framing of Bob in the opening to the wagon, is perhaps the film's most visually arresting series of shots.

She soon gives birth to a son, and, ailing, makes the trio the boy's godfathers, before swearing to protect their godchild, and take him to safety. She soon dies, leaving the trio of mismatched desperados and petty criminals to care for the child, an extended sequence that begins to flesh out what makes these three men tick-despite his nigh-illiteracy, the Kid is fervently religious, singing a hymn at the mother's graveside, and being the first to begin to link his trio, the mysterious appearance of a shooting star, and the child in the manger to the Three Magi. Pete, for his part, reveals a remarkably caring, and conscienious side to the bandit, looking after the mother during giving birth, and being the primary carer for the child after her death. For his part, it is truly Bob who goes through a slow, but notable softening, as the trio set back out to take the child to safety.

This, though, comes at a high cost-the trio are now running dangerously low on water, and with the Kid now increasingly delirous from his injury, so he eventually succumbs to his wounds on the salt-flats, the remaining duo carrying on into the foothills around it-yet, it is not the mawkish sentiment that marks the scene out, but its starkness, two men giving the last rites to their friend and carrying on into the punishing sun, carrying their precious cargo. Again, though, their journey takes its toll, and now essentially out of water, it is Pete that breaks his leg, and cannot carry on, requesting Bob's gun to protect himself. A single shot soon rings out, and Bob trudges on. Entering a cave, and seemingly at the end of his energy, Bob sinks to his knees, tossing the bible that he's carried since leaving camp, aside, and seemingly gives up.

It is here that the film finally explores its sense of faith, the wind flickering the fallen bible open to reveal a page about Jerusalem. Getting back to his feet, spectral forms of Pete and the Kid reappearing to urge their friend on, to complete his vow to the child's mother, and, finally, Bob has a stroke of luck, finding a mule and its colt-an explict biblical invocation, and reaches New Jerusalem to collapse in front of Sweet, who arrests him. However, despite vengefully hunting Bob for much of the film-driven by his mistaken belief that the bandits were the ones to kill his wife and poison the water-so Sweet and Bob grow close, and, when Bob refuses to hand over full custody of the boy to Sweet and his wife, so the judge commutes the sentence handed down to a single year, and the film ends with Bob leaving for prison, not in disgrace, but as a hero.

3 Godfathers is not a perfect film. It's a charming, if lightweight version of the story, and one superceded by, and palely imitating, better, rawer versions of this film. It is a warm, beautifully shot shadow of what it could be, Ford's usually razorsharp direction left in the middle of a homage to a man, and a film lost to time. And yet, it is undeniably, one of the best Christmas-themed Westerns ever made, a smartly retold story of the Three Wise Men and the child in the manger, and, like few films like it, manages to match the religious elements of the season with a well-paced, and often charming tale of three desperados seeking redemption in saving the life of a child.

Rating: Recommended

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