Only the Lindsay Anderson-Gavin Lambert generation of Sequence and Sight and Sound kept Ford’s reputation alive in the period beginning with They Were Expendable in 1945 and ending with The Sun Shines Bright in 1954. The British critics could appreciate Ford for the flowering of his personal style at a time when the rest of the world (this critic included) were overrating Carol Reed and David Lean for the efficient, impersonal technicians that they were. Finally, the New Critics in London and Paris rediscovered Ford after he had been abandoned even by the Sequence-Sight and Sound generation. The last champions of John Ford have now gathered around Seven Women as a beacon of personal cinema. The late Andre Bazin damaged Ford’s reputation with New Critics by describing Ford’s technique as a hangover scenario-dominated focus in thirties.

Andrew Sarris, The American cinema: directors and directions, 1929-1968, New York, 1968