The Long Voyage Home

During World War II, the crew of the tramp steamer Glencairn enjoys a final night of carousing in the West Indies before shipping out to pick up a load of dynamite in Baltimore. After stowing the explosives in Baltimore, the crew is on edge, fearful that rough seas might detonate their volatile cargo. They're also concerned about the increasingly isolated Smitty, who they believe may be signaling the Nazis. The favorite film of the playwright O'Neill, who ran it repeatedly, and certainly among the director's best.. While both Ford and the ensemble cast turn in magnificent work, the most notable contribution to the film is made by legendary cinematographer Gregg Toland, experimented with a new type of deep-focus photography.
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Lighting, as a matter of fact, is my strong point. I can take a thoroughly mediocre bit of acting, and build points of shadow around a ray of strong light centered on the principals, and finish with something plausible anyway thats my one boast. If youll watch in any of my pictures youll see the trick I use for special effect: While the stars are running through their lines a diffused glow settles over the background assemblage, which at the same time begins to murmur and then to talk intelligibly. And the louder the voices, the stronger the glow, until the main actors are merely part of a group and the general realism is achieved. It always works. Good technique is to let a spot
follow a bit player with an important line or two of dialogue across a shadowed set until his part of the scene is finished too.
</i>John Ford talking with Howard Sharpe, 1936