Chords of Mystic Memory: Spielberg’s Homage to Ford in Saving Private Ryan

By Nicholas Stix

When one thinks of the phrase, "chords of mystic memory," one thinks first of Mr. Lincoln, and then of music.

Those of us of a certain age were taught American folk songs very young, in school, at sleepaway camp, movie theaters (“follow the bouncing ball”), on tv, and by our parents.

Movies, even ballets, were full of such music. John Ford (1894-1973) movies were full of folk songs, like “Red River Valley,” even in his World War II classic, They were Expendable (1945).

In Hugo Friedhofer’s (1901-1981) at times emotionally overwhelming score to the greatest picture ever made, combat veteran William Wyler’s (1902-1981) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Friedhofer took a theme from Aaron Copland’s (1900-1990) ballet score, Billy the Kid (1938), signifying the hectic pace of town, as opposed to ranch life, and slowed it down, to express the romantic and domestic hopes of disabled, returning combat veteran Homer Parrish’s fiancée, his next door neighbor Wilma. (“Wilma’s Theme” runs from 0:40-2:36 here).

Over 40 years later, when the at times stunning dramatic series China Beach (1988-1991), about the Vietnam War alternated, beginning with its third season, between showing veterans during the war, and them coping with civilian life many years later, composer-actor John Rubinstein took Copland’s theme and alternated it with the theme Rubinstein had written for the show. The veterans’ time “in country” had been the best years of their lives. How many people would have caught that? It was a wonderful, historical and spiritual treat for the few who did.

However, there are other such “chords” of mystic memory, which are images or words.

Ford and his greatest student, John Wayne (1907-1979), understood that perfectly.

At the end of Ford’s masterpiece of masterpieces, The Searchers (1956), Wayne, as Indian-killer Ethan Edwards, turns and faces the camera and the house of his late mother, brother, sister-in-law (the secret love of his life), and niece and nephew, the women gang-raped and all of them slaughtered by the Comanche at different times, and grabs the crook of his left arm with his right hand. It was a sign that Wayne’s childhood movie idol, the late Harry Carey (1878-1947), sometimes made. It stood for rectitude. Wayne did that for Carey’s widow, Olive (1896-1988), who was silently standing off-camera, tears flowing down her cheeks; for Harry Carey fans everywhere; and for everyone else watching the picture.

In Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), about the Revolutionary War, as Gil Martin (Henry Fonda, 1905-1982) is marching off to war, his wife, Lana (Claudette Colbert 1903-1996) stands atop bales of hay, watching him, and slumps onto her side.

That image would make quite the impression on Steven Spielberg (1946-). Circa 1962, Ford would give the teenaged Spielberg a brief, private audience.

Thirty-six years later, when Spielberg made his own masterpiece of masterpieces, Saving Private Ryan (1998), there is a seven-and-a-half minute sequence which is as stunning as anything I’ve ever seen on the screen.

We see, through DoP Janusz Kaminski’s (1959-) lens, a dim office at the War Department, just after D-Day, full of women typing condolence letters to the families of servicemen who had fallen in battle (though not just at Normandy). Everything is perfect—the period dresses, the manual typewriters, the office furniture, the uniforms worn by the wounded officers who are their supervisors, including retired Marine and technical advisor, Capt. Dale Dye (1944-, though wearing an Army uniform), with one uniform arm pinned back, thanks to costume designer Joanna Johnston and set decorator Lisa Dean Kavanaugh.

The head secretary sees a disturbing repetition. Three of the KIA letters are for young men named Ryan, from the same Iowa farm family. She takes the letters to her supervisor, who takes them up the line. The officers determine that a fourth Ryan brother had parachuted in with the 101st Airborne, and is missing in action somewhere in Normandy.

The officers go all the way to the top: Five-star General of the Army, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, George C. Marshall (1880-1959).

Gen. Marshall retrieves one of the most famous letters in American history, a condolence note to a Mrs. Bixby in Boston, who had lost five sons in battle. At first, Gen. Marshall reads the letter off the page, but about halfway through, he closes his eyes and recites it by heart. He has read this letter many times.

“Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

“Abraham Lincoln”

That was Harve Presnell (1933-2009), as Gen. Marshall.

Gen. Marshall declares that the fourth Ryan boy is still alive, and orders his subordinates find and rescue him.

And all this plays out to John Williams’ (1932-) mournful score.

But that wasn’t even Spielberg’s homage to Ford!

My late Mom (1930-2022) liked to say “genius is infinite attention to detail.”

Spielberg’s homage lasted only a few seconds, before the scene with Gen. Marshall.

As an Army automobile drives up to the Ryan farm, with a Catholic chaplain and an officer, Mrs. Ryan (Amanda Boxer) is watching from her kitchen window, as she washes the dishes. That window was perfectly decorated, with four stars for four boys. Just inside the front door, there’s a photo of the four brothers, all in uniform, wearing their helmets, perched atop the family radio.

Immediately, she knows this is terrible news. Even I knew, growing up, from old WWII movies, that “news” for a family, usually in the form of a telegram, was always terrible. (My Great Aunt Rose Goodman got such a telegram, when my cousin, Capt. Howard “Barney O’Goodman,” 25, got it from a Jap sniper on Cape Gloucester, “because he exposed himself to spot the enemy rather than order one of his men to do it.” Every family had its heroes; we were a nation of heroes!)

But this wasn’t some kid on a bicycle, delivering a telegram. It had to be worse than terrible.

Mrs. Ryan staggers out to her porch, and just as the men alight from the official vehicle, slumps onto her left hip.

Commenters at youtube claimed the actress was some sort of “genius.” Actually, she did exactly what Spielberg told her to do—to recreate Claudette Colbert’s pose in Drums Along the Mohawk.

And that’s how a middle-aged man showed his reverence and gratitude to the late master who had once permitted him, as a teenager, into his inner sanctum for a minute or two.