Towards the end of 1947 in the second number of Sequence there appeared a study of some of the films of the Hollywood director John Ford. Although the author did not so much as mention Ford's amusing and accomplished comedy Passport to Fame … and though he referred to Ford as a "great" director, this was on the whole a fair survey. In subsequent numbers of Sequence Ford's films were criticised, certainly, but in terms that suggest that Homer had nodded…. It was not that the writers in Sequence were blind to the faults in Ford's films: it was rather that, good or bad, these were treated not as the ephemeral entertainments of a commercial director but as lofty communications from a great artist who sometimes had lapses. By the time the Sequence office had moved over to the B.F.I. the tone of lyrical adulation had become more...