John Ford night, and a documentary

Tonight's lineup on TCM is a night of movies directed by John Ford, some of which I've already mentioned before, starting with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance at 8:00 PM. But I mention the night for two reasons. First is that there's a new-to-TCM documentary on, John Ford: The Man Who Invented America, overnight at 1:15 AM. I haven't seen the documentary, but for some reason I get the same sort of vibe that I had after watching the documentary on James Stewart and Robert Mitchum that TCM ran at the beginning of the year, which while nice to see was nothing particularly noteworthy.

Just before the documentary, there's The Battle of Midway at 12:45 AM. This is one of the movies Ford made during his time in the military in World War II, taking actual footage from the battle to make a two-reel short about one of the decisive battles in the Pacific theater of World War II. No CGI here unlike more recent movies about the battle; of course they didn't have computers in those days to do CGI.