Fort Apache

Fort Apache (1948) is John Ford's cavalry western you can watch online on iFILM, with John Wayne and Henry Fonda as two officers who couldn't disagree more about what war with the Apache actually means. Ford shot it in Monument Valley, the landscape he'd already made his own, and cast a post-child-stardom Shirley Temple in a fully adult role.

Colonel Thursday (Fonda) arrives at the remote fort hungry for glory and contemptuous of everything he finds there — the dusty outpost, his rough-edged men, the Apache chief Cochise, and especially Captain York (Wayne), who argues for negotiation. Thursday's plan involves luring Cochise back across the Mexican border against all advice and riding straight into terrain where cavalry tactics become a death sentence.

Ford wasn't simply making an adventure. Thursday dies because his arrogance demands it — but the film ends with his portrait on the wall and York reciting the legend for a reporter. That closing scene is one of Hollywood's earliest self-examinations of how myth swallows facts, and it still lands. Stream Fort Apache (1948) online on iFILM.