Alongside his work as a teacher and author of several books on film history and monographs on specific authors (including John Ford - The Man and His Movies and The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini), Tag Gallagher is also a prolific director of video essays. In these film analyses in which he addresses specific themes or sequences of a film or author in audiovisual form, Ford is the name most often and most excellently treated, but his notable essays on Preminger, Ophüls, and Sternberg are also worth mentioning, among others. In his introduction to John Ford, Gallagher goes through some of the essential elements of the director's life and work, based on selected moments from his filmography