THE SEARCHERS
1956
us Directed by John Ford
This is my number one western movie of all time, I love this film more than any other oater and I'm not alone in that. The film has been hailed as a favourite by Martin Scorsese and has been referenced in films as diverse as Taxi Driver, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
In my opinion it is both John Ford and John Wayne's finest moment.
The plot which sees an Indian
attack in which the only survivor is young Debbie (Natalie Wood) and she is carried off by the Comanches. This kicks off five years of searching for Wayne and his half Indian sidekick played by Jeffrey Hunter.People who claim Wayne always played himself should be forced to watch this movie - his performance of the forever lonely, bitter racist Ethan is absolutely superb. What Wayne does is make Ethan so close to his own self that he doesn't appear to be acting at all. And that's a skill that requires a great depth of performance. Wayne would only give performances comparable to a few other movies.
In fact many people feel that when Wayne later got the Oscar for True Grit that it was really an apology for losing out for this monumental
western.The Searchers is a truly complex movie with Ford admitting, perhaps for the first time, that someone who hates Indians can no longer be the clean cut hero of old. And the use of Monument Valley has never been bettered. When Wayne's character hovers down on his cowering niece at the climax of this movie we are repulsed that he is going to kill her and the final moment when he is redeemed is still as powerful after viewing the movie literally dozens of times.
Another points that makes the Searchers such a masterpiece is its pacing - at times it hurls along and then it seems to grind almost to a halt for the quieter moments and at the end of the quest to find the girl, we, the viewer, feel as if we too have been on that long journey across the West.
THE LEGACY OF THE SEARCHERS
Buddy Holly adopted Wayne's character's catchphrase , That'll be the Day and turned it into a rock and roll standard
British band The Searchers took their name from the movie
George Lucus has said that he tried to mimic shots from the movie for his mega sci-fi hit, Star Wars
Travis Bickle's character in the Taxi Driver was heavily based on that of Wayne's Ethan Edwards.
So is it the best western ever? Well, that's obviously down to personal choice but to my mind it is most definitely the king of oaters, a film without equal. There are scores and scores of other great westerns but for me this will always be the finest. It's got all the western cliches - outlaws, Indians, gunfights, harsh weather but it's also a wonderfully humane film and the first time that John Ford would stray into the realms of revisionism.
Better western that The Searchers..."That'll be the day."
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6 comments:
It might make it even more interesting to know that historians in Texas and elsewhere are fairly certain that the exploits of Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers" were based on the exploits a real person: Britton Johnson ... who was black and a former slave, who went hunting in Indian territory for his wife and two children, and the children of his employer when they were all taken prisoner by Comanche raiders in the Elm Creek Raid. (I wrote about him here http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=34253
and had him make a brief appearance in Book Three of Adelsverein.)
Celia that's interesting - I know of the raid in Young County, Texas. It may have also been based on the 1836 Commanche raid in East Texas in which they snatched 9 year old Cynthia Parker.
Yes, Cynthia Parker's uncle was one of the early Texas Rangers, and searched for her for decades.
Brit Johnson went into Indian Territory three or four times, over a period of about five years: he located his own family, negotiated a ransom, and went back and forth between the Tribes and the families of captives, searching for captives and getting them repatriated. He was a teamster and ranch foreman, and supposed to be a terrifically good shot with a rifle... he is another one of those barely known, but terrific stories.
I'm wincing because I haven't seen this one. I know, bad bad Arkansas Slim.
I vaguely recall seeing the movie once upon a time, but I did read the Reader's Digest condensed version of the book story which I found very well done.
Now I'm going to be looking up this movie classic as I love John Wayne movies.
Arkansas Slim - you are sentanced to be run out of town until you watch this great movie
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