Year: 1956
Director: John Ford
New Year – so rather than tackle anything new it’s another film from the Sight and Sound 2022 critics poll of the best films of all time. If Meshes of the Afternoon, a 15 min black and white silent short, was one of the most obscure then the film one spot above it in 15th place, The Searchers, is one of the most familiar. John Ford’s 1956 Western stands in that period where the genre was in transition, from the straightforward studio films with its reliable cast of heroes and villains to the cynical and nihilistic spaghetti westerns of the sixties.
John Wayne made a career playing the cowboy hero, and provides a magnetic central focus as an ex-confederate soldier who returns to the home of his brother. The opening action sees the menfolk lured away from the house by Native Americans, enabling another Comanche raiding party to loot, kill and most significantly kidnap Wayne’s two young nieces. Wayne and the adopted brother of the family Martin spend the entire rest of the film looking for these missing girls.
No need to rehash the plot further but instead talk about what Ford does in the film. Firstly, Wayne’s character is almost all the human interest and character complexity of the film. What engages the viewer is what Ford doesn’t allow the character to do. Though he’s often seen as possessing skills and knowledge others don’t have, he doesn’t save Lucy’s fiance Brad from a futile death. He doesn’t seem to care about the fate of the hostages in the first opportunity to attack the Comanches. He doesn’t write home, unlike Martin. And above all he would rather see his younger niece Debbie dead once he realises she has grown up as a Comanche. The two scenes in which Ethan tries to kill his niece are quite extraordinary, even if the second ends with Ford delivering a modicum of happy ending. Even this is undercut in the famous final doorway-framed shot in which Ethan walks away – a man whose addiction to violence has exiled him from society.
What drives Ethan, and makes the film speak still to audiences today, is the cycle of violence. We never know what has spurred the initial Comanche attack, but time and time again we see a never-ending cycle of revenge and retribution moving between the Comanche and the whites, causing just more death and destruction. Nothing is settled. The army are no better than anyone else – seen in the depiction of their demolition of the Comanche camp. The Texas Rangers are a self-appointed militia. Civilians aren’t spared on either side, from Ethan’s family in the homestead to Martin’s Comanche wife.
Ethan’s view of Debbie brings to the surface the racism of the frontier: the Native Americans are seen by all the white characters bar Martin (one-eighth Cherokee himself) as savages, and the white settlers as quick to resort to indiscriminate slaughter as their antagonists. To some extent the bleakness of Ethan’s narrative is contrasted with Martin. His part in the quest drives him to the same places as Ethan – his return to interrupt Laurie’s marriage ends in violence too, but as it’s between whites it’s fists and played for laughs. At the end he is redeemed, having not just saved Debbie with Ethan, but prevented Ethan from killing her.
The film was famously shot in Monument Valley despite being set in Texas, and the landscapes are both beautiful and bleak. It’s an unending vista of rock, sky and sand, always immaculately framed – one shot where a party of riders are framed on the skyline is breath-taking. Interiors by contrast are very studio-bound, and several fights end up with the classic all-too-easily broken chairs.
Marvel at how much ambiguity, darkness and complexity Ford could wring out of a big-budget studio picture. Like many films at the top of the list, its influence on subsequent generations of film-makers is clear to see. The burning homestead re-appears on Tattooine, the obsessive quest in Taxi Driver, and much of the film wholesale in Paris, Texas to name but three. If you’ve watched it caught up in the story and visuals I’d wholeheartedly recommend a re-watch.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Well Westerns…
On reflection it’s got great appeal because you can practically hear Ford having the debate with himself ‘Can carry on just showing all the whites as heroes and all the Native Americans as savages’. ‘Am I going to still show that killing people solves problems’ . The revisionist Western, that would culminate in Leone’s masterpiece Once Upon A Time In The West (in my top ten films ever, and a soundtrack in my top five) a decade later was under way.
Nice write up. An absolute masterpiece and probably my favourite Western.
Haven’t seen it in a while, but isn’t there the hint of a romantic relationship between Ethan and his brother’s wife. Could his “niece” actually be his daughter?
I think it’s hinted at as unrequited.
A few thoughts.
It’s loosely based on a true story, in turn a novel by Alan LeMay. If you’re interested in the background, I’d recommend Glenn Frankel’s excellent” The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend” and/or Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon, about Quanah Parker.
That to one side, it’s one of my favorite movies. It looks beautiful, and the last scene, with Wayne framed in the doorway, is iconic.
With regard to the attitudes to Native Americans, it’s interesting comparing Edward’s attitudes to them with Nathan Brittles in “She wore a Yellow Ribbon’. It is also worth bearing in mind that white captives of Native Americans generally went one of two ways: some refused to leave the Native American community. Others were treated horrendously
For me, it’s not the best Western (that’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, closely followed by The Outlaw Josey Wales), but it’s up there, and it is one of the best-looking ones.
It also proved to me that John Wayne could really act. He often seemed like a film star rather than an actor, who was cast for his big presence – “look, it’s John Wayne!” – rather than his ability to emote (the same applies to Arnold Schwarzenegger – he wasn’t going to win an Oscar, but he could really carry a film). But John Ford knew how to get the best out of JW, and some of his scenes in The Searchers are really moving (when he tells Debbie it’s time to come home, the final scenes in the homestead, etc.).
Thanks for the review, which has made me want to watch it again.
I hoped it would be the WYWITRHMs……
Needles and pins-ah.
Newton’s Fourth Law:
John Wayne film = Sunday afternoon on the sofa