The Searchers 1956 Wow

Could not believe that was Festus Hagen in there.

 

The love story between Ethan and Martha. It's in, what, only one or two scenes and you feel the whole backstory. Maybe that's why Ethan stays away...

 

You could write an entire thesis on that ending. I always thought Ethan was viewed as a necessary evil by Martha and in some ways, the way he feels about the indians, savage and wild and uncivilized, is exactly how Martha feels about Ethan. In the end, standing in that doorway, he realizes that he feels hemmed in by even the prospect of civilization and that he does not belong there. It's tragic because you feel for Ethan, but it can't be any other way. That's just one of many interpretations I'm sure and I'm no film scholar. Just a doof with a DVD player.

 

That is a great film. I don't generally like Westerns, but this would be one of five or six I really like.

 

Interesting comments. I agree that Ethan isn't someone who can be tied down. But I see some of the desire to be before he walks out the door.

Plus Martha is his brother's wife.

 

I bought my Dad the restored Widescreen VHS version about 25 years ago. I used to use it to loan to people to get the understanding of why widescreen was better than pan&scan. Everyone was impressed.

 

I think that ending shot, it’s like Ethan sees that he’s brought everyone together, they all have someone, but he knows that’s something he’ll never have, and never could have because he knows what he is. The Wild is his partner, and who he returns to.

 

I like "I can't believe I hadn't seen this movie before" posts. Even if you are old and have seen thousands of movies, it happens to all of us (I recently saw Public Enemy for the first time).

If this is your first Ford film, you have some good times ahead. Dozens of his films are on YouTube, including Stagecoach and My Darling Clementine, and the cavalry trilogy gets shown all the time on Grit. I envy folks who get to see those films for the first time.

 

Rio Grande has become a personal favorite. It appears to have been made entirely with just Ford's stock company and everyone has a chance to shine. Not as deep as The Searchers, more a rousing entertainment, but also a commentary on the sacrifices men at war must make. It features one of my favorite Victor McLaglen performances ever too.

Ford has to have been one of the most consistent film makers ever; especially impressive given how prolific he was.

 

Yeah. It's the irony of the Western form. A society built on violent conquest (whether the object of the violence be Indian or white) has no place for that violence any more, or so the myth goes - like the ending of Shane, or Tom Doniphon in Liberty Valance.

 

The Searchers is tied with The Quiet Man for my favorite film of all time. The scorched earth of the first, the bucolic splendor of the second. Ford’s yin and yang.

And, yes he’s a remarkably consistent director. Even his silent pictures are worth a look, particularly Straight Shooting with Harry Carey, who hits that arm-on-elbow pose that Wayne uses in the final shot of The Searchers.

 

John Ford may be the master of endings that give the viewer goosebumps. Thinking of the final scenes of "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", I always get the chills.

 

Are we required to laugh at this?

 

I'm not a fan of John Wayne but he's terrific in this.

 

I don’t generally care for traditional Hollywood westerns and I usually dislike John Wayne, but I liked The Searchers a lot when I saw it a few years ago. The cinematography is gorgeous and you can really tell it was made by a master director. The story was surprisingly mature and the characterization goes much deeper than the usual John Wayne tough guy swagger. It’s still subject to some of the tropes of its time, but overall it handles itself with much more grace and nuance than you’d expect from a John Wayne western.

 

Of course Wayne's repeated boast of "That'll Be The Day" was made IMMORTAL by Buddy Holly.

Certain themes seem to reappear in Wayne's films. We fear he will kill Natalie Wood....some theorize that she may have really been his daughter with Martha.

In "The Shepherd Of The Hills" Wayne returns to his home town to kill his father who he blames for his mother's death.

In "Red River" Wayne vows to kill Montgomery Clift who he has loved and raised like a son.

The HERO in Western Mythology must always be a LONER as Wayne is again at the conclusion of "The Searchers".

A recurring theme in Wayne's films is that if you love someone you "step aside" so she can be with someone who will "make her happy". Also that the task of keeping the peace and being the Marshall, Sheriff or Texas Ranger was a job for a single man....not a married man with a wife and children to provide for. Another Wayne axiom was that duty and patriotism came before personal happiness.

This is why Wayne found "High Noon" so objectionable. The job of the Marshall was to protect his town; whether anyone helps him or not. That the Marshall wanted to marry and start a family served only as a hindrance to him doing his sworn duty.

 

I don'rt care for most of Wayne's non-Ford and non-Hawks films, but I make exceptions for The Shootist, True Grit (though I prefer the recent version), The Angel and the Badman and Hondo.

The Searchers is, of course, a version of that old 'American' literary genre, The Captivity Narrative, and not Ford's only take on it - though it's certainly the better film. Usually, of course, it's captivity by the Indians, but not always. See Unforgiven or Flaming Star, for example. Now, of course, you get captured by aliens...

 

Couldn’t find the clip, but the shot where John Wayne reacts to the ‘traumatized’ girl in the settlement cabin is incredible.

And, if you want another JW cry, watch The Cowboys.

 

I have to mention Ward Bond in this discussion. Plays a memorable role in this movie (Rev. Capt. Clayton) and in the Quiet Man. He appears in 7 films in the AFI 100 best films list. Never the Star of a movie but always had a great role, especially in John Ford productions.

 

Yes, one of my film school professors made a good case that The Searchers was a rare case where John Wayne had to actually act and not be the same heroic character he normally was. The Shootist was another.

 

I think it's easy to dump on JW's acting ability. Yes he played the same character over and over and yes, toward the end, he was just meandering through the same movie over and over again too (and often wearing the same clothes!), but he made a lot of interesting movies where he did a great job. Fort Apache, Stagecoach, Rio Grande, Rio Bravo, Angel and the Bad Man, Hondo, True Grit, The Cowboys. You can make a pretty long list of the hits as well as the misses and given his long career, that is impressive. Each to their own of course, but I think the Duke gets a bit of a bad rap in this regard.

 

As a follow up I watched the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, really enjoyed that also, but it’s not as epic and sweeping as Searchers, still darn good though!

 

Another film Wayne wanted to make at the same time as "The Searchers" was "Seven Men From Now" which was produced by his own company Batjac. It would have been the third teaming of Wayne and Gail Russell who starred so memorably with him in "The Angel & The Bad Man" & "The Wake Of The Red Witch". His commitment to "The Searchers" forced Wayne to bow out and he asked his friend Randolph Scott to step in. Thus began the partnership of Scott and director Budd Boetticher which resulted in the 7 films known as the Ranown cycle.

 

I love that movie so much it's hard to imagine anyone but Randolph Scott in the role. He and Budd made movies very similar to those of Stewart and Mann, where the good guy had a little shade to him; a little ambiguity. It would have been interesting to see if Duke could have pulled something like that off. I'm sure he would have made it interesting though. Especially true because it would be easy to interpret Lee Marvin's character as a young Liberty Valance.