The Searchers (1956)

The Searchers is an American western first released in 1956, directed by John Ford.  The film stars John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond and Natalie Wood.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


In 1868, Ethan Edwards returns to his brother, Aaron, who lives on a frontier farmstead in northern Texas with his wife Martha and their three young children: Ben, Lucy and Debbie.  The farm is also home to Martin Pawley, who was adopted by Aaron after having been rescued as a boy from Indians by Ethan.  Aaaron hasn’t seen his brother for years, not since he fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and rumour has it that he has been up to no good.  The next day, Ethan, Martin and Brad Jorgensen, Lucy’s fiancé, are lured away from the farmstead by Comanche Indians.  On their return, they find the farm in flames.  Aaron, Martha and Ben all dead and Lucy and Debbie are missing.  Ranger Captain Clayton leads a party to look for the missing girls who, it is assumed, have been abducted by the Comanches.  When Ethan reveals that he has found Lucy’s dead body, Brad makes a solo attack on the Comanches and is killed.  In a search that will last many years,  Ethan and Martin continue looking for Debbie, but for different reasons.  Whilst Martin wants to save his half-sister, Ethan has resolved to kill her since, in his eyes, it is better to be dead than to live as a squaw...

The most highly regarded of all John Ford’s great westerns is also one of the director’s most subversive, since it confronts the issue of racism, specifically the ingrained hatred of Anglo-Americans towards Native Americans, head on.  When the film was made, racism was a hot topic in the United States, with civil rights politics increasing tensions between different racial groupings.  The Searchers may not handle the issue with much subtlety but, to its credit, it is the first film that shows racial hatred as the primary motivating force in the white man’s determination to exterminate the Native Americans.  In no small way it helped to change public attitudes on the race issue, mainly by encouraging other influential artists and commentators to continue reminding Americans of their shameful history and of the need to make amends.  

The Searchers is also technically John Ford’s most ambitious film, and the one of his films that can legitimately be called an epic.  The stunning panoramas, mostly shot in Ford’s beloved Monument Valley, the sprawling narrative and the underlying political subtext all contribute to this being the director’s masterpiece, a complex and compelling western that is ambiguous, poignant and highly poetic.  The film would be unbearably bleak were it not for some inspired moments of comedy which offer a much-needed relief from the tense, doom-laden drama.

In a surprisingly antipathetic role, John Wayne gives one of his better performances, one that paints the traditional western hero with a great sense of irony, suggesting that his courage and resolve may be the product of less noble motivating forces than raw heroism.  Unlike most westerns, which tend to glamorise the settlers and portray the Indians as faceless savages, The Searchers is a film that strives for historical accuracy.  It laid the groundwork for the modern westerns which rejected the old myths and showed us the grim truth of how the west was really won.

© James Travers 2009

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