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The Searchers (1956)
The Searchers (1956) is considered by many to be a true American
masterpiece of filmmaking, and the best, most influential, and
perhaps most-admired film of director John Ford. It was his
115th feature film, and he was already a four-time Best Director
Oscar winner (The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940),
How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952)) - all
for his pictures of social comment rather than his
quintessential westerns. The film's themes included racism,
individuality, the American character, and the opposition
between civilization (exemplified by homes, caves, and other
domestic interiors) and the untamed frontier wilderness.
With dazzling on-location, VistaVision photography (including
the stunning red sandstone rock formations of Monument Valley)
by Winton C. Hoch in Ford's most beloved locale, the film
handsomely captures the beauty and isolating danger of the
frontier. However, at its time, the sophisticated, modern,
visually-gorgeous film was unappreciated, misunderstood, and
unrecognized by critics. It did not receive a single Academy
Award nomination. The film's producer was C.V. Whitney - a
descendant of Eli Whitney, who was a pioneer in the mass
production of muskets in the first firearms assembly factory in
New Haven, CT.
The film's screenplay was adapted by Frank S. Nugent (director
Ford's son-in-law) from Alan Le May's 1954 novel of the same
name, that was first serialized as a short story in late fall
1954 issues of the Saturday Evening Post, and first titled The
Avenging Texans. Various similarities existed between the film's
script and an actual Comanche kidnapping of a young white girl
in Texas in 1936.
Ten to fifteen years after the film's debut, and after
reassessing it as a cinematic milestone, a generation of "New
Hollywood" film directors, French film critics and others,
including Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Steven Spielberg, John
Milius, Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, and George Lucas, praised
the film. They traced their own fascination with film to this
mythic John Ford western, and in reverence, reflected his work
in their own films (e.g., Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), Who's
That Knocking at My Door? (1968), and Mean Streets (1973),
Lucas' Star Wars (1977), Spielberg's Close Encounters of the
Third Kind (1977), Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West
(1969), and Schrader's Hardcore (1979)). Even rock musician
Buddy Holly wrote a song based on John Wayne's trademark line:
"That'll Be The Day," popularized by the Beatles.
The Searchers tells the emotionally complex story of a perilous,
hate-ridden quest and Homeric-style odyssey of self-discovery
after a Comanche massacre, while also exploring the themes of
racial prejudice and sexism. Its meandering tale examines the
inner psychological turmoil of a fiercely independent, crusading
man obsessed with revenge and hatred, who searches for his two
nieces (Pippa Scott and Natalie Wood) among the "savages" over a
five-year period. The film's major tagline echoed the search:
"he had to find her...he had to find her."
John Wayne, the "Duke," had already played many major roles in
numerous westerns in his career, including The Big Trail (1930),
The Spoilers (1942), Red River (1948), The Three Godfathers
(1948), and The Fighting Kentuckian (1949), and had appeared in
five previous Ford westerns, including: Stagecoach (1939), Fort
Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande
(1950), and Hondo (1953). In this film, his first anti-heroic
role, he was a bigot and racist - a tragic, lonely,
morally-ambiguous figure perenially doomed to be an outsider. It
was a role that the actor often described as his favorite. It is
commonly regarded as Wayne's finest-acted performance - and his
ninth starring role in a Ford film. [Wayne's other Ford films,
four non-westerns, included: The Wings of Eagles (1957), The
Quiet Man (1952), They Were Expendable (1945), and The Long
Voyage Home (1940).]
The opening credits (portrayed in a Playbill fontface) are
displayed before a backdrop of an adobe brick wall. The words of
the romantic Stan Jones ballad (sung by The Sons of the
Pioneers) that play during the credits, What Makes a Man to
Wander?, define the central theme of the film - one man's
wanderings and obsessive search:
What makes a man to wander?
What makes a man to roam?
What makes a man leave bed and board
And turn his back on home?
Ride away, ride away, ride away.
The screen goes black and a title appears: "Texas 1868." The
film begins with a frontier cabin door opening onto the
wilderness. [The scene presents the visual motif of the framed
doorway and threshold between the two worlds. The interior area
in the cabin represents civilized values and the settled family.
The brilliant, glaring, sunny outdoor area represents the savage
and threatening land of the western frontier loner.] The black
silhouette of a frontier woman moves from the darkness, with a
forward-tracking camera, through the door to the brightly sunlit
wilderness outside through which Monument Valley is seen. Moving
excitedly to the porch, she notices a man approaching - in the
center of the frame - who slowly rides in from the desert in a
mythic entrance - the man is framed between two distant buttes.
[This opening scene is symmetrical to the last one in the film,
except that the character in the doorway is different.]
After several years of a mysterious absence following the Civil
War, loner and war veteran Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) suddenly
appears with no explanation (where has he been?), returning on
horseback to his estranged brother Aaron Edwards' family, living
on a solitary, Texas frontier farm.
All the members of the Edwards family walk to positions on the
porch to watch him approach, first Aaron's radiant wife Martha
(Dorothy Jordan, the wife of film producer Merian C. Cooper) who
in a mid-closeup shot raises her left hand against her forehead
to shield her eyes from the sun. Then Aaron (Walter Coy) comes
out and steps down from the porch, asking: "Ethan?" Martha
doesn't acknowledge what her husband has said. Then, all their
children take places on the porch and look out - their two
daughters (Ethan's nieces): teenaged, full-skirted Lucy (Pippa
Scott) and young 10 year old Debbie (Lana Wood, younger sister
of co-star Natalie Wood) with the family dog, and their teenaged
son Ben (Robert Lyden) who carries wood. The camera cuts back
and forth between views of Ethan and the expectant faces of the
waiting family. [A folded Navajo blanket on a hitching post in
front of Debbie moves to a hitching post in front of the house,
and then disappears!] Lucy tells her brother Ben: "That's your
Uncle Ethan."
[As Ethan arrives home, the soundtrack is playing Lorena, a
favorite song of Civil War soldiers from both the North and
South - and a reminder of the lost love they left at home during
wartime - its placement at this point in the film (and
repeatedly at key points) is doubly symbolic given the context
in the film and the unacknowledged, frustrated relationship
between Ethan and Aaron's wife Martha.]
His face hidden by the low, broad brim of his black hat, Ethan
dismounts and wordlessly shakes hands with his brother Aaron.
Dusty from travel, he wears blue, yellow-striped cavalry
britches. His faded, gray Confederate military cape/over-cloak
reveals a red sergeant's chevron, and his saber hangs at his
side in its scabbard. His sister-in-law, Martha greets him:
"Welcome home, Ethan." Then, he kisses Martha on the forehead -
she closes her eyes during the reverential kiss. [It is obvious
that they have an unspoken, deep and unfulfilled mutual love for
each other, although it has long been suppressed and only hinted
at. Has he returned home to express his love in the open, and
finally settle down?] The children join in the greeting. Martha
swirls around in front of the door and enters backwards, drawing
him also into the homesteader's cabin.
Having been gone for so long, Ethan mistakes the younger
daughter Debbie for Lucy. As he lifts her high into the air
above his head [an important gesture that Ethan repeats in the
film's climax], she tells him: "I'm Deborah. There's Lucy over
there." After Ethan gives Ben his war saber, Aaron asks about
his brother's whereabouts, but is given an evasive answer:
Aaron: How was California?
Ethan: California? How should I know?...No, I ain't been to
California. I don't intend to go either.
Martha takes Ethan's coat, folds it, and puts it in her
bedroom's hope chest, while Ethan watches. At Ethan's side,
Aaron - aware of their semi-secret love - peacefully offers a
handshake and welcome.
During supper, Aaron's adopted son, part-Cherokee (one-eighth)
Martin "Marty" Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), an orphan saved years
earlier by Ethan from an Indian slaughter and raised by the
family, rides a horse bareback (Indian-style), leaps off his
horse, and bursts into the doorway [another framed doorway
motif, linking the two characters who both rode toward an open
door for their entrance] to meet Ethan, his uncle. A prejudiced
Indian hater, Ethan doesn't acknowledge him as a true relative
but as a mixed-blooded, estranged, adopted nephew. Ethan treats
him in an intolerant, harsh, racist and insulting manner because
of his Indian blood (one-eighth Cherokee):
I could mistake you for a half-breed.
After supper in his first evening home with Aaron's family,
Ethan sits in the rocking chair facing the fire. Ethan's
hardness and guarded, mysterious background reflect his
inability to accept or understand society, or to embrace family
life for himself. When Aaron's son asks about Ethan's
experiences as a Confederate soldier three years earlier, Ethan
doesn't respond:
Ben: Uncle Ethan, will you tell us about the war?
Aaron: The war ended three years ago, boy.
Ben: It did? (To Ethan) So why didn't you come home before now?
His presence in the Edwards family potentially promotes discord,
and threatens to destroy its stability. Oblivious to the
unspoken overtones already established, the children are excited
to see Ethan and gather around him as he gives away mementos of
his past to his brother's children. Debbie tells her Uncle Ethan
that Lucy is wearing the gold locket that he gave her when she
was a little girl, and she would like one too: "...I wouldn't
care if you gave me a gold locket if it made my neck green or
not." Ethan gives her his medal over Martha's protests, telling
her: "Oh, let her have it. It doesn't amount to much."
Martha is a strong force in the family - the essence of
not-giving up or weakening. Ethan is furious over Aaron's remark
that he seemed anxious to leave the harsh farming existence
before the war, but stayed around - implying that it was on
account of his yearning for Martha [Ethan allowed Martha, the
woman he loved, to marry his brother - and she still continues
to love him]:
Aaron: (referring to Martha) ...she just wouldn't let a man
quit. Ethan, I saw it in you before the war. You wanted to clear
out. You stayed beyond any real reason. Why?
Martha: (interrupting so that the question can remain
unanswered) Aaron! Please!
Ethan: (jumping out of the rocker and questioning his brother)
You askin' me to clear out now?
Expressing his dependence on no-one, Ethan takes out
freshly-minted Yankee dollars and tells Aaron: "I expect to pay
my way." Aaron's incredulous reaction at the many freshly-minted
double eagles suggests that Ethan may be a wanted man for
robbing some Yankee banks during the war, or he may have
received the money from another non-US government. (Is the law
after him?) Ethan retorts when asked about the brand-new coins:
"So?" Later that night before bedtime, Ethan is left alone on
the porch with only the dog for company and a sad, reflective
look on his face. As he turns back to look into the door frame
of the house, he sees Aaron taking Martha to their bedroom and
closing their door for the night. [The two doorways make him an
outsider to society and to his intimate union with her as well.]
During breakfast the next morning, their Norwegian neighbor Mr.
Lars Jorgensen (John Qualen), and Captain / Reverend Samuel
Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond), a garrulous preacher and Texas
Ranger, arrive with a posse of local folks:
a slightly eccentric old Indian scout Mose Harper (Hank Worden)
rancher Nesby (William Steele)
Lars' son Brad Jorgensen (Harry Carey, Jr., son of Harry Carey,
Sr., a famous silent era cowboy star)
Charlie McCorry (Ken Curtis, director Ford's son-in-law, who
later played the role of Festus in the western TV series
Gunsmoke)
The Reverend greets Martha as "Sister Edwards." They are
concerned about Comanche marauders and Indian uprisings. Cattle
rustlers (or Indians) have stolen some cattle from the Lars
Jorgensen ranch nearby, and they want to hunt for them. Lars
comically swears: "Next time, I raise pigs, by golly. You never
hear anyone runnin' off pigs I bet you." Sitting down to
breakfast and coffee, he asks young Debbie: "You been baptised
yet?" Aaron and Marty are deputized to help the Captain and the
Texas Rangers find the cattle thieves.
During the deputy oath, Ethan walks into the scene from the
background. Clayton greets "the prodigal brother" and wonders
about Ethan's whereabouts following the Civil War and the
South's surrender three years earlier. Still linked by his oath
of loyalty to the Confederacy, Ethan claims he never
relinquished his Confederate cloak or saber after the surrender:
Clayton: Well, the prodigal brother. When did you get back? I
ain't seen you since the surrender. Come to think of it, I
didn't see you at the surrender.
Ethan: (I) don't believe in surrenders. No, I still got my
saber, Reverend. Didn't turn it into no ploughshare neither.
Sitting in the family's rocking chair, Mose Harper speculates on
the rustlers of the cattle: "The Indians did it, Mrs. Edwards.
Caddos or Kiowas. Ol' Mose knows. Yes, sir." Ethan insists that
Aaron stay at the homestead, while he takes his place: "Stay
close, Aaron. It might be, this is rustlers. Might be that this
dodderin' old idiot (pointing to Mose Harper) ain't so far
wrong. Could be Comanche." Ethan doesn't want to take an oath to
be deputized, claiming it wouldn't be legal anyway. Clayton
questions: "You wanted for a crime, Ethan?" Martha interrupts
the discussion to deflect attention. Ethan appears to be acting
outside the law and may be a fugitive from the law:
Ethan: Are you askin' me as a Captain or a preacher, Sam?
Clayton: I'm askin' you as a Ranger of the sovereign state of
Texas.
Ethan: You got a warrant?
Clayton: You fit a lot of descriptions.
Ethan never rejoined the Union after Lee surrendered to Grant:
I figure a man's only good for one oath at a time. I took mine
to the Confederate States of America.
As Mose Harper leaves the cabin, he thanks Martha for using the
rocker: "Grateful to the hospitality of your rocking chair,
Ma'am." Ben and Debbie open the front door [a framing device],
catching Brad Jorgensen and Lucy Edwards, two sweethearts,
hugging each other.
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