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The Searchers

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The Searchers
File:The Searchers.jpg
Directed byJohn Ford
Written byAlan Le May (novel)
Frank S. Nugent
Produced byC.V. Whitney
StarringJohn Wayne
Jeffrey Hunter
Natalie Wood
CinematographyWinton C. Hoch, ASC
Edited byJack Murray
Music byStan Jones (title song)
Max Steiner
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release dates
March 13, 1956
Running time
119 min.
CountryUSA
LanguageEnglish

The Searchers is a 1956 epic Western film directed by John Ford, which tells the story of Ethan Edwards, a bitter, middle-aged loner and Civil War veteran played by John Wayne, who spends years looking for his abducted niece.

While a modest commercial success upon its 1956 release, The Searchers received no Academy Award nominations and was certainly not regarded by then-contemporary reviewers as a potential classic. In recent years, however, the film's prestige has risen and it is now widely acknowledged as one of the best westerns ever made, being named the Greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008. It also placed 12th on the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the top 100 greatest movies of all time.[1]

In 1989, the United States National Film Registry's first year of selecting films for preservation, The Searchers was one of the twenty-five films to be deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Now a highly influential film, it has inspired other Westerns as well as dramas, science fiction, and even Bollywood films.

Plot

The year is 1868. Ethan returns from the American Civil War, in which he fought for the Confederacy, to his brother's house in rural Texas. No one knows what he's been doing for the past three years (since the war ended), but despite hints that Ethan has been up to no good, no one asks, though the local Ranger Captain, (who is also the local preacher) dourly observes "you fit a lot of descriptions" (on wanted posters); moreover, Ethan has a medal that suggests he has been in Mexico during the period of the Emperor Maximilian. Shortly after his arrival, a Comanche raid leaves his brother and sister-in-law dead, his nephew dead, his two nieces abducted, and the family homestead burned down. With his brother’s adopted son, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who is part Indian, part white, Ethan pursues the Comanche to rescue the girls.

Ethan soon finds the murdered body of the older girl, Lucy, and Lucy's fiance dies in a fruitless attempt to avenge her. Ethan and Martin continue to search for the other girl, Debbie, a search that lasts for five years. During that time, she grows into adolescence and is taken as mate by Scar (Henry Brandon), the chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanche. Scar is presented as the cultural mirror image of Ethan. He hates whites every bit as much as Ethan hates Indians. Once Ethan realizes that Debbie has been mated to Scar, he undergoes a change. He no longer wants to rescue Debbie; he wants her dead, believing that a white woman being a Comanche's "squaw" is worse than death. Martin follows in hopes of stopping Ethan from killing the girl. Eventually Ethan, Martin, and the Texas Rangers find Debbie. Martin kills Scar and Ethan scalps the dead chief. Martin tries to prevent Ethan from killing Debbie, but it is Ethan himself who realizes how close he has come to destroying the last link to his tragic family. Instead of killing Debbie, he lifts her in his arms just as he did when she was a child. Ethan brings Debbie to the safety of friends and then walks away. The film, which opened with a near-identical shot of another doorway, slowly revealing the film's landscape, finishes with a reversal: the film's players enter the darkness within the doorway, and the door closes, just before the end title, leaving Ethan isolated outside where he turns and wanders away from the home and family he can have no part in, wandering back into the desert that defined him.

Production

The Searchers was originally produced by C.V. Whitney, directed by John Ford, and distributed by Warner Brothers. The film starred John Wayne, who was the only actor Ford ever considered for the lead in the movie.

Ford from the onset strove to make a movie unlike any made before it in Hollywood. Wayne had played outlaw characters before (the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach), but never one as driven and borderline psychotic as Ethan Edwards - indeed, Edwards is played as hovering on the verge of a complete breakdown. Jonathan Lethem said of Wayne’s portrayal of Edwards that he was “tormented and tormenting . . . his fury is righteous and ugly, at once, resentment branded as a fetish.”[2] His racism and hatred are so open that they sear the viewer, and Ford intended it so. His own comments make clear he is seeking to portray the racism of white America that led to the genocide practiced against Native Americans.[3]. Lethem also writes of his first look at The Searchers, “Weren't Westerns meant to be simple? The film on the screen is lush, portentous.”.[2]

While the movie was primarily set in the staked plains (Llano Estacado) of Northwest Texas, it was actually filmed in Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah. Additional scenes were filmed in Mexican Hat, Utah, and in Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles.

The film was one of the first shot in the VistaVision widescreen process.

The film stressed the incredible vastness of the fabled Comancheria, including the Staked Plains, Llano Estacado

Real-life inspiration

Several film commentators have suggested that The Searchers was inspired by the 1836 kidnapping of nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker by Comanche warriors who raided her family's home at Fort Parker, Texas.[4] She spent twenty-four years with the Comanches, married a war chief, and had three children, only to be rescued against her will by the Texas Rangers. James W. Parker, Cynthia Ann's uncle, spent much of his life and fortune in what became an obsessive search for his niece, like Ethan Edwards in the film. In addition, the rescue of Cynthia Ann, during a Texas Ranger attack known as the Battle of Pease River, resembles the rescue of Debbie Edwards when the Texas Rangers attack Scar's village.

Parker's story was one of 64 real-life cases of 19th-century child abductions in Texas that author Alan Le May studied while researching the novel on which the film was based. His surviving research notes indicate that the two characters who go in search of a missing girl were inspired by Brit Johnson, an African-American teamster who ransomed his captured wife and children from the Comanches in 1865.[5] Afterward, he made at least three trips to Indian Territory and Kansas relentlessly searching for another kidnapped girl, Millie Durgan (or Durkin), until Kiowa raiders killed him in 1871.[6]

Near the end of the story, Debbie’s apparent willingness to leave Scar’s household with Marty represents a significant departure from most historical models. In real life, abducted children who spent more than a year with the Comanches typically became highly assimilated and did not want to leave their adoptive people.

In the film, Scar’s Comanche group is referred to as the Nawyecka. The more common names for this Comanche division (with whom Cynthia Ann Parker lived) are Nokoni or Nocona.

Some film critics have speculated that the historical model for the cavalry attack on a Comanche village, resulting in Look’s death and the taking of Comanche prisoners to a military post, was the well-known Sand Creek massacre of 1864. The sequence also resembles the 1872 Battle of the North Fork of the Red River, in which the 4th Cavalry captured 124 Comanche women and children and imprisoned them at Fort Concho.

At one point in the story, Ethan Edwards and Martin Pawley receive information about Debbie's whereabouts from a trader named Jeremiah Futterman, who is portrayed as venal. However, several real-life frontier traders, including Marcus Goldbaum and Jesse Chisholm, attempted to recover kidnapped children without expectation of reward.

Wayne's posture in the closing frame, with one arm folded over his chest and clutching the other arm, was a conscious tribute to his own favorite Western actor, Harry Carey, Sr., who was known for that gesture.

Cast and character description

  • John Wayne – Ethan Edwards; Wayne played his most difficult role as the racist Civil War veteran who hates practically everyone - but Indians in particular. After he discovers that his niece Debbie has mated with an Indian, he intends to kill her.
  • Jeffrey Hunter – Martin Pawley; the adopted son of Ethan's brother, he is part Indian, and undertakes the search with Edwards to save his adoptive sister from the Comanche and, later, from Ethan.
  • Vera Miles – Laurie Jorgensen; Pawley's sweetheart, she gets just one letter in five years from him.
  • Ward Bond – Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton; preacher and Texas Ranger captain who notes that Edwards "fits a lot of descriptions" (on wanted posters).
  • Natalie Wood – Debbie Edwards (older); Ethan Edwards's niece, carried off by Comanches when she is a child, she married Chief Scar when she grows up. Natalie Wood's younger sister, Lana Wood, plays Debbie as a child.
  • John Qualen – Lars Jorgensen; a Scandinavian immigrant, and father of Laurie.
  • Olive Carey – Mrs. Jorgensen; American-born wife of Lars and mother of Laurie.
  • Henry Brandon – Chief Cicatrice (Scar); chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanche; the abductor of the girls.
  • Ken Curtis – Charlie McCorry; a hayseed cowboy who intends to marry Laurie Jorgensen.
  • Harry Carey, Jr. – Brad Jorgensen; engaged to the older Edwards sister.
  • Antonio Moreno – Emilio Figueroa; a Comanchero, he leads Ethan Edwards at last to Scar.
  • Hank Worden – Mose Harper; half-mad cowhand who helps locate Debbie.
  • Beulah Archuletta – Wild Goose Flying in the Night Sky (Look); Indian woman married to Martin through his misunderstanding.

Ford originally wanted to cast Fess Parker, whose performance as Davy Crockett on television had helped spark a national craze, in the Jeffrey Hunter role but Walt Disney, to whom Parker was under contract, refused to allow it, according to Parker's videotaped interview for the Archive of American Television. Parker notes that this was by far his single worst career reversal.

Release

Critical interpretations

Plot

The unspoken love between Wayne's Ethan and his brother's wife Martha and his obsession with avenging her drives the film.

Many reviewers see a powerful, albeit unspoken, factor in the plot. These reviewers maintain that Ethan Edwards is clearly in love with his brother's wife Martha. These same reviewers state it is this love (clearly mutual, as witness the scene in which Captain Clayton notices Martha stroking Ethan's coat) which drives Ethan initially both toward rescue and toward revenge. In terms of the dramatic action of the film, these reviewers maintain it is by far the strongest initiator of behavior on the lead character's part. Those espousing this theory allege that the most startling part of this plot undercurrent is that there is not one word of dialog alluding to the relationship and feelings between Ethan and Martha, despite the importance of those factors to the plot. Every reference to this relationship is visual.[7][8][9]

Themes

Ford made an effort in this movie to examine the issues of racism and genocide towards Native Americans. Ford's was not the first film to attempt this, nor the most polished as regards the effort, but it was startling (particularly for later generations) in the harshness of its approach toward that racism. Ford's examination of racism starts with the racism of his hero. (That "hero" is hardly conventional.) Indeed, Wayne's Ethan Edwards hates practically everyone, but reserves a special bile for Indians.[10] And it is this openly virulent hatred of Native Americans by the lead character which opens the door for the movie to examine racism as an excuse for the genocide of the Indians. Emanuel Levy says "It's a rare attempt to deal head-on with the problem and roots of racism in American life."[11]. Perception of the film has evolved steadily over the years as people more willingly examine as a society the horrific treatment of Native Americans by the white culture. Roger Ebert says in a somber analysis of this movie: "In The Searchers I think Ford was trying, imperfectly, even nervously, to depict racism that justified genocide."[12]

John Ford, as his interviews give evidence, unquestionably felt strongly about the plight of the Native Americans, and the way that white society had smashed their culture and thrown them aside. His landmark work The Searchers was an attempt to examine how this plight had come to pass, and how racism had turned into genocide.[3]

Ethan felt Debbie was better dead than married to an Indian, exemplifying the themes of racism and miscegenation that run through the movie

The theme of miscegenation also runs through this movie. Ethan says repeatedly that he will kill his niece rather than have her live “with a buck.” He says “living with the Comanche ain’t living.” Even one of the movie’s gentler characters, Vera Miles’s Laurie, tells Martin when he explains he must protect his adoptive sister, that “Ethan will put a bullet in her brain. I tell you Martha would want him to.” This outburst made clear that even the supposedly gentler characters were thoroughly tainted by racism and the fear of miscegenation.[3] It is instructive to note that Ford made an attempt in this movie to deal with subjects and themes which were quite controversial for that time in America. His own words express what he was attempting to do. In a 1964 interview with Cosmopolitan magazine he said:

“There’s some merit to the charge that the Indian hasn’t been portrayed accurately or fairly in the Western, but again, this charge has been a broad generalization and often unfair. The Indian didn’t welcome the white man... and he wasn’t diplomatic... If he has been treated unfairly by whites in films, that, unfortunately, was often the case in real life. There was much racial prejudice in the West.[3].

The story of Cynthia Parker, which so many reviewers find as the real-life inspiration for this movie, is instructive. Ostensibly rescued in an attack on an Indian band virtually identical to the one shown in this movie, she starved herself to death when her white relatives refused to let her find her sole surviving child. Yet to this day, her rescue is considered a “victory” in the Indian Wars. Indeed, Sul Ross's report about the "Battle" in which he recaptured Cynthia Parker is instructive, after killing women and children indiscriminately, he reports:

"So single a victory had never before been gained over the fierce and war like Comanches; and never since that fatal December day in 1860 have they made any military demonstrations at all commensurate with the fame of their proud campaigns in the past. The great Comanche confederacy was forever broken."[13]

In summing up the social impact of this movie Arthus Eckstein says,

"The Searchers has obsessed many filmmakers, critics, and scholars in a manner unusual even for those with a passionate love of cinema...The Searchers is one of those rare films that reveals something new with every viewing...The Searchers is so dense with meaning the only way to understand it is to slow the projection time to equal the five year diegetic time."[14]

Reception

Although the film was set in Texas it was filmed in Monument Valley, Utah.

In 1989, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.

The Searchers is often cited as a candidate for the greatest film of all time, such as the Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made. In 1972, The Searchers was voted in eighteenth place then fifth place in 1992 and in 2002 it was in eleventh place.

The 2007 American Film Institute 100 Greatest American Films list included The Searchers in twelfth place. In 2008, the American Film Institute named The Searchers as the greatest Western of all time.[15] The Searchers is a favorite of Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ramesh Sippy, James Robert Baker, Brent Spiner, Quentin Tarantino and John Milius.[citation needed]

Entertainment Weekly ranked The Searchers as the thirteenth greatest movie of all time, as well as the greatest western of all time.[citation needed] Popular film website, They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? currently ranks it 7th.[16]

Influence, homage, and allusion

The Searchers has influenced films as diverse as Taxi Driver, Paris, Texas, Star Wars, Dances with Wolves, Hardcore, The Wind and the Lion, Saving Private Ryan, and Apocalypse Now.

David Lean watched the film repeatedly while preparing for Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to help him get a sense of how to shoot a landscape. The entrance of Ethan Edwards in The Searchers across a vast prairie is echoed clearly in the across-the-desert entrance of Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia.

Sergio Leone, a noted Ford admirer, mentioned The Searchers as one of his favorite films and referenced it in a key scene of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). It was also referenced in a similar scene in the Bollywood film Sholay.

George Lucas alludes to the film in his Star Wars movies. In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the burning of Luke Skywalker's home parallels visually and narratively the burning of the homestead in The Searchers; also the framing of the shots through the opening of the cave where R2-D2 is hiding, when Obi-Wan Kenobi first appears, directly matches the framing of the screen shots of Ethan Edwards' reunion with his niece, Debbie. Another direct quote comes in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones when Anakin Skywalker approaches the Tusken Raider settlement to rescue his mother, a scene which is framed in the exact same manner as Ethan Edwards surveying the Comanche camp before rescuing Debbie.

The movie is referenced to by the character of Ed in the Northern Exposure episode "Soapy Sanderson" when conversing with a couple of film students on the topic of cinema technique.

Other films, such as Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (which references the final shot of The Searchers), and 10000 BC which shares not only similar direction but a similar story line, show direct influence as does work in other media, such as Jonathan Lethem's novel Girl in Landscape which cites the film as inspiration in its jacket copy.

John Wayne's catchphrase in the film, "That'll be the day", inspired Buddy Holly to write his hit song of the same name.

References

  1. ^ AFI's website listing Top 100 films
  2. ^ a b Jonathan Lethem, "Defending The Searchers " on Bloomsbury.com Cite error: The named reference "Defending the Searchers by Jonathan Lethem" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b c d Brenton Priestly, "Race, Racism and the Fear of Miscegenation" on brentonpriestly.com Cite error: The named reference "Race, Racism and the Fear of Miscegenation" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  4. ^ Dan Schneider, "DVD review: The Searchers " on blogcritics.org is one example. John Milius also makes this point in a documentary about the production, although film historian Edward Buscombe observes in The Searchers (London: British Film Institute, 2000), p. 71, that Milius “gives no evidence for this assertion.”
  5. ^ "Brit Johnson, The Real Searcher", American History magazine, June 2007, p. 64.
  6. ^ "Negro Brit Johnson, Dennis Cureton & Paint Crawford" on forttours.com
  7. ^ Studlar, Gaylyn. "What Would Martha Want? Captivity, Purity, and Feminine Values in The Searchers," in Eckstein & Lehman, pp. 179-182
  8. ^ Eckstein, Arthur M. "Incest and Miscegenation in The Searchers (1956) and The Unforgiven (1959)", in Eckstein & Lehman, p. 200
  9. ^ Lehman, Peter. "'You Couldn't Hit It on the Nose': The Limits of Knowledge in and of The Searchers," in Eckstein & Lehman, pp. 248, 263
  10. ^ John Puccio, "The Searchers (Speecial Edition DVD)" review from DVDTown.com
  11. ^ Emanuel Levy, "Film Review: The Searchers" from emanuellevy.com
  12. ^ Roger Ebert, "The Searchers (1956) ,Chicago Sun-Times, November 25, 2001 on rogerebert.com.
  13. ^ J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations
  14. ^ Eckstein, Arthur M. and Lehman, Peter, (Eds.), The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Ford's Classic Western, Wayne State University Press, 2004 ISBN-10 0814330568 ISBN-13 978-0814330562
  15. ^ American Film Institute (2008-06-17). "AFI Crowns Top 10 Films in 10 Classic Genres". ComingSoon.net. Retrieved 2008-06-18.
  16. ^ "The Top 100 films" on theyshootpictures.com
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