Searchers, The (DVD)

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Whenever the subject arises of which movie Western is the best of all, which unfortunately for the Western is more and more seldom these days, John Ford's 1956 "The Searchers" usually comes up. True, it's often mentioned in the same breath as "Stagecoach," "Red River," "High Noon," "Shane," "Unforgiven," and other well-known classics, but the fact that it is almost always mentioned at all is the point. The movie has a loyal following, and there is a good argument to be made that if John Ford was one of the greatest of all Western directors, and "The Searchers" is the quintessential John Ford Western, then maybe "The Searchers" is one of the greatest Westerns of all time. Who knows.

What is clear is that "The Searchers" is a fine example of the breed and can stand comparison with any Western ever made. This is probably why Warner Bros. went the full route by decking it out handsomely in their 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition. If you're a fan of the film or a fan of the director or a fan of the star, John Wayne, or a fan of Westerns in general, this new edition of "The Searchers" may be right up your Wild Western canyon.

The story line is remarkably straightforward, considering that it presents a series of fairly important themes. Based on a screenplay by Frank S. Nugent from the novel by Alan Le May, "The Searchers" deals with the winning of the West, the struggles between the invading White Man and the Native Americans, the Western Code of Honor, and old-fashioned determination vs. selfish, vengeful spite, all of it peppered with action, romance, and humor.

There are plenty of fine actors in the film, but it's John Wayne and his character who dominate the picture. He plays Ethan Edwards, a man who could hardly be called a typical Western hero. Indeed, he is probably the least heroic and most thoroughly contemptible character Wayne ever played. The setting is Texas, 1868, and Edwards has just returned home to his brother's place from the Civil War, where he fought for the Confederacy. But the War's been over for three years. What's he been doing in the meantime? He's got plenty of newly minted gold coins with him, and there are hints that he has been up to no good, maybe an outlaw. But like a lot of things in the story, it's more of a suggestion, an innuendo, than revealed truth.

Worse, Edwards is an embittered, Indian-hating racist. He makes no bones about it. He hates Native Americans probably as much as he hates Yanks. In truth, there are few people of any kind that he does not seem to hate, as he no sooner returns home than he finds himself arguing with his own brother. But it's the Indians he seems to despise most of all, even if we're never sure at first exactly why. Still, it is only a brief time before he has even more reason to hate them. A band of renegade Comanches lures Edwards and several others away from the homestead, and in their absence the Comanches raid the home, killing most of the remaining family and kidnapping the two young daughters. Edwards knows what the Comanches want from the young women, and he'd rather see the girls dead than in Comanche hands.

So off goes Edwards to search for the missing girls, along with a few other men that include a young fellow named Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), whom Edwards saved as a youngster and who was later adopted into his brother's family. But the question remains: As the search goes on, for five long years, what will Edwards do if and when he does find the girls? He shows a savage side to him every bit as brutal as that of the renegade Indians. Will he rescue the girls or kill them? As he says, "Living with Comanches ain't being alive."

How much does Edwards hate Indians? He even shoots them when they're already dead. "What good did that do you?" asks his friend when Edwards shoots an Indian corpse in the eyes. "By what you preach, none," answers Edwards. "But what that Comanch believes, he got no eyes, he can't enter the spirit land, has to wander forever between the wind."

Something interesting Peter Bogdanovich says on his audio commentary is that the film wasn't considered anything particularly special when it was released in 1956, but it was only when critics re-examined and re-evaluated Ford's films in the 1970s that they began to realize its importance. That is pretty much my recollection, too. I saw the film when I was kid, largely because it had John Wayne in it playing a cowboy, not because it was directed by John Ford, a name I would not have recognized at the time in any case. The movie just seemed like another Western to me. I didn't even have any trouble with Wayne's character hating Indians because I had grown up with the unfortunate Hollywood stereotype of settlers being good guys and Indians being bad.

Today, we can see that Ford was trying to show both sides of the story: That the White Man was the invader, that the Native Americans were defending their land, and that both sides had their good and bad people. The movie never flinches from showing the savagery committed by both sides. Believe it or not, it was a novel movie idea at the time, especially when it was John Wayne playing one of the "bad" people.

With time, most of us came to appreciate the movie's strengths in a clearer light, and nowadays we can see that the movie is probably the apex of Ford's film career. Note, for instance Ford's framing of each scene and the photography of Winton Hoch, both exemplified by the opening and closing daylight shots, bookends filmed from within a house through a doorway, the bright outdoors framed by the dark interior walls. They were common shots Ford often used--to highlight a bright area of the screen with darkness around it. Note, too, that the movie ends with the door closing into complete darkness, a shot Francis Coppola would use to end "The Godfather." Looking back, Ford and "The Searchers" influenced countless subsequent films, including my own personal favorite Western, Clint Eastwood's "The Outlaw Josey Wales."

You might also look for the number of medium and long shots Ford uses as compared to the relatively few times he actually closes in on an object or a face. He uses close-ups sparingly, to emphasize a point, and when he does, he makes the point all the more dramatically. Compare that to many of today's directors who use close-ups and quick editing so often they have a numbing effect. Ford was able to imply things that are more dynamic by our not seeing them. Just as he used close-ups infrequently, so did he use violence in moderation. Some of the most intense acts in the movie--murder, scalping, rape--the director only suggests, never shows. He let the audience use their imagination, and the movie is all the more powerful for it.