| Collector's Corner September 2002
 The SearchersStarring: John Wayne, Jeffrey
Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, Ken Curtis, Harry Carey Jr., Dorothy Jordan,
Hank Worden, Walter Coy, Henry Brandon
Directed by: John Ford
Theatrical release: 1956
DVD release: 1997
Video: Full screen and anamorphic
widescreen (dual-sided DVD)
Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
A door opens and, over Martha Edwards’s (Dorothy
Jordan) shoulder, we see the beautiful Texas landscape. A lonesome rider in the distance
is coming toward her. Soon, her husband Aaron (Walter Coy), her three children, and the
dog are on the porch, trying to see who’s coming. It’s Aaron’s brother,
Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), home from the Civil War. While they are eating, Martin Pawley
(Jeffrey Hunter) comes riding up bareback and runs in. Ethan had rescued an infant,
Martin, from an Indian raid and taken him to live in his brother’s house. Ethan
starts scowling, saying Martin acts like a half-breed. Ethan’s face shows his hatred
toward all Indians.
The next morning, a Texas Ranger’s posse rides up
looking for volunteers to hunt for a cattle thief. The leader, Reverend Captain Samuel
Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond), swears in Martin and Aaron to go on the chase. Old Mose
Harper (Hank Worden) says he thinks it’s the work of Indians. Ethan decides
he’ll go and leave Aaron to protect the family.
When they catch up, the cattle theft turns out to be a
decoy, so that the Indians can circle back on a murder raid. The Indians kill Aaron,
Martha, and their son, and kidnap the two daughters, Debbie (Lana Wood) and Lucy (Pippa
Scott). The posse takes off in pursuit, trying to save the two young girls. They chase
Chief Scar’s Comanches till they catch up, but then the hunters become the hunted.
After a fight, most of the posse head home. Just Ethan, Martin, and Brad Jorgensen (Harry
Carey, Jr.) continue.
The tribe splits up and Ethan follows one trail while
Martin and Brad follow the other. When they get back together, Ethan is upset. Martin
notices that Ethan has lost his coat. When they question him, he refuses to talk. They
head on again.
The scene changes to night. Brad comes running up the hill,
excited.
Brad: I found 'em! I found Lucy.
They're camped about a half-mile over. I was just swinging back, and I seen their smoke.
Bellied up a ridge, and there they was, right below me.
Martin: Did you see Debbie?
Brad: No, no. But I saw Lucy, all right. She was wearin' that blue
dress that she…
Ethan: What you saw wasn't Lucy.
Brad: Oh, but it was, I tell ya.
Ethan: What you saw was a buck wearin' Lucy's dress. I found Lucy
back in the canyon. Wrapped her in my coat, buried her with my own hands. Thought it best
to keep it from you.
Brad: Well, did they…? Was she…?
Ethan: (Yelling) What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture?
Spell it out? Don't ever ask me! Long as you live, don't ever ask me more.
Brad, filled with grief, attacks the Indian camp by himself
and is killed. For five years, Ethan and Martin keep up the search, going through their
own Odyssey. Ethan is sure that Debbie has been defiled by a "buck," somehow
reducing her to less than human. His hatred of Indians runs deep enough that he can’t
decide whether to kill or rescue Debbie. What will he do? For the sake of those that
haven’t seen The Searchers, I’ll stop here.
The Searchers has always been one of Ford’s
most misunderstood films. It wasn’t nominated for any awards. The critics didn’t
understand it. Ford didn’t much care. The Searchers was his 115th film. He had
already won four Oscars (The Informer -- 1935, The Grapes of Wrath -- 1940, How
Green Was My Valley -- 1941, and The Quiet Man -- 1952), a feat still
unmatched. He was supposedly contentious and mean-spirited, but actors lined up to
work for him. His stock company (John Wayne, Harry Carey, Jr., Ward Bond, Mildred
Natwick, Maureen O’Hara, Ken Curtis, Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen, Woody Strode) were
a bunch of professionals that could deliver the goods, usually in one take. He
tended to downplay his abilities saying once, "Anybody can direct a picture
once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery; it's not an art. The main
thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes."
Their eyes. If you have the opportunity to watch The
Searchers, pay special attention to the eyes; where they go, what they take in. Watch
chapter 3 for the scene where Ethan is openly staring at his sister-in-law while
forgetting his brother is even standing there. In chapter 7, from 13:08 to 13:47, watch
the eyes of Ward Bond, Dorothy Jordan, and John Wayne. In 39 seconds, without a single
word being spoken, we learn volumes about the three characters. It’s all in the eyes.
Harry Carey, Jr., in his superb autobiography Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in
the John Ford Stock Company, wrote, "When I looked up at [John Wayne] in
rehearsal, it was into the meanest, coldest eyes I had ever seen. From day one, Duke was
Ethan Edwards. That character seemed built into him, and no other actor, no matter how
great his talent, could have played that part as well."
But the character was controversial. Here was John Wayne,
the number-one all-time box-office draw, playing for the director that made him a star.
Generally typecast as a hero, Wayne made Ethan Edwards into a complex human and a pathetic
racist, doomed to be an outsider even to his family. Ethan, not so secretly, covets his
brother’s wife. Ethan sets Martin up as a decoy for murderers. Then, he shoots them
in the back and steals their money. Throughout the film, you always feel that Ethan is
more intent on killing the Indians than rescuing the girl. With the exception of a vague
sense of loyalty and dedication, there’s not much to like about Wayne’s
character. Ford, the man who helped create the myth of the Western hero, then embodied it
in John Wayne, now tears it up and discards it. It was a brave piece of acting on
Wayne’s part. Kind of like Tom Hanks offering to play Osama bin Laden.
People new to Ford’s work often don’t know what
to make of it. He uses abrupt changes of mood, like in chapter 38 where he takes us from
one of Ethan and Marty’s most intense emotional conflicts, then sweeps us onto a
dance floor at a wedding. In his Westerns, Indians get short shrift. They are usually
faceless warriors, doomed to be shot by the hero, then fall off their horse to be
drug along by their stirrups until they roll into a heap of defeated humanity.
Another Ford trait that drives some people crazy is that he
is a sentimentalist in terms of old folk music. Just try to find a Ford film with a
funeral where they don’t play "Shall We Gather at the River." Then, in the
middle of all this, Ford is likely to bob around from group to group showing us violence
followed by a scene of domestic tranquility, then a bar scene where boys will be boys.
People accustomed to the strictly linear story telling of today’s action flicks
wonder why Ford throws in all the other stuff. Ford’s films require immersion and
concentration, not because they are complicated, but because so much is going on, and the
stories and characters are so rich. Yet everything is so natural that it appears simple.
Deceptive simplicity.
In the early 1970s, a new bunch of maverick filmmakers
started talking about The Searchers, calling it a masterpiece. Paul Schrader, John
Milius, Wim Wenders, and George Lucas all paid homage to the film. Jean-Luc Godard called
it one of the ten best films of all time.
Steven Spielberg claimed to have watched The Searchers
more than a dozen times before 1977, the year he made Close Encounters of the Third
Kind. Then he watched The Searchers twice while on location for Close
Encounters, searching for inspiration. Now, it’s a regular thing. "Before I
go off and direct a movie I always look at four films," Spielberg says on his home
page: "Seven Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life, and The
Searchers." Martin Scorsese said, "The dialogue is like poetry! And the
changes of expression are so subtle, so magnificent! I see it once or twice a year."
The filmmakers love Ford’s sense of symmetry. The film
begins and ends with Ethan and a door. Debbie has to cower in the corner while facing a
man that might hurt her and will take her from her family; first, in the person of Scar,
then five years later, Ethan. They love how Ford took the "good" guys and
"bad" guys and made them alike. Ethan and Scar are both brutal killers, good
strategists, and dedicated to hatred for the other’s race. They also both kidnap
Debbie and kill the other’s family. They both take scalps. They are, in most ways,
two of a kind. So which one is the bad guy?
After the expansion of laws and sentiments for civil rights
in the 1960s, it became fashionable in the 1970s to say that, in The Searchers,
Ford was apologizing for the bigotry of his prior Westerns. None of this came from Ford
himself. It was more as though the passing of time had magically enlightened both Ford and
his film. Ford was right wing and pro-USA. His defenders were more left leaning. Could
they have been trying to remold Ford to make his politics more palatable? Here are some
interesting facts.
Ford made two changes when converting the book to the film.
In the book, Martin Pawley is a white boy. In the movie, he’s "one-eighth
Cherokee, the rest is Welch and English." That change allowed Ford to keep constant
emphasis on Ethan’s racism. The other change from the book refers to the dialogue
above where Brad thinks he’s found Lucy. In the book, he recognized Lucy by her hair,
not her blue dress. I think that Ford felt a warrior dancing around in a dead girl’s
dress was easier to take than one dancing around wearing her scalp. He wanted to keep the
focus on Ethan’s brutality and not the Indians. The other important fact to remember
is that the Navahos loved Ford and made him a member of the tribe. They gave him the name
Natani Nez (Tall Soldier) and presented him with a sacred relic. Clearly, they didn’t
feel like he was misrepresenting them.
But was Ford having a change of heart? I don’t know.
The question comes up in Carey’s book and he says that he doesn’t know either.
Carey thinks that Ford was just trying to tell a good story. Maybe. I think Ford was
interested in exploring characters. And Ethan Edwards is definitely a character worth
exploring.
The DVD comes in one of those dual-sided affairs with full
screen on one side and enhanced widescreen on the other. Any film lover that watches the
full-screen side should be sent on an excursion with Ethan Edwards. The widescreen side is
beautiful. Other than Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, these are the most
beautiful pictures of Monument Valley ever. The sound is clear and remains mono, just like
it was intended. The extras are a pathetic offering. Those of you that have the deluxe
laserdisc set should keep it. It had a wonderful documentary and a four-part promo from
The Kaiser Aluminum Hour. I guess they just ran out of space on the DVD because all they
include is two of the promos and a trailer. Hopefully, Warner Brothers will come out with
a new version that has just the widescreen film and all of the original offerings from the
laserdisc. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could add some interviews with the directors
listed above that are so enamored of the film?
I had a hard time picking which Ford film to review.
I’m equally in love with The Informer, Stagecoach, How Green Was My Valley, My
Darling Clementine, The Cavalry Trilogy (Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio
Grande), The Quiet Man, and Mister Roberts. But the moral ambiguity coupled
with John Wayne’s superb performance pushed The Searchers into the
Collector’s Corner.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
