John Ford: The Searchers

The USPS has issued a set of four stamps honoring great film directors and the films for which they are most remembered. The four selected are: John Ford (The Searchers), John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life), and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot). We will be exploring the lives and work of these directors over the next several weeks. In this post LR Simon reviews The Searchers.

In The Searchers, John Wayne plays Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards, whose years-long search for his niece, Debbie, who has been kidnapped by Comanche, forms the structure of the film. Ford’s “less is more” ethic of silent films informs much of the style of the film, from the economic dialogue to leaving some of the most violent scenes to the audience’s imagination.

In the most superficial terms, The Searchers is a quest film. Ethan wants to find his niece, and is prepared to spend several years until he accomplishes his task. But the film is also about family and race, and the way 19^th Century society treated women. Once it becomes apparent that Debbie has become a bride to her captor, Scar, both Ethan and Laurie (Vera Miles) take the attitude that the girl should die. Family feelings end up taking precedence over race, and Ethan has a change of heart where his despoiled niece is concerned.

John Wayne gave one of his best performances in The Searchers, and also one of his bravest. His audience is so accustomed to thinking of him in perfectly heroic terms that playing a racist character like Ethan Edwards had to be one of the biggest risks he ever took.

In telling the story visually, Ford echoes early scenes late in the film. For example, when Ethan returns to his family early in the film, he lifts his niece, Debbie (Lana Wood) in a loving and playful manner. Near the end, after he leads a raid on the Comanche who had kidnapped her, Ethan lifts her (now played by Natalie Wood) in a similar way, showing that he’s come to value as family to the point where his earlier racism is almost forgotten.

Bookending the film are two sequences with doors that almost exactly mirror each other. The film opens with Martha going out of the house, exposing the wide vista, and soon after, Ethan coming home. At the end of the film, Ethan returns Debbie to her family, but doesn’t enter the house. Instead, he turns and leaves as the camera moves into the house, with the door closing on Ethan and his story.

Hint: Because Ford filmed The Searchers in VistaVision, it is advisable to watch this movie on the largest screen available. VistaVision was a widescreen format with deep focus; smaller screens cannot show the level of detail Ford had in mind for this film.