Cast: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Natalie Wood

Director: John Ford

Screenplay: Frank Nugent

Running time: 2 hrs 35 mins

Genre: Western



CRITIQUE:


Influencing myriad films from George Lucas’s Star Wars to Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver, infusing filmmaking visions to Spielberg and Eastwood – who ever knew this Western film would cause such repercussion the day John Ford decided to make The Searchers. Built on lavish, spectacular panoramas of the West, specifically the vistas of Monument Valley, one could actually freeze-frame and mount it on your wall. The cinematography is that gorgeous. Perfectly lit, the West has never better captured than through the adroitness of Ford’s framing, from one stone structure to the next, from one position of horse to the cascade of battle scenes in the river. Ford, arguably an auteur himself who made filmic hymns to the old West from My Darling Clementine, Stagecoach to She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, has a keen eye on his pictures. But all the same, it is his actor John Wayne who makes this his show: portraying a no-bullshit cowboy who ruthlessly hates American Indians, kills them for merciless vengeance, even shoots a lifeless one, and overtly fancies his brother’s wife without apologies. Much to the debate about the unfair treatment to the native Indians, The Searchers starts as a black-and-white view of the West, whites as heroes and Indians as villains. But that changes as nothing is ever simple in the plot and its central protagonist. Ethan Edwards is not a clean-cut hero. He is a bastard without much of a brain and compassion. Flawed as the hero, one couldn’t help but consider some imperfections in the film as well. Albeit scored to magnificence by Max Steiner, the orchestral music just blares and blasts in any opportunity, not letting its picture to sigh in silence. And the narrative time that spans in five years seemed like five months depicted, both Edwards and apprentice Pawley barely grow beards as though they just stepped out of their cabins. But these are nitpicking in a film that is obviously regarded as a largely influential, classic Western.


VERDICT:

One of the most beautifully shot, lit and framed Westerns of all time. John Ford’s direction is impeccable. John Wayne’s presence is profound. The Searchers manages to be flawed like its hero, ringing a dark, morally complex hymn to the old West.



RATING: A