#15 The Searchers (Ford) at Stanford Theatre
I've spent my movie watching career generally avoiding the Classic Westerns genre. The frontier masculinity is off putting. So are the racist depictions or Native Americans. And the treatment of women as symbols rather than subjects. This film has all three.
In The Searchers (1956), John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a brooding Confederate veteran driven to hunt down the Comanche chief who killed his family and abducted his niece, Debbie, played by Natalie Wood.
This film is one of the most mysterious of the classic Westerns because of the degree that the audience is asked to read into the antihero's motivations. Does Ethan feel he is to blame for the death of his family? Is he on a quest to bring Debbie home because he's secretly her father? Does he mean to rescue her, or is he so outraged by the threat of miscegenation that he'd rather kill her? Is that why Debbie's adopted brother is so insistent in joining him, to guard against his fury? Maybe Ethan is meant to be an enigma, but I found the level of narrative subtlety distracting.
Quentin Tarantino --- historically, not a fan of this film --- and I agree, the film "wimped out at the end." We do not buy that Natalie Wood's character would have willingly left the Comanches. And that John Wayne's character didn't kill her. Again, enigmatic.
The film was shot on location, most memorably in Utah's Monument Valley. This is a visual film and its landscapes need to be seen in a theater. We saw the movie projected from a 35mm VistaVision reduction print and it was stunning. I know the image of John Wayne framed by the doorway is one of the most memorable final shots in cinema history, but I was most struck by the landscapes. Magnificent and unyielding. I could see how this film's sprawling composition inspired David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. But watch for the laughable break in continuity when the actor playing a dead Native American man is visibly breathing in his grave.
The film's narrative mysteries and outdated representations offend my modern sensibilities, but I suppose I can give John Ford credit for a Homeric tale of rescue-or-revenge.