This week's Classic American Film: "The Searchers" (1956)
directed by John Ford; starring John Wayne
“the most profound portrait of macho monstrosity ever delivered by an American movie star. . . . as far from an ordinary mid-century western as King Lear is from a soap opera” --Michael Atkinson,"Built Ford Tough"
Texas, 1868; loner and Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards arrives at the home of his estranged brother Aaron. After Aaron's family is butchered in an Indian raid, his niece Debbie taken into captivity, Ethan spends years in an obsessive search: to find his the lost girl--and to take revenge against the Comanche Indians he despises with racist fury.
An infuence on Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese. . . .
In a famous l979 article in New York Magazine, "The Super-Cult Movie of the New Hollywood," Stuart Byron demonstrated the influence of The Searchers on directors ranging from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to Martin Scorsese, John Milius, Paul Schrader, Sergio Leone, Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Winders. Scorsese said of The Serachers, "The dialogue is like poetry! And the changes of expression
are so subtle, so magnificent! I see it once or twice a year." His film Taxi Driver (1976) (to be screned in our series on April 21) is clearly indebted to John Ford's classic Western.
To read more about The Searchers in an article for Turner Classic Movies by Scott McGee, click here.
To read Roger Ebert's review of The Searchers click here
Actress Natalie Wood as Debbie--"saved" by Uncle Ethan?
