Placement On Sight & Sound 50 Best Movies List: #7
Certain actors you tend to associate with specific types of movies. Matthew McConaughey, for instance, was the go-to romantic comedy guy for so long that that's what became known for while Adam Sandler was the proprietor of broad immature comedies. Perhaps no single actor is as directly tied to a genre they frequently inhabited as John Wayne is to the world of the Western. That no-nonsense attitude of his that always seemed to have a retort and a bullet ready to go for any situation seems to be the pop culture default for what many classify as a protagonist in a Western motion picture.
Out of the countless Westerns he starred in, his most acclaimed in the modern age seems to be The Searchers, a 1956 John Ford movie that has a quintessential John Wayne Western protagonist named Ethan Edwards, whose come back to his brothers ranch in the year 1868 hoping for some peace and quiet. Well, that's not exactly what happens, as he soon sets off on a quest for vengeance to take back his kidnapped niece Debbie from a violent tribe of Native Americans, led by a fellow named Scar, who have killed his brother as well as the various members of his brother's family. Tagging along for the ride is the adopted son of his brother, Martin Pawley (Jeffery Hunter).
Their journey is long and arduous, spanning years and years in a hunt that takes them across the Southern part of the United States. Along the way, Ethan and Martin have their requisite disputes, with Ethan's no-nonsense take-charge personality rubbing Martin the wrong way on a constant basis. The two's adventures across multiple states carries with it a quietly melancholy vibe, as the fear of Debbie not being alive if they ever actually find her looms over their heads like a psychological stormy rain cloud. Even Ethan, who carries a tough guy swagger to himself, can't help but be clearly perturbed by the wretchedness he's seen on this journey that makes him doubtful there will be a happy conclusion to this search.
Along the way, we get to see plenty of mid-19th-century landscapes that are just beautiful to look at and perfectly visually encapsulate how this terrain, in this particular time period, carried a sense of wide-scale uncertainty to it. Land charted by only a few stretched out as far as the eye can see, that's an intimidating prospect if I ever heard one and the cinematography that captures the rocky canyons or snowy banks that our two leads travel on capture that feeling on a visual level. Director John Ford certainly seems aware that just letting those shots of topography linger not only can say so much, but the grandness to these natural features fits in with the grandiose nature of The Searchers as a whole.
This is a movie that's keen on going whole-hog into its Western heritage, with its story (which is based on a book and has been noted to share similarities to a real kidnapping that occurred in 1836) never missing the chance to go for the big and the bombastic. A lot of those stylistic choices are actually quite a bit of fun in their unabashed sincerity nad keep the movie chugging along at a solid pace. Other times, it can't help but feel like The Searchers is settling for more rote story choices executed in a similarly derivative way when it could stand to be a bit more bold, especially in its final scenes, which goes from a very somber sequence directly into a series of rushed scenes that wraps things up in too convenient of a manner given the multi-year long adventure that's preceded it.
John Wayne, the definitive Western protagonist likely for all of time, fits The Searchers gung-ho Western approach like a glove. For instance, he never just hands someone a gun in this movie, he's gotta twirl it first and then hand it to them. It's those gleefully heightened touches that show how both Wayne and the folks behind this production are taking advantage of the unique opportunities afforded by the more mythic qualities inherently imbued into the world of Westerns (even if the depictions of non-White characters within that story haven't aged well in the slightest) to create a pretty solid affair that's darn tootin' fun to watch in its best scenes and concludes with a shot that basically sums up the entire Western genre on a visual level.
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