The Searchers - John Wayne's Finest Role

A dark look at the American frontier and the bitter struggles between the Indians and the settlers in the years following the Civil War, The Searchers stars John Wayne as a deeply flawed man, more like the Indians he hates than he knows.

Filmed against the glorious scenery of Utah’s Monument Valley, The Searchers inspired later filmmakers, but was only recognized as a classic western years after it was released. Now seen as perhaps the first film to deal - at least tentatively - with the clash of cultures and the racism that justified the genocide of American Indians as the nation grew west.

Ethan Edwards (Wayne) returns home in his Confederate coat from the Civil War three years after it ends, a mysterious gap that while never explained, feels like three hard years indeed. He returns to his brother Aaron’s homestead in Texas, and to his brother’s wife, with whom he clearly shares a deep, unspoken bond.

A Comanche raid on a neighbor’s cattle lures Ethan and the local band of Texas Rangers away from the homestead -– a ruse that allows the Indians to attack, killing Aaron and his son, brutally raping and murdering his wife, and abducting their two daughters—the older, Lucy, and the youngest, Debbie.

The raid sets the stage for the epic search that consumes Ethan and Martin, a part-Indian boy Ethan found as a child after an earlier Indian raid, and who Aaron’s family took in as a son. Ethan’s nemesis and doppelganger is Chief Scar, the Comanche leader who kidnapped Debbie, and made her one of his wives.

All the lonely outsiders that were to come in American westerns owe something to Wayne’s performance. He is committed to his family, but never really part of it. He hates the Indians passionately, but knows their ways, and lives more as they do than as a settler. He abuses Martin, who is one-eighth Cherokee, yet sees him as the closest thing he has to a son.

He loved his brother’s wife, and the lost girl is his daughter - in spirit and, perhaps, in fact. Yet, after years of searching, he is ready to kill her for living as an Indian "squaw." He is a man without a home who can find neither justice nor peace. It may well be Wayne’s finest performance.

Jeffrey Hunter as Martin is adequate, although a richer performance from a young man torn between the worlds of white man and Indian, and yearning for Ethan’s acceptance, would have added greatly to the film’s resonance. Vera Miles is fine as Martin’s sweetheart, who improbably waits five years for him, and Ward Bond is excellent as the local preacher and head of the Texas Rangers.

The always luminous Natalie Wood plays the adult Debbie, with her real-life sister Lana playing her as a child. John Qualen does a cliched schtick as the neighboring rancher with a thick Swedish accent, and Hank Worden is somewhat off-key as the “tetched” cowhand Mose Harper. But they, and the oddly unfunny comic scenes, don’t bring the film down too far, and Henry Brandon helps redeem it with his fierce dignity as Chief Scar.

To modern audiences, the raw racism and intolerance may bit a bit hard to digest, but at least the Indians are not portrayed either as complete savages or buffoons. Most film critics see this as director John Ford’s tentative exploration of racism and miscegenation in the American West set against the real-world battle for civil rights for African Americans in 1956.

Fewer critics note the pointed double standard in the treatment of the women. Ethan is ready to kill the kidnapped Debbie for her perceived dishonor. Yet when Martin mistakenly takes an Indian bride (he thinks he’s buying a blanket), the “marriage” is at first a source of amusement. She is later murdered by American soldiers when she returns to an Indian village in a possible effort to help the searchers find Scar, and Martin at last displays pity for her.

On a more trivial note, Wayne’s wry catch-phrase in the movie inspired the lyrics for a great rock’n’roll song – Buddy Holly’s “That’ll be the Day.”

John Ford was among Hollywood’s most prolific and lauded directors, helming dozens of films from the silent era through the 1960s. Known for his iconic westerns and war movies, he won five best director Oscars –- for The Quiet Man and Stagecoach, both John Wayne films; two movies from bestselling books, How Green was My Valley and The Grapes of Wrath; and 1935's The Informer.

Prickly, manipulative, and famously unwilling to discuss his techniques and inspirations, Ford has been cited as an influence by many great directors who followed, and western movies from Silverado to Close Encounters of the Third Kind have paid homage to its spectacular cinematography.

'The Searchers' - the Bottom Line

The Searchers is a uniquely American film, and its breathtaking views of Monument Valley became the global image of the American West. Look past its cliches. Watch it for the scenery and for its halting steps toward portraying the tragic clash of cultures that bloodied the nation’s westward march.

'The Searchers' at a Glance:

Year: 1956, Color
Director: John Ford
Running Time: 121 minutes
Studio: Columbia Pictures