#96. The Searchers (1956)

Fresh off my horrible experience with “Unforgiven” the AFI has dealt me another western with John Wayne’s “The Searchers.” If you haven’t already read about that experience, “Unforgiven” left such a bad taste in my mouth I felt like I’d given a hummer to the Jolly Green Giant. Needless to say another western with just one movie in between them felt like it was going to be quite the chore. Add to that the fact that my only previous knowledge of “The Searchers” was rampant speculation that it could possibly be the most racist movie this side of “The Passion of the Christ.” Oy!

Right out of the chute we get a feeling for what kind of racial attitudes we are up against. John Wayne's character Ethan comes home from the Civil War where he was fighting for the Confederacy. He finds out his brother has taken in an adoptive son named Martin who is one-eighth Cherokee, of which Ethan clearly disapproves. One day while all the men-folk are out with the Texas Rangers, except Ethan's brother, the savage and inexplicably vicious Comanche Tribe raids the homestead and kills everyone except the 9 year old and teenage daughters, where it is more than heavily implied they will rape them and forcibly make them part of their tribe.

Of course the only thing a "real man" like John Wayne can do is pursue justice. It was a little tougher for me to get a hard-on over this pursuit of sweet, bloody revenge like it was when I started watching "Unforgiven." Namely because of the fact that it is conveniently overlooked exactly WHY the Comanches are so hostile and conduct raids on land that used to be theirs to begin with. "The Searchers" takes place the same year the Texiacans (American colonists who were welcomed without any restriction into Texas by the Mexicans who still owned Texas) attempted to force the Comanches onto crude reservations in the Arizona desert. Thus, no matter how evil they attempted to depict them, it is hard for me to vilify the Comanches too much.

Almost immediately Ethan discovers that the Comanches must have gotten all they wanted out of his niece Lucy, because he finds her dead in a canyon. The plot is now him and Martin attempting to find the last survivor, Debbie. The search takes place over the course of five years which, of course leads to a lot of false leads, ambushes and self-discovery. To make a long story short, they find her, she has been forced into the Comanche tribe, and John Wayne hates injuns so much he would rather kill her than see her be "one of them" and the only thing that stops him from doing so is Martin.

"We'll find 'em in the end, I promise you. We'll find 'em. Just as sure as the turnin' of the earth" (Ethan Edwards "The Searchers")

Eventually, with the help of the Texas Rangers and the Union Army, Ethan successfully raids the Comanche camp, has a chance to kill Debbie, but instead thinks better of it and rescues her and everyone lives... happily ever after?? As happy as a movie like that can end I suppose...

As much as I can (and will) criticize John Wayne's one-dimensional acting, there is one thing I can say to his credit in this film. There is one early scene in particular shortly after their search begins that he has a breakdown where he conveys so much anger and hatred that it is almost scary. Maybe he was drawing on his real feelings toward Native Americans (which I've heard rumors were sour) or maybe it was because of the implied subtext that Ethan is in love with his brother's wife, but whatever it is, for one brief moment in this film, John Wayne seems like he is ready to kill for real.

Initially I wanted to unload on this movie and talk about how horribly racist it was, how ignorantly it depicted Native Americans and how it absolves the white settlers of any wrongdoing. Then I got to thinking, maybe they were trying to illustrate some subtle point against racism after all. Even though it seems quite begrudgingly, Ethan does accept Debbie as his own flesh and blood after all, even if she has been "defiled." Though even more of an afterthought is the fact that Scar, the Comanche Chief, while showing off his collection of white people's scalps, mentions that he takes two for every son he has lost to the white man. In the end the point is made, just not stressed enough, that Ethan's quest for revenge is no different than the position the Comanches were forced into.

"The Searchers" was a vastly superior western to "Unforgiven" in every way, and I can't believe only one movie separates the two in the minds of the AFI. Or more to the point, I don't see how "Unforgiven" was even allowed to be on the same list as "The Searchers." The cinematography is so far beyond anything that was being done at the time and I have taken enough film classes to know that John Ford was one of the greatest outdoor directors of all time. All in all this movie endures a lot. It endures the racially insensitive vernacular of it's time, it endures the advancements made in film making that have come along since and most of all it even endures John Wayne's sucky acting.