Western #2: The Searchers
The Searchers (1956) is the story of a Civil War veteran who returns to his family’s homestead, but is unable to prevent his niece from being captured by a tribe of vicious Indians. He teams up with the family’s adopted son to search for the girl and bring her back to civilization. The film is traditionally held up as one of the great partnerships between director John Ford and the celebrated hero of the Western, John Wayne, and is renowned for capturing the beauty of Arizona’s Monument Valley. The film explores the state of morality and the racial/gender politics of the Old West, while also serving as a revealing artifact of the society in which it was produced - America in the mid-1950s. Our second stop on the Western Marathon journey examines not only a film celebrated in cinema history, but also a more traditional genre piece.
Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), the veteran who leads the search for his niece, is motivated by familial ties, guilt from not preventing the capture, and eventually the racial prejudice that dictates a white woman cannot possibly live within Native American society. As years pass and the search continues, aided by his sidekick Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), Ethan’s goal shifts from rescuing the captured Debbie (Natalie Wood), to killing her. This change comes after a dramatic sequence, where the pair find the Comanche camp and attempt to rescue Debbie; she refuses, expressing her desire to stay with her tribe. Ethan would rather kill the girl than see her living as an Indian and his new objective colors the climax of the film. Just when Ethan could strike the fatal blow, his affection and fondness for the memory of Debbie as a young girl stays his hand and he decides to bring her back to civilization.
The fundamental undercurrent that drives the film’s character motivation, and therefore plot and action, is the belief that Indians are savage, civilization is the ideal way of life and reserved for white people, and if that purity is sullied, then the latter is forbidden to return to the fold. The Native Americans are drawn as one note Others. Visually, their costumes and color palette are diametrically opposed to the white men in the film; the Indians wear bright colors, elaborate head dresses, and bare chests, while the men who are the searchers wear traditional cowboy garb, extenuating their differences. More problematically, the tribe’s motivation for pillaging the homestead and stealing the girl is attributed to revenge upon the white community. The Native Americans are portrayed as categorically evil and the heroes must track down the marauding tribe to rectify their heinous deeds. This was most likely accepted point blank and unquestioned in the 1950s, but it is a glaring deficiency of the film when viewed through a modern lens.
Beyond the strictly drawn racial politics, the film has a singular portrayal of women - held up as an ideal frontier homemaker that holds the foundation of civilization amongst the wildness of the West - and anything that deviates from this is shown as descending into madness. Amidst their long search, Ethan and Martin are shown two women who were rescued back from the Native Americans; the women are literally mad - writhing in hysterics and no longer able to function properly in society. One of the male characters comments in disgust, “it’s hard to believe they are white,” which explicitly defines that character’s belief that a certain skin color defines a set of behaviors in civilization.
Debbie’s place in the story and the limits of her agency also reveal the film’s position on gender. At the onset of her capture, Debbie may have desperately wanted to be rescued; the audience can easily imagine it would be absolutely terrifying to be captured as a child and placed outside one’s normalized environment. Years later, when the searching pair finds her, several motivations could drive Debbie’s vocal declaration to stay with the tribe. She may have been experiencing Stockholm Syndrome, living as a prisoner so long that she begins to sympathize and then identify with her captors. Alternatively, she may actually have found the tribe to be her new home and genuinely doesn’t want to leave. The script gives few clues to either of these possibilities, really to any shades of grey, because it is so focused on the assumption that Debbie must have gone insane to desire living outside her original patriarchal white society; therefore order must be restored and the balance shifted away from her chaotic claim. In 1950s Hollywood and America, conventional wisdom drove the conversation and left no room for an alternative reading of the script, the actor’s performances, or the film audience’s assumed reaction.
The most egregious scene of white patriarchy occurs at the climax of the film, when Ethan chases Debbie into a cave, intent on shooting her down, but before he triggers the deadly act, Ethan, presumably thinking of fond memories of her as a young girl, stays his hand. Instead he hugs her tight and says “Let’s go home.” Home - he means the homestead and not the tribe. Not only does the he feel entitled to make the decision to grant or eliminate her life, but also to where and how she will live the rest of her days once he spares her. While Debbie is denied her own agency to make life decisions, Wood does make an interesting choice at the end of the film, portraying Debbie as reserved and reticent when she is led into her family’s homestead. This is supposedly a joyous homecoming, but her reaction implies that simply returning home does not ensure her happiness. Although the balance has been restored according to the film’s strict moral code, her face conveys a subversive note that shows the potential cracks in the West’s foundation of civilization.
John Wayne is renowned as the hero of the classic Western, the very model of manhood in the wilderness. In The Searchers, the character he tackles is a soldier that does not fit inside domestic life, has an incredibly racist outlook, and develops an obsession that consumes his every thoughts and actions. Ethan is also a man brimming with hate, filled with a burn for revenge against “the injuns,” and perhaps scarred by his wartime experience. He is a man more at home during war or on the hunt, than in the civilization that he is so steadfastly defending. When he successfully brings Debbie home at the conclusion of the film, he stays on the edge of the domestic bliss, not even entering the homestead; he gazes a bit longingly through the door frame’s silhouette, but in the end turns and walks away, accepting that he will stay on the fringes of society, acknowledging that he doesn’t belong in domesticity or civilization, but in the desert west with the rest of the savages he despises. One is left to wonder what his next phase of life will bring without the obsessive quest that has consumed his waking days.
John Wayne’s persona as a hero was well established by the time of The Searchers, as was his collaboration with John Ford. Their exploration of a man who is tainted by hate and obsession and their intent to redeem a flawed hero with one shot is an interesting endeavor, pairing Wayne’s traditional star power with the character of an anti-hero. Unfortunately, Wayne falls short in bringing this complexity to life. His acting style is just two notes, ranging from stoic silence to overly dramatic shouting. His interactions with the sidekick Martin are wooden, with no sense of an inner conflict that is pushing his character’s motivations from hunting to mercy. His character’s great crisis comes to a head at the climax, where he must decide to kill the girl or spare her; unfortunately, there is no time taken from either Wayne nor Ford to show the moment of Ethan’s decision; rather, the camera stays on Debbie’s face, showing her transition from terror to relief, rather than focusing on Ethan’s moment of change.
Unlike Wayne’s acting, Ford does spend the time to highlight the Monument Valley in all its glory. Ford was already an ardent admirer of this area from filming his first Western, Stagecoach, but this film is a love letter to nature and specifically the beauty of the Southwest. His appreciation of the land is demonstrated from the very first shot of the film, where the camera is placed inside a darkened, silhouetted homestead with just a glimpse of the bright landscape outside, then as the camera moves outward, the shot blossoms into a full view of the desert vista. The film is filled with shots that showcase the landscape, as the structure of the narrative enables Ford to focus on the land. The story follows Ethan and Martin’s five year search as they journey throughout the southwest territory looking for the captured girl. The plot’s cadence allows Ford to design shots of people physically moving throughout the space, while the timeline gives the opportunity to feature the land in all seasons.
One of the best examples of characters moving throughout the land is the truly remarkable abilities of the horses and the men who ride them. Throughout the film, horses are shown racing up an incredibly steep hill to scramble atop a bluff, crossing an icy flowing river, and struggling down hills laden with snow. As the horses and men travel across the land, they highlight the varied terrain and potentially devastating nature of the wilderness. This distinctive representation of the land makes it painfully obvious when the director chose to shoot a scene indoors on a set, which lacks the wondrous hue of natural light, the expansive size of the open landscape, and in all ways pales in comparison to the wild beauty captured by the location shoot.
The film is regularly held up as a classic Western and critics/celebrated filmmakers often declared it as one of the best examples of the genre. It certainly fits with the standard definition for Westerns - a story that takes place at the edge of the frontier, where civilization is battling the natives for dominance over the land and for cultural power. John Wayne, by this time already an established figure in the genre, is the embodiment of a lone man fighting against larger forces, and the film exploits his persona to explore the genre’s strict moral code. Released in 1956, The Searchers is positioned just at the onset of change within the genre, as films began to show more enlightened portrayals of race and gender and as the protagonists began to turn towards anti-heroes. For example, Wayne had always been held up as a hero, but his character of Ethan is fueled by a deep-seated hatred and racism that fuels his five year search. Whether his character is redeemed in the end by his last minute change of heart is debatable, but Wayne is certainly flirting with villainy when he threatens to kill Natalie Wood’s pure white girlhood. Finally, the film is a shining examples of the genre’s emphasis on visual landscapes, as Ford presents a master class in highlighting the American southwest with an admiring camera’s gaze.
Overall, this film is incredibly racist towards Native Americans and reduces women’s agency to absolute nil. Unlike the forward thinking treatment of gender and race in High Noon, this film fails to challenge conventional thinking, rather relying on racist and patriarchal lines to draw the film. Some critics argue that Ford and Wayne are presenting a complex character who is fueled by racist motivations and that his choice at the end is the character’s arc toward redemption, but this does not sit well with me, especially since his actions reveal a change of heart towards the girl, but his views towards Native Americans remain constant. Interpreting the film’s - and by extension Ford and Wayne’s - stance on racism is a popular topic among critics, with tracts of articles debating the subject. Perhaps it is best to set aside the art from the artist, so if reading the film as an isolated text, I cannot move past celebrating a hero with racist views just because he decided against murdering his niece. Finally, the music, composed by Max Steiner and considered a classic score, provides a rich backdrop to the film that properly raises the level of drama and passion for the audience.
Overall, The Searchers certainly has stunning visuals, but between the (over)acting and the thematic presentation of outdated morality, this film is ranking far below High Noon in my estimation. Up next, reviewing John Ford’s first Western film - Stagecoach.
