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THE SEARCHERS
1956
Director
John Ford
Starring
John Wayne
Jeffrey Hunter
Vera Miles
Ward Bond
Natalie Wood
Runtime
119 minutes
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"From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
There is no story more profoundly American than a quest fuelled by psychotic obsession and ending in ruinous madness. John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS is an apotheosis of the form. While mercilessly interrogating the mythological cinematic persona of John Wayne, it birthed a lineage of American filmmaking about broken, violent men trying to redeem themselves as the saviors of those who they perceive as victims—a tradition running from works like Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER and Paul Schrader's HARDCORE right on through to the defining work of the QAnon era, Lynne Ramsay's YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE.
Duke stars as Confederate veteran Ethan Edwards who, on the losing side of history, is consumed by a pathological hatred for Native Americans, so-called “savages” who Edwards greatly exceeds in his viciousness. He embarks on a years-long mission of rescue-or-revenge to find his missing niece, presumed captured by the Comanche. It’s a film of overwhelming contradictions. Through the central image of the American frontier, the meeting point of wilderness and civilization, Ford explores the divisions of our national character, with its search for order and its need for violence, its spirit of community and its quest for independence. Often ranked among the greatest films ever made, and certainly among the most discomfiting, THE SEARCHERS is a study of the American spirit that pulls zero punches.
“Like all great works of art, THE SEARCHERS is uncomfortable. The core of the movie is deeply painful. Every time I watch it—and I’ve seen it many, many times since its first run in 1956—it haunts and troubles me. The character of Ethan Edwards is one of the most unsettling in American cinema. In truly great films—the ones that people need to make, the ones that start speaking through them, the ones that keep moving into territory that is more and more unfathomable and uncomfortable—nothing’s ever simple or neatly resolved. You’re left with a mystery.” - Martin Scorsese
“THE SEARCHERS gathers the deepest concerns of American literature, distilling 200 years of tradition in a way available only to popular art, and with a beauty available only to a supreme visual poet like Ford." - Dave Kehr
There is no story more profoundly American than a quest fuelled by psychotic obsession and ending in ruinous madness. John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS is an apotheosis of the form. While mercilessly interrogating the mythological cinematic persona of John Wayne, it birthed a lineage of American filmmaking about broken, violent men trying to redeem themselves as the saviors of those who they perceive as victims—a tradition running from works like Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER and Paul Schrader's HARDCORE right on through to the defining work of the QAnon era, Lynne Ramsay's YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE.
Duke stars as Confederate veteran Ethan Edwards who, on the losing side of history, is consumed by a pathological hatred for Native Americans, so-called “savages” who Edwards greatly exceeds in his viciousness. He embarks on a years-long mission of rescue-or-revenge to find his missing niece, presumed captured by the Comanche. It’s a film of overwhelming contradictions. Through the central image of the American frontier, the meeting point of wilderness and civilization, Ford explores the divisions of our national character, with its search for order and its need for violence, its spirit of community and its quest for independence. Often ranked among the greatest films ever made, and certainly among the most discomfiting, THE SEARCHERS is a study of the American spirit that pulls zero punches.
“Like all great works of art, THE SEARCHERS is uncomfortable. The core of the movie is deeply painful. Every time I watch it—and I’ve seen it many, many times since its first run in 1956—it haunts and troubles me. The character of Ethan Edwards is one of the most unsettling in American cinema. In truly great films—the ones that people need to make, the ones that start speaking through them, the ones that keep moving into territory that is more and more unfathomable and uncomfortable—nothing’s ever simple or neatly resolved. You’re left with a mystery.” - Martin Scorsese
“THE SEARCHERS gathers the deepest concerns of American literature, distilling 200 years of tradition in a way available only to popular art, and with a beauty available only to a supreme visual poet like Ford." - Dave Kehr