The Searchers

***** Classic

It’s not what is said and done in John Ford’s The Searchers that makes it such an effective film. It is what is not said and done—the actions that are implied but never seen, and the dialogue that is thought but never spoken. It is about two men’s five-year search for a girl kidnapped by Comanche Indians, but it is more interested in why they are searching than who they are searching for.

Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) might be the last, traditional cowboy of the pre-Political Correctness era. John Ford attempted to paint sympathetic, more accurate portrayals on Indians in his Westerns, in a time when they were usually just used for villains and set pieces for the heroic cowboys to conquer. Ethan Edwards is such a conqueror—a hard-boiled racist and an ex-Confederate soldier who searches for his kidnapped niece Debbie with the sole intention of shooting her dead. “Living with Comanches ain't being alive,” he insists, and he sees no moral dilemma in murdering the girl in cold blood once he finds her.

Ethan’s adopted nephew, Marty (Jeffrey Hunter) is a half-breed who, after the rest of his family was killed by a Comanche raid, intends to rescue his sister from what is surely a terrible fate. Despite his uncle’s intent, Marty plans to go to great lengths to bring her back alive, because she is the only family that he has left besides this racist, bitter ex-soldier, who sees Marty as a half-breed who “ain’t no kin to me.”

The two men pursue the Comanche raiders together despite the fact that they understand that once they find them, one will probably have to kill the other in order to fulfill their intentions. Still, for now they need each other. Marty needs Ethan because no one knows the Comanche customs and travel patterns better than he does. Ethan needs Marty more than he’d like to admit—to stabilize his rage and keep him from going completely mad in his isolation.

The Searchers can be viewed as a simplistic action story about two men’s hunt for Debbie and revenge for the death of their family, but Ford makes several directorial choices to make it clear that his film works on a much more complex level. Most of the dialogue is sparse and limited to the action at hand, but think about the dialogue that we never hear. Ethan and Marty pursue Debbie for five years, but they never have one deep conversation, not one heart-to-heart talk. It’s as if both men spend five years on the surface, never discussing the feelings of loss or anger that plagues them. Ethan has one moment in which he describes an American woman who he has found dead, and when he begins to show emotion, he shuffles it away by saying, “What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture? Spell it out? Don't ever ask me! Long as you live, don't ever ask me more.”

Ethan’s only intention is to kill Debbie once he finds her, and it is an obsession that remains within him for five whole years. He pursues her passionately, rigorously. He is relentless, determined, obsessed, and nearly unstoppable. We are forced to ask, why would a man pursue a woman for five years, only so he can kill her? Certainly Marty is an acceptable foil—he loves his sister, and he wants to bring her back alive. He stares at Ethan curiously, often wondering what is going on inside the man’s head. What has happened to him to fuel such hatred and rage against the Comanche that he would go to such great lengths to kill a niece who has been integrated into their tribe?

As Marty questions this man, we do also, attempting to draw conclusions about his behavior based on what we know about him. Could this bloodlust be because of the love that he had for his brother’s wife? Before the family was murdered, Ethan eyed her carefully, and was quick to show her muffled signs of affection when they were alone. Perhaps losing her snapped the rest of a failing sanity, and now he must destroy everything that reminds him of this love that could have been. Could it be his ex-soldier status? He fought for the Confederate States of America, and he refused to surrender even after the war was over. Perhaps he feels that he must continue fighting and killing, because it is all that he knows. Besides these two aspects, virtually everything else about Ethan remains hidden to the viewer, and neither Ford nor Wayne ever give us a clear answer of the man’s exact person.

Personally, I think that Ethan’s true motivation is in the fact that his old ways are dying. He is representational of the Hollywood cowboy and the perceptions that were shifting among viewers at the time The Searchers was made. He represents the old-fashioned cowboy from the days that there were no moral implications to consider when killing Indians. They were the “bad guys,” plain and simple. To him, that’s all that they will ever be. Men like Marty, a half-breed, might also believe that the men they are pursuing are evil, but he is sympathetic towards the Indian race in general. Others, such as the reverend-turned-soldier Sam Clayton, (Ward Bond) see Indians as an evil that must be purged, but Clayton understands that there is a time when the war must end and peace must be made. Ethan refuses to see this, and he refuses to let go of his traditional values.

Ethan is John Wayne’s most complex role, and probably his best. He plays Ethan as a Westernized Captain Ahab, pursuing his own, limitless obsessions under the guise of an attainable goal. He is his own antagonist, even when he believes that he enemies lurk all about him. He is a character of complete surface—he laughs and converses when he has to, and otherwise uses dialogue to simply move the action along. But underneath this surface is a man on the brink of insanity. His eyes shift, his face grimaces, and every so often, he explodes in anger. We understand what he does not—his obsessions are driving him mad, but he is so set in his old traditions that he is incapable of change. His destiny is ultimately lonely isolation—a point made clear in the famous last shot from inside a doorway: All the other chief characters enter into the house, and Ford pauses the camera on Wayne, alone in the expansive wilderness outside. He turns to leave, and the door shuts behind him. He is a victim of his own solitude.

Ford’s filmmaking techniques compliment the film’s message. He more or less invented he modern Western with his sweeping visuals and epic storylines, and The Searchers was part of that invention. The entire film is tinted with an orange filter, leaving the impression that despite what we are literally seeing on screen, there are other shades that these characters are tinted with. The point: Cowboys live in an age that, whether you are good or bad, you follow a strict code of honor in which you always tell the truth, never cheat an honest fellow, and tip your hat to the ladies. Ford has a deep appreciation for these chivalric codes, but he also understands that they create a surface that can sometimes tint the deeper emotions and struggles within a person.

When The Searchers deals with the hunt for Debbie and the careful relationship between Ethan and Marty, it is flawless, provocative, and revealing. Not so successful is a subplot between Marty and a childhood sweetheart (Vera Miles) that distracts us from the film’s central thesis. These moments are played for laughs, and Ethan’s racism and obsession are such strong, powerful contrasts to this light-hearted romance that the scenes devoted to Marty’s love subplot seem routine, silly, and, ultimately, dead in the water. Ford was certainly dealing with the deconstruction of conventions with this film, yet he is eventually a victim of a convention himself. Why he chose to insert such a pointless romance into an otherwise great, serious film is anyone’s guess—perhaps the studio didn’t think that the movie could sell without teenage heartthrobs strutting their stuff. Too bad.

This pointless love subplot aside, there are still unforgettable, genre-defining aspects in The Searchers that cannot be overlooked or discredited. I prefer to measure a film on how close it comes to achieving greatness, glaring flaws aside, and this film achieves it wholeheartedly, with or without its faults. Indeed, this could very well be the film that transformed the Western genre and paved the way for more sympathetic examinations of the Native American culture, which had otherwise been reduced to cliché. In addition, Wayne’s careful portrait of an obsessed madman probably also opened the door for other great performances of deranged heroes—Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle and Apocalypse Now’s Willard come immediately to mind. For this, we should be very grateful. And we are.

Cast:
John Wayne: Ethan Edwards
Jeffrey Hunter: Marty Pawley
Ward Bond: Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton
Vera Miles: Laurie
Henry Brandon: Chief Scar

A Warner Brothers film. Directed by John Ford. Written by Frank S. Nugent, from the book by Alan Le May. No M.PA.A. rating (fine for mature kids—most of the action is bloodless). Running time: 119 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: March 13, 1956.