Part of Restoration Roundup
In this revered yet problematic Western staple, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returns home to Texas after the Civil War. When members of his brother’s family are killed or abducted by Comanches, he vows to track down his surviving relatives and bring them home. Eventually, Edwards gets word that his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood) is alive, and, along with her adopted brother, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), he embarks on a dangerous mission to find her, journeying deep into Comanche territory.
With its talk of “savages” and cringe-worthy depiction of Native Americans, THE SEARCHERS has been reevaluated over time as giving voice to a standing racism of the Old West. Yet proponents argue that in some of the most scrutinized scenes, Ford is presenting the most compromised character in “anti-hero” Ethan Edwards himself — Wayne’s own politics aside. While scenes from Ford’s prior films presented Native Americans in similarly harsh light, later films like TWO RODE TOGETHER and CHEYENNE AUTUMN would be more thoughtful, and similarly tough on white pioneers — thereby putting THE SEARCHERS somewhere in the middle of a great filmmaker’s reckoning with the genre he’d helped to develop. As Roger Ebert wrote, “In the flawed vision of THE SEARCHERS, we can see Ford, Wayne, and the Western itself, awkwardly learning that a man who hates Indians can no longer be an uncomplicated hero.”
“At its center is a difficult question, because the Wayne character is racist without apology — and so, in a less outspoken way, are the other white characters. Is the film intended to endorse their attitudes, or to dramatize and regret them? Today we see it through enlightened eyes, but in 1956 many audiences accepted its harsh view of Indians.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Nov 25, 2001) “Like all great works of art, it's 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.” —Martin Scorsese, Hollywood Reporter (Mar 8, 2013)
