Independent Films, Film Profiles

The Searchers (film)
by John Ford

The Searchers is a 1956 epic Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May. It is the story of Ethan Edwards, a middle-aged Civil War veteran portrayed by John Wayne, who spends years looking for his abducted niece.While a commercial success upon its 1956 release, The Searchers received no Academy Award nominations. It was named the Greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008. It also placed 12th on the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the Top 100 greatest movies of all time.The year is 1868. Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returns from the American Civil War, in which he fought for the Confederacy, to the home of his brother Aaron (Walter Coy) in rural northern Texas. Despite hints and supposition that Ethan has been up to no good, the movie's early scenes never explicitly frame Ethan for wrongdoing. However, Ranger Captain Clayton (Ward Bond), who is also the local preacher, dourly observes, after Ethan refuses to take an oath of allegiance to the Texas Rangers ("no need to, wouldn't be legal anyway") "you fit a lot of [wanted poster] descriptions." Ethan has a medal that he gives to his niece Debbie (Lana Wood), which suggests he has been in Mexico during the period of the Emperor Maximilian. He also gives Aaron two pouches of freshly minted Double Eagle $20 dollar gold pieces to help with the ranch. Martha and Aaron wonder, but do not ask, where they came from. Shortly after his arrival, a Comanche raid leaves his brother and sister-in-law Martha (Dorothy Jordan), his nephew, Ben (Robert Lyden), all dead, and his two nieces, Lucy (Pippa Scott) and Debbie, abducted, and the family homestead burned down.After the funeral, a group led by Captain Clayton goes in search of the raiding party. When they discover the location of the encampment, Ethan wants to attack immediately, before daylight. Clayton points out to Ethan that the Comanche generally kill their hostages at the first notice of a raid, which is something that Ethan already knows. This is the first sign that Ethan is willing not to bring the girls back alive. Captain Clayton gives the order that they will sneak in easy and scare off the band's horses. By the time they get to the encampment the Indians are gone. The Rangers are then caught in a pincer movement trap and have to make a run for the river. As they cross the river, one of the group, Nesby (William Steele), is wounded. The Rangers take up a defensive position using the river as a buffer, and they manage to repel the attack. The Indians retreat. When Ethan attempts to kill one more Comanche, Clayton stops him by knocking his rifle barrel down. This enrages Ethan who says that from now on he will do the job by himself. Captain Clayton decides that they are too few to continue and must get Nesby back home to treat his wound.One of the group, Brad Jorgensen (Harry Carey, Jr.), also Lucy's fiancé, says that someone will have to kill him to make him stop looking for Lucy. Aaron's adopted son, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who is ⁄8 Cherokee, feels the same way, and with the two of them, Ethan continues to pursue the Comanche. The three of them find where the main trail goes one way and four horses take off to the right, into a tight canyon pass. Ethan tells them that he will follow the small trail and that the two of them should stay on the main trail. When Ethan returns he is distracted and seemingly upset, but doesn't say anything. He also seems to have lost his Confederate Army long coat. Later Brad is out on scout duty on foot and returns to Ethan and Martin saying that he has found the Comanche camp, and has seen Lucy. At this point Ethan tells Brad and Martin that it wasn't Lucy, that he had already found the murdered body of Lucy in the canyon. He had wrapped her body in his coat, and buried her with his bare hands. Brad, enraged, mounts his horse and charges into the encampment alone, dying in a fruitless, suicidal attempt to avenge Lucy.Ethan and Martin lose the trail when the winter blizzards come. They go to Fort Richardson, Fort Wingate (near Gallup, New Mexico), Fort Cobb and the Anadarko Agency both in Indian Territory, among other places trying to pick up the trail. After a year, they return to the Jorgensen ranch. When they arrive, Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles) has been pining and waiting for Martin, and Ethan has a letter waiting for him from a man who runs a trading post on the Salt Fork of the Brazos River, Jerem Futterman, saying that Futterman has information about Debbie. The next morning Martin learns that Ethan has left without him, but Laurie has stolen the letter to give to Martin. She also lets Martin take her horse. Laurie doesn't want Martin to go, but knows that he must. Ethan and Martin continue to search for Debbie, a search that goes on for five years. During that time, she grows into adolescence and is taken as mate by Scar (Henry Brandon), the chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanche. Scar is presented as the cultural mirror image of Ethan. He hates whites every bit as much as Ethan hates Indians. Once Ethan realizes that Debbie (now played by Natalie Wood) has been mated to Scar, he undergoes a change. He no longer wants to rescue Debbie; he wants her dead, believing that a white woman being a Comanche's "squaw" is worse than death. Martin follows in hopes of stopping Ethan from killing the girl. When Ethan and Martin are alone with Debbie the first time, Ethan draws his pistol to murder his niece but Martin shields her with his own body. Ethan fires the pistol to kill Martin in order to get a clear shot at Debbie but his aim is ruined when he is struck by an Indian's arrow just as he pulls the trigger. Ethan and Martin have to run for cover and Debbie escapes execution by her uncle.Eventually Ethan, Martin, and the Texas Rangers find Debbie again after an old man named Mose Harper who was Scar's captive escapes and lets them know where to go. Martin kills Scar and Ethan scalps the dead chief. Martin tries to prevent Ethan from killing Debbie, but it is Ethan himself who realizes how close he has come to destroying the last link to his family and how, in the act of scalping Scar, he himself has become what he hated so much. Instead of killing Debbie, he lifts her in his arms just as he did when she was a child. Ethan brings Debbie to the safety of friends and then walks away. The film, which opened with a near-identical shot of another doorway, slowly revealing the film's landscape, finishes with a reversal: the film's players enter the darkness within the doorway, and the door closes, just before the end title, leaving Ethan isolated outside where he turns and wanders away into the wilderness.