We all remember the iconic scene from Star Wars where Luke comes home to discover his family homestead has been torched by Imperial Stormtroopers, the tragedy of his aunt and uncles’ death paired with his understanding of his new destiny. It is perhaps the seminal call-to-action beat in cinema, arguably the defining moment of the most renowned of pop mythologies, operatic and powerful, and it is a scene George Lucas lifted almost verbatim from The Searchers –a 1956 western about a white Texan on a ruthless quest for vengeance against the Native Americans who killed his family and abducted his niece.
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John Ford’s The Searchers is one of those films that you’re most likely to first encounter through a fact like this. Through being adored by that generation of young filmmakers who came up and redefined Hollywood in the 1970s and after, it is one of the most influential and aesthetically quoted movies in American film history. Lucas wasn’t its’ only fan; Spielberg, David Lean, Paul Schrader, Sam Peckinpah, Michael Cimino, and Quentin Tarantino have all sung its’ praises or paid it homage. Scorsese once named it his favourite movie and even Goddard considered it one of the greatest American films. It’s a movie with a rich reputation far exceeding its’ mere modest success in its’ time.
And yet it also happens to be a movie that plays into certain tropes of the Old West myth, that casts a white guy as the one Native character of significance, and follows a hero who casually spews vile slurs and goes beyond reasonable bounds for his entirely race-motivated revenge –still cast valiantly by the final frame. The Searchers is a movie that may be consigned to that space of Gone with the Wind, The Jazz Singer or even Birth of a Nation –historically important movies with unforgivable racial politics that can thusly be dismissed, ignored, or de-legitimized. A movie that in 2022 cannot possibly be respected due to the harmful misconceptions and hateful ideology contained within it.
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That had been my take on The Searchers for a long time –I first saw it in college to find out what all the fuss was about, why this was the movie spoken of so highly by many of the great filmmakers who came after. I came away liking the scenery and offended by everything else. John Wayne was a hideous racist and the story seemingly jumps through hoops in its’ portrayal of the Comanche to justify his actions in the name of that racism. Just another Hollywood western grossly romanticizing white supremacy and manifest destiny. It did not age well and I assumed these later directors only admired it for aesthetic purposes as some of them did Leni Riefenstahl and Triumph of the Will –which is a whole other uncomfortable conversation.
But over the years I started to wonder about it again, this movie that still stands tall in cinematic history. And as I learned and grew more in my capacity for critical analysis, as I began to question my assumptions, my reasonings for liking or disliking a work of art, I realized movies such as The Searchers –indeed any with such lasting impact (looking at you especially Gone with the Wind)- can’t be dismissed out of hand. Watching the movie again for the first time in many years I was struck, not by how much I loved it or anything, but by how much more complicated and interesting it is than I had given it credit for. There are some conversations that have made it age better, taken in a wholly different light than in 1956. But at the same time it may well be a case of intent vs. execution, and the former is still important. It says something about the culture in which this film was made that cannot be overlooked, even as time and interpretation may shift the overall meaning. What is The Searchers, really? A horrible racist western or a great western about racism?
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It’s necessary to synopsize the thing first of all. Beginning in 1868, Ethan Edwards (Wayne) returns to his family farm in barren West Texas (though looking suspiciously like Monument Valley, Utah) after nearly a decade away fighting in both the Civil War and the war in Mexico. It’s immediately clear he is both infatuated with his brothers’ wife and disgusted by the family’s adopted son Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), who is part Cherokee. When a neighbour’s cattle are stolen, supposedly by Comanche, Ethan and Martin join the recovery party only to discover it was a ploy to draw them away from home –they return to find the Edwards farm in ruins and the family all killed but for the two daughters, including Ethan’s favourite Debbie, who have been taken. Thus begins a years-long mission to hunt down the Comanche and save the captives.
And basically from the start of this Ethan openly voices pessimism about the fate of the girls –much to the dismay of his compatriots, casually adding “if they’re still alive” to every discussion or plan. He’s not as emotionally invested as Martin, or the older girl’s fiancé, or even Texas Ranger Reverend Clayton (Ward Bond). Wayne is not a very emotive performer under the best of circumstances, but here it accentuates his coldness –it’s easy to read him as not terribly concerned one way or another about the safety of his nieces. And the alternative to their death, if they are after a time adopted into the tribe (as happened periodically throughout this era with captives of raids), it is worse in his view. But it’s not even registered as a fear of Ethan’s, just a fact of the circumstance that his responsibility will be to kill them. Even just being captured seems to lower their value in his estimation. It’s not about the girls, not even little Debbie. What matters is simply revenge.
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In 1956, Wayne is still the hero in spite of, or even because of this. He’s still the guy the audience can root for or aspire towards: the Duke on a noble quest for American values and American exceptionalism. John Wayne was and remains (for perhaps altogether different reasons) a symbol of the United States, and so through him anything could be just. But in the decades since, Ethan Edwards has tended to be viewed more consistently as at best an anti-hero -reportedly Paul Schrader looked to him as a model for Travis Bickle, which makes a whole lot of sense. Ethan is a man alienated from and isolated within the world, passionately driven by his own sense of justice. We don’t have an insight into his mind though, the way we do Travis. And that actually makes him come off more alien to the audience, as we aren’t privy to the way his mind works, how he rationalizes his bigotry. Removed from the iconography and hero worship of Wayne, there’s very little redeeming about his character, even in that last minute “redemption” the film gives him.
And what’s curious is this isn’t just the retrospective “John Wayne was a horrible person” lens, or the “classical westerns have always been innately racist and colonialist” lens. It is highly supported by the text. There is a stark difference between Ethan Edwards and other John Wayne characters, in films such as Stagecoach, Red River, and Fort Apache. Plenty of times Wayne characters have been condescending to Native Americans, disrespectful or verbally violent, but in Ethan we see a new systematic cruelty. Early on the trail, he shoots out the eyes of a dead Comanche at a burial ground, essentially desecrating the corpse, for no other reason but that it is an indignity in their religion. He doesn’t at all believes it makes a difference in whether this soul can go to the afterlife, but the point is to callously mock their spiritual beliefs while ascertaining his white supremacy. Outside of the quickly killed-off Martha (Dorothy Jordan), Ethan has no love interest and so has no need to show any kind of sentimental side -he’s rougher and a hell of a lot more angry than the average Wayne protagonist. His steadfast determination is so irrational too, he is a figure notably driven by hate, because he has nothing else in life that he values.
For as much as this sort of thing was likely lost on many, it is clearly, purposefully there. This characterization is so specific, the racial themes routinely ignored by Hollywood so open -it’s not an accident what comes across. But why is it here, and what is being said by it?
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It should be noted the Native Americans are not depicted in a terribly positive light either. Their perspective is not given much interest, they tend to live up to several stereotypes Ethan believes of them. And of course, with the exception of one woman who through comic circumstances briefly becomes Martins’ wife, the only speaking part is played by a white actor -the main antagonist Scar is in fact Henry Brandon, who made a career out of playing “ethnic roles”. The movie treats them with menace, as in the scene where they storm the Edwards’ farm, or when a lone Comanche on horseback observes the party from a hill just ahead of an ambush. They are seen to be violent, ruthless, and in a crucial scene, as motivated by revenge as Ethan. When they finally meet face to face, Scar tells him his two sons were killed by white men and for that he has “taken many scalps.” Ethan and Scar are parallels of one another, a dichotomy is created around them. And it’s possible the movie means this to justify Ethan’s actions and behaviour -or possibly justify them both. That what is being said here is that the frontier accentuates evil and bigotry on either side.
This of course ignores the larger picture of the systemic genocide of Indigenous peoples by white settlers just like Ethan. It places racial hatred within a vacuum and on an equal footing that doesn’t exist. One could argue it even directly favours the white side, by Ethan at the end doing the bare minimum of not killing his niece -but of course Scar never has the chance for a similar redemption, Martin killed him before he could and Ethan of course, took his scalp as yet another vicious mockery. Still, it’s curious that Ford holds back on some of the ways he could vilify the Comanche, who only appear intermittently for much of the film. In fact they are much more organized as a collective than westerns of this era typically portrayed them, there are allusions to a culture (misinformed though it may be). And consider the climax in which a cavalry charges through a Comanche camp -one that is echoed thirty-four years later in the Pawnee raid in Dances with Wolves. We see Clayton and his men firing at will into the largely defenseless settlement, women and children are seen fleeing for their lives. How much better is this than the Comanche attacking an innocent farm? Certainly more are dying in this circumstance.
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The very fact that its’ white characters are not beyond reproach in their participation in this violent exercise of revenge and racism is significant. That we see so much of an unambiguously horrid character in Ethan and are asked instead to sympathize with the likes of Martin, his love interest Laurie (Vera Miles), and even Debbie (who grows into Natalie Wood) -far less extreme characters with values more immediately relatable. Of course even Laurie shares Ethan’s view that killing Debbie is preferable to her becoming one of them -a sign of just how disseminated this racism is; and Debbie herself is framed as naïve in her choice to remain among the Comanche. Martin though is the most consistent contrast to Ethan and he firmly believes in saving Debbie -he of course acts as a human shield when Ethan attempts to shoot her. Martin is not so bitter, even though he lost as much as Ethan in the torching of the farm, and he ultimately is the one to kill the bad guy. He is generally the more conventional western hero -the type Wayne himself had often played twenty years prior. And let it not be forgotten that he is a product of miscegenation.
That is a subtle theme throughout the movie -multiple characters expressing a particular fear of the intermingling of the races. Ethan asserts it plainly that the worst outcome beyond Debbie’s death or indoctrination would be for her to be sexually involved or procreate with a Comanche-and others back this up. What’s more disturbing about this conviction is the insinuation that Debbie might actually be Ethans’ daughter rather than niece, born through a brief affair with Martha years ago. That even with that close blood-tie, she ceases to be a human being to him in the event of miscegenation, even if it is rape (as is the general assumption in these circumstances), renders him all the more reprehensible. That, as Laurie believes “Martha would want him to do it” says even sicker things about that society. But Ford doesn’t support that position, clearly epitomized by Martin rebuking such things. If he had, the “happy ending” might have been Ethan actually following through on his threat.
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But obviously it’s small potatoes that this movies’ attitude towards miscegenation boils down to ‘it’s not worth killing over’. For as much as it does seem to be conscious of its’ politics and the awful personality of its’ protagonist, a lot of the racist material brought up goes uncriticized -it still ends in a place that can feasibly frame Ethan as the good guy, doesn’t actively dispel much of what he thinks of the Comanche, or ask its’ characters to be any less racist going forward. And of course if John Wayne himself had felt the film was actively anti-racist in any way he wouldn’t have done it. So we come back to that central point. Is The Searchers bad because of the racism that is a fundamental part of it, both in content and intent? Or is it good because it draws attention to racism and revenge in ways that are viscerally off-putting, countering it with mild anti-racist themes?
The thing is the premise of this essay is inherently flawed. It assumes an either/or answer, as many of these kind of essays do when there isn’t one (in my defence it’s a topic worth considering). The Searchers can be both racist and about racism -the fact of the latter doesn’t cancel out the former. But I now realize when I first watched the movie I was asking it to provide easy moral signposts, in a way I still am -to spell out in some kind of definitive statement that the racism is wrong, that Ethan must be punished for being a racist person, that it must outline these points for an impressionable audience, lest they take away the wrong message (which of course with a movie like this in the time it came out, many did). And it’s generally not a helpful way to look at movies. The Searchers can speak for itself, and one thing that hasn’t changed about interpreting it is that it is fundamentally a movie about hate.
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Ethan is driven by hate, whether or not it is rational, and whether or not he redeems himself in the end, it makes him say and do cruel things. Roger Ebert asks the same questions I do in his review of the film, included in one of his Great Movies lists. He comes to a curious conclusion: “I think Ford was trying, imperfectly, even nervously, to depict racism that justified genocide -many members of the original audience probably missed his purpose; Ethan’s racism was invisible to them, because they bought into his view of Indians.” There may be something there. Ebert notes in the same review that a few years later Ford made a western with a much more sympathetic depiction of Native Americans, Cheyenne Autumn. The Searchers definitely seems to be a movie in conversation with the western genre in a way westerns hadn’t been up till then. But at the same time, it placates its’ audience, diluting some of that intent and allowing the myths to continue in the minds of the public unabated. It challenges racism but not unflinchingly, it re-envisions the Old West but not succinctly. It is very imperfect and it is very fascinating.
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I no longer can call The Searchers a bad movie, in spite of the reservations explained. That said I don’t know I would put it on my own list of THE Great Movies either -though certain aspects might sway me. Taking the text aside, it is John Ford’s best directed movie, it looks better than any of his record four Oscar wins. The wild red scenery is breathtaking and the cinematography stunning. It’s got a lot of really strong, evocative visual choices, Ford having been more of a visionary than he gets credit for; particularly the bookends, which frame the vast open desert through a homestead doorway -it’s no wonder so many filmmakers have quoted it. And it’s no wonder its’ striking technicolour and the way the environment is made so much a character of the piece had a ripple effect on greater “exotic” epics to follow like Lawrence of Arabia or Doctor Zhivago.
My initial thoughts on The Searchers I understand to have been premature. I realize too that my own personal bias had clouded this movie for me: namely that I don’t particularly care for John Wayne, as an actor and especially as a public figure. But then I think about a movie like The Unforgiven (not to be confused with the Clint Eastwood film) -a western from a few years later that I saw around the same time and also tackles racism but stars Audrey Hepburn, maybe my favourite star of that era- and how I much preferred it. But The Unforgiven isn’t terribly memorable, its’ good intents probably just as complicated as this movies’, and while it doesn’t feature as heinous a character as Ethan Edwards, Hepburn does play a half-Kiowa woman in slightly browned-up make-up and it is not convincing. The Searchers has plenty of faults, and it is worth discussing its’ problematic politics in depth (I didn’t even go into the role of masculinity in the film), yet I admire its’ attempts at something bold -the way it effectively peels back the curtain of the western hero, revealing just how toxic the archetype really is, and leaving it to the audience to decide whether they are good or bad. It provokes the right questions whether or not it does justice to its’ intents. Doubtless The Searchers is an important film, especially in the history of this genre. And if more westerns in that classic era had been like The Searchers, warts and all, it might have been a richer and more compelling subset of the American Cinema.
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