The Searchers

Mittenbuttes_1There’s a scene in a Deep Space 9 episode where Nog is hiding out in Vic Fontane’s 1963 apartment watching TV. He sees the end of the Western movie Shane and then declares:

NOG: I liked The Searchers better.

VIC: (shrugging) Who doesn’t?

This intrigued me because, at the time, I had seen Shane but not The Searchers. Recently, I got the chance to. In fact, Steve Greydanus and I watched it together. It was the first time to see the film for both of us, and afterward we had a great time debating the film–particularly its moral significance.

YOU CAN READ STEVE’S REVIEW HERE.

I’m particularly tickled by one line in Steve’s review, where he cites as an example of pointless carping the criticism that John Ford’s Monument Valley, Utah filming location doesn’t look like the West Texas setting of the film. I’m tickled by that because as we watched the film, I made this very criticism! (Sure, Monument Valley is gorgeous, but seeing the East and West Mitten Buttes [above] in film after film by Ford harms my suspension of disbelief.)

My thought largely converges with Steve’s, but I thought I’d add a few thoughts of my own.

First, about Shane. There is a reason one can compare this film with The Searchers, because both are part of the same general subgenre of Western, which one might call "the thoughtful Western." This contrasts with the commedic Western (Support Your Local Sheriff, Support Your Local Gunfighter, Maverick), the hard-bitten Western (Clint Eastwood’s "Man With No Name" trilogy), the Indian-centric Western (The Little Big Man, Dances With Wolves), the Spaghetti Western (Sergio Leone’s stuff), the historical recreation (Tombstone, Wyatt Earp) and a bunch of other subgenres, including the Sci-Fi Western (Timerider, Back to the Future III, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.).

The thoughtful Western involves showing something other than a feel-good shoot-’em-up or a hostile critique of Western expansion. It combines elements of the two, attempting to show the moral complexity of the Old West. It allows elements of the feel-good Western but mixes it with disturbing elements that serve as a moral counterpoint. It doesn’t slide into being "hate America," politically correct history, but it doesn’t present the Old West with "white hats vs. black hats" simplicity.

In other words, it tries in some measure to capture the human condition. This is what elevates The Searchers into being a work of art rather than simply being a work of entertainment.

Shane does this to a certain extent, most memorably in a scene in which its hero is having a brutal fight with a villain and the proceedings are being observed by a young boy who–his eyes wide with wonder at the spectacle–is also eagerly munching on a candy cane as he watches. This disturbing image of a child being exposed to and fascinated by such violence invites the audience to contemplate its own enjoyment of Western action and the motives that might be behind the pleasure they get at watching it. It’s an implicit questioning of the simplistic vision of the Western hero.

Shane does not break too much from the mold and does not examine the moral complexity of the Old West to the extent of other films, but John Ford’s The Searchers does. This film carries the respectful questioning of Western mythology to a whole new level.

It would be a little hard for me to say, with Nog and Vic, that I would "like" or "enjoy" The Searchers more than Shane.  I recognize that it is a film that better expresses the human condition and that from this perspective it is a better film, and one that is to be watched. But for pure enjoyment value, a Western with more feel-good factor is more likely what I’d plop into my DVD tray on any given occasion.

The Searchers represents a continuation of themes found in previous John Ford’s works. His earlier film She Wore A Yellow Ribbon was set just after the Battle of the Little Bighorn (i.e., Custer’s Last Stand) and features John Wayne as an aging calvalryman who is trying to avert a full-scale Indian war and the devastation it would bring to both sides if, buoyed by their success against Custer, various tribes decided to begin a massacre.

At one point in the film, Wayne tries to avoid the coming war by meeting with an aging Indian chief who is a personal friend of his. The chief, who is a Christian, tells Wayne that the young men of the tribes are too empassioned to be calmed down by words, that he has lost his influence with them, and that he fears that a war that will be devastating for both sides is now unstoppable. This "voice of wisdom and experience" vs. "youth and passion" dynamic represents a factor of the human condition affecting all groups (Indians and Anglos alike) and goes beyond the "circle the wagons, start the shoot-’em-up" mentality of many Westerns.

In The Searchers, Wayne is again working with Ford, but this time the director expresses the human condition in a different way, by turning Wayne not into the aging voice of wisdom but into the aging voice of bitterness.

Now Wayne is an embittered former Confederate soldier who refused to surrender at the end of the war and who has been wandering ever since. Like the majority of people at this time, he harbors racist attitudes, but they are not so extreme that he is unable to recognize and respect the humanity of others. It would seem that Wayne’s character would be happy if different groups simply left each other alone and minded their own affairs.

He doesn’t get what he wants, because an aggrieved Indian leader murders most of his family and kidnaps two of its youngest female members. In an attempt to get them back, Wayne and a companion become the searchers that give the movie it’s title.

Wayne’s character is far more complex than what one expects from the traditional John Wayne hero. At different moments he can be heroic, wise, foolish, and morally repugnant. And the film means him to be shown in these lights. While Ford  means us to respect and appreciate much of what Wayne does, he are means us to be dismayed and abhorred by some of it.  He is thus trying to show the human condition, for all humans barring Our Lord and Our Lady are in some measure praiseworthy and in some measure abhorrent.

Ford does not push the character so far in the direction of the latter that he becomes an anti-hero. In this way, The Searchers may represent a transitional film in the history of Westerns, pushing the hero firmly toward the dark side, but not pushing him full into it the way later filmmakers did. There are several points in the latter half of the movie where Ford could have simply stopped filming, leaving us with a bleak, existential statement, but in the end he allows the characters involved, Wayne’s included, to find redemption.

After all, no matter what our flaws, redemption is what each of us is searching for.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

7 thoughts on “The Searchers

  1. I’m particularly tickled by one line in Steve’s review, where he cites as an example of pointless carping the criticism that John Ford’s Monument Valley, Utah filming location doesn’t look like the West Texas setting of the film. I’m tickled by that because as we watched the film, I made this very criticism! (Sure, Monument Valley is gorgeous, but seeing the East and West Mitten Buttes [above] in film after film by Ford harms my suspension of disbelief.)

    Heh. Well, I didn’t mean that it’s “pointless carping” for someone who happens to be familiar with the geography to complain that it harms his suspension of disbelief — any more than it’s unreasonable for someone who happens to be familiar with American Indian language and culture and so forth to complain that having John Wayne declare that the traditional Navajo “squaw dance song” is actually a Comanche “death song” harms THEIR suspension of disbelief — or for that matter for a Scandanavian to complain about John Qualen’s Swedish accent.
    What I meant to dismiss as “pointless carping” is not just complaining, but OBJECTING that these inaccuracies are somehow inherently disrespectful or objectionable to someone or something.
    For example, I didn’t want to say it in my review, because I didn’t want to get excessively polemical or point fingers, but one critic, who has taught the film in classes with American Indian students, says that The Searchers “plays nearly as badly for Native Americans as Birth of a Nation does for African Americans,” and refers to the “subtle forms” of racism inherent in the film’s non-rigorous approach to depicting American Indian culture, as well as what he calls the film’s larger “blatant racism,” though it’s not clear to me why the examples he cites from the film are supposed to show that the film itself, as opposed to the characters’ attitudes, is problematic.
    Be that as it may, to compare The Searchers‘ “ludicrous ‘tom-tom’ music” to the truly disturbing imagery in Birth of a Nation is, IMO, way, way over the top, and it was the exaggerated stridency of this sort of objection to which my comments about “pointless carping” was directed.

  2. P.S. Another anecdote from Jimmy’s and my viewing that readers might enjoy:
    At one point John Wayne’s character Ethan is told by a Mexican about an Indian chief named “Cicatriz,” which Ethan translates as “Mexican for ‘Scar'” (the name of the enemy Comanche chief).
    “Spanish,” I murmurred (“Mexican” isn’t a language). But Jimmy replied, “Well, but Ethan would probably also say that he speaks ‘American.'”
    Wouldn’t you know it — in the very next scene Ethan is greeted by Scar in English, and shoots back at him: “You speak pretty good American — someone teach ya?”
    Western-watchin’ cool points to Jimmy!

  3. “Briscoe County Jumior” …. Ah! you were the other person watching the best thing on TV. I knew there was more than just me.

  4. Actually, that wasn’t me. FOX advertised Brisco as if it was going to be a sexier show than I’d want to watch, so I didn’t see it when it was first on.
    Discovered it in re-runs and loved it! When are they going to put this out on DVD???

  5. dear jimmy,
    i am a movie fan and i see that you are a great specialist of the “american west” and the western.
    Could you help me in giving me some information concerning the movie “support your local sheriff”.
    Were is the exact filming location of that excellent movie.
    thank you.
    Jacques

  6. It’s probably John Wayne’s best performance. It also contains my favorite John Wayne scene(yeah, even over the scene in “True Grit” where he takes the reins in his teeth): that wonderful scene of redemption when he picks up Natalie Wood(whom he earlier tried to kill) and says: “Let’s go home, Debbie”.

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