39 min
#17 - The Searchers (1956) Film School 101
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- TV & Film
A popular though critically ignored Western at the time of its release, John Ford's The Searchers was canonized a decade later by auteur critics as the American masterpiece par excellence exerting its influence as a cinematic touchstone and "cult film" among such directors of the New Hollywood as Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Representing Ford's most emotionally complex and generically sophisticated work, The Searchers manages to be both a rousing adventure movie and a melancholy film poem exploring the American values at the heart of the Western genre.
At the center of the film is Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a bitter, ruthless and frustrated crusader engaged in a five-year quest to retrieve a niece kidnapped by the Comanches. Edwards is perhaps Wayne's most accomplished characterization, isolated by the violent individualism which defines his heroic status.
A popular though critically ignored Western at the time of its release, John Ford's The Searchers was canonized a decade later by auteur critics as the American masterpiece par excellence exerting its influence as a cinematic touchstone and "cult film" among such directors of the New Hollywood as Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Representing Ford's most emotionally complex and generically sophisticated work, The Searchers manages to be both a rousing adventure movie and a melancholy film poem exploring the American values at the heart of the Western genre.
At the center of the film is Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a bitter, ruthless and frustrated crusader engaged in a five-year quest to retrieve a niece kidnapped by the Comanches. Edwards is perhaps Wayne's most accomplished characterization, isolated by the violent individualism which defines his heroic status.
39 min