The Searchers, John Ford's epic 1956 Western, is a film geek's paradise: It is preposterous in its plotting, spasmodic in its pacing, unfunny in its hijinks, bipolar. The Searchers (1956) Trivia on IMDb: Cameos, Mistakes, Spoilers and more. If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor spectacle like such Ford classics as She Wore a. The Hotties and Fashion Icons: Carroll Baker, Doris Day, Diana Dors, Anita Ekberg, Annette Funicello, Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren. The Searchers (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Searchers is a 1. American Technicolor. Vista. Vision. Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1. Alan Le May, set during the Texas. Guitar chords and guitar tablature made easy. Chordie is a search engine for finding guitar chords and guitar tabs. F or 30 years – from the 1960s until the late 1990s – The Searchers left a substantial mark on a whole generation of film. In terms of classical storytelling, The Searchers, John Ford’s most compelling Western, avoids association with the genre’s established precepts. An Indian-hating Civil War veteran tracks down the tribe that slaughtered his family and kidnapped his niece. Starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter and Ward. Critic Roger Ebert found Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards, . Since its release, it has come to be considered a masterpiece, and one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. It was named the greatest American western by the American Film Institute in 2. American movies of all time. Ethan Edwards (Wayne) returns after an eight- year absence to the home of his brother Aaron (Walter Coy) in the wilderness of West Texas. Ethan fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, and in the three years since that war ended he apparently fought in the Mexican revolutionary war as well. He has a large quantity of gold coins of uncertain origin in his possession, and a medal from the Mexican campaign that he gives to his eight- year- old niece, Debbie (played as a child by Lana Wood). As a former Confederate soldier, he is asked to take an oath of allegiance to the Texas Rangers; he refuses. Captain Samuel Clayton (Ward Bond) remarks, Ethan . When they return they find the Edwards homestead in flames. Aaron, his wife Martha (Dorothy Jordan), and their son Ben (Robert Lyden) are dead, and Debbie and her older sister Lucy (Pippa Scott) have been abducted. After a brief funeral the men set out in pursuit. They come upon a burial ground of Comanches who were killed during the raid. Ethan mutilates one of the bodies. When they find the Comanche camp, Ethan recommends a frontal attack, but Clayton insists on a stealth approach to avoid killing the hostages. The camp is deserted, and further along the trail the men ride into an ambush. Though they fend off the attack, the Rangers are left with too few men to fight the Indians effectively. They return home, leaving Ethan to continue his search for the girls with only Lucy's fianc. Ethan finds Lucy brutally murdered and presumably raped in a canyon near the Comanche camp. In a blind rage, Brad rides directly into the Indian camp and is killed. Martin is enthusiastically welcomed by the Jorgensens' daughter Laurie (Vera Miles), and Ethan finds a letter waiting for him from a trader named Futterman (Peter Mamakos), who claims to have information about Debbie. Ethan, who would rather travel alone, leaves without Martin the next morning, but Laurie provides Martin with a horse to catch up. At Futterman's trading post, Ethan and Martin learn that Debbie has been taken by Scar (Henry Brandon), the chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanches. A year or more later, Laurie receives a letter from Martin describing the ongoing search. In reading the letter aloud, Laurie narrates the next few scenes, in which Ethan kills Futterman for trying to steal his money, Martin accidentally buys a Comanche wife (Beulah Archuletta), and the two men find a portion of Scar's band killed by soldiers. They find Debbie after five years, now an adolescent (Natalie Wood), living as one of Scar's wives. She tells the men that she has become a Comanche, and wishes to remain with them. Ethan would rather see her dead than living as an Indian, and tries to shoot her, but Martin shields her with his body and a Comanche wounds Ethan with an arrow as they escape. Though Martin tends to Ethan's wound, he is furious with him for attempting to kill Debbie, and wishes him dead. Ethan and Martin arrive home just as Charlie and Laurie's wedding is about to begin. After a fistfight between Martin and Charlie, a nervous . Greenhill (Patrick Wayne), arrives with news that Ethan's half- crazy friend Mose Harper (Hank Worden) has located Scar. Clayton leads his men to the Comanche camp, this time for a direct attack, but Martin is allowed to sneak in ahead of the assault to find Debbie, who welcomes him. Martin kills Scar during the battle, and Ethan scalps him. Ethan then locates Debbie, and pursues her on horseback. Martin fears that he will shoot her as he has promised; but instead he sweeps her up onto his saddle. Debbie is reunited with her family, and Martin with Laurie. In an iconic closing scene, Ethan departs the homestead as he arrived. Whitney; it was directed by John Ford and distributed by Warner Brothers. While the film was primarily set in the staked plains (Llano Estacado) of Northwest Texas, it was actually filmed in Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah. Additional scenes were filmed in Mexican Hat, Utah, in Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, and in Alberta. Ford originally wanted to cast Fess Parker, whose performance as Davy Crockett on television had helped spark a national craze, in the Jeffrey Hunter role, but Walt Disney, to whom Parker was under contract, refused to allow it and didn't tell Parker about the offer, according to Parker's videotaped interview for the Archive of American Television. Parker has said retrospectively that this was easily his worst career reversal. Whitney Pictures; the second being The Missouri Traveler in 1. Brandon de. Wilde and Lee Marvin, the last being The Young Land in 1. Patrick Wayne and Dennis Hopper. Historical background. Parker, Cynthia Ann's uncle, spent much of his life and fortune in what became an obsessive search for his niece, like Ethan Edwards in the film. In addition, the rescue of Cynthia Ann, during a Texas Ranger attack known as the Battle of Pease River, resembles the rescue of Debbie Edwards when the Texas Rangers attack Scar's village. Parker's story was only one of 6. Texas that author Alan Le May studied while researching the novel on which the film was based. His surviving research notes indicate that the two characters who go in search of a missing girl were inspired by Brit Johnson, who ransomed his captured wife and children from the Comanches in 1. Marty, in one final leg of his search, finds her days later, only after she has fainted from exhaustion. In the film, Scar's Comanche group is referred to as the Nawyecka. The more common names for this Comanche division (with whom Cynthia Ann Parker lived) are Nokoni or Nocona. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U. S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's Cheyenne camp on the Washita River (near present- day Cheyenne, Oklahoma). The sequence also resembles the 1. Battle of the North Fork of the Red River, in which the 4th Cavalry captured 1. Comanche women and children and imprisoned them at Fort Concho. Reception. Nugent, whose screenplay from the novel of Alan Le. May is a pungent thing, right on through the cast and technicians, it is the honest achievement of a well- knit team. It concentrates on the characters and establishes a definite mood. It's not sufficient, however, to overcome many of the weaknesses of the story. In 1. 97. 2, The Searchers was ranked 1. The 2. 00. 7 American Film Institute. American films list ranked The Searchers in 1. In 1. 99. 8, TV Guide ranked it 1. Members of the Western Writers of America chose its title song as one of the top 1. Western songs of all time. Ford was not the first to attempt this examination cinematically, but his depiction of harshness toward Native Americans was startling, particularly to later generations of viewers; Roger Ebert wrote, . From the beginning of his quest, it is clear that he is less interested in rescuing Debbie than in wreaking vengeance on the Comanches for the slaughter of his brother. The Indian didn't welcome the white man .. If he has been treated unfairly by whites in films, that, unfortunately, was often the case in real life. There was much racial prejudice in the West. Never do we see the Indians commit atrocities more appalling than those perpetrated by the white man. For each son, I take many.. Early on, Martin earns a sour look from Ethan when he admits to being one eighth Cherokee. Ethan says repeatedly that he will kill his niece rather than have her live . Even one of the film's gentler characters, Vera Miles's Laurie, tells Martin when he explains he must protect his adoptive sister, that . I tell you Martha would want him to. There is no actual rape scene but Alexandra Heller- Nicholas in her study of Rape- Revenge Films says, . Though no dialog alludes to it, there are a multitude of visual references to their relationship throughout the film. Such a situation would add further layers of nuance to Ethan's obsessive search for Debbie, his revulsion at the thought that she might be living as an Indian, and his ultimate decision to bring her home. Beyond the ostensible motivations, it might depict a guilt- ridden father's need to save the daughter he made by cuckolding his brother, then abandoned. David Lean watched the film repeatedly while preparing for Lawrence of Arabia to help him get a sense of how to shoot a landscape. Sam Peckinpah referenced the aftermath of the massacre and the funeral scene in Major Dundee (1. Jay Cocks, Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia contains dialogue with . In the film, Anakin Skywalker learns that one of his family members has been abducted by a group of Tusken Raiders (though it is the character's mother who is kidnapped, rather than a niece). Anakin massacres the kidnappers in vengeance, much like The Searchers' climactic battle in the Comanche camp. Retrieved December 2. Ebert, Roger (November 2. American Film Institute. British Film Institute. The Moving Arts Film Journal. Retrieved 1. 0 March 2. The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Retrieved 2. 3 February 2. Presents^Eckstein, Arthur M.; Peter Lehman (2. The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Ford's Classic Western. Wayne State University Press. Fort Tour Systems, Inc. Retrieved 2. 3 February 2. Retrieved 1. 0 March 2. Retrieved 1. 0 March 2. Archived from the original on 1. August 2. 01. 4. Turner Classic Movies. Rape- Revenge Films: A Critical Study. British Film Institute. The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend. Captivity, Purity, and Feminine Values in The Searchers. Trustees of Boston University. Retrieved 1. 2 July 2. The Westerns and War Films of John Ford. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
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