THE SEARCHERS: Blu-ray (Warner Bros., 1956) Warner Home Video

There are those who regard John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) with irreverence, as the greatest western of all time. It is rather difficult to argue with such an assessment, particularly as Ford and his star, John Wayne are functioning from the vantage of two well-seasoned talents in complete creative symbiosis. That Wayne and Ford often clashed behind the scenes, mostly as Ford increasingly came to resent Wayne – regarding him as the ‘star’ he alone had made with Svengali-like precision, Wayne, thus owing Ford everything, and, Ford, caustically to claim a queer and unsettling ownership of Wayne exclusively, the Ford/Wayne alliance was, by 1956, leaning in favor of Wayne’s longevity, star-power and box office cache. While Ford could ostensibly argue his early movies had helped put Wayne’s star on the map, he could no longer suggest with any degree of certainty that, without his influences, Wayne would have been nothing at all. Nevertheless, an ‘understanding’ endured between these two, the result of Wayne’s unerring – if slightly misguided – loyalties to Ford. While increasingly finding it difficult to tolerate Ford’s condescension and humiliations, Wayne nevertheless continued to sign on to make Ford pictures, usually at the director’s beckoned call.

The purveyor of so many classics to have extolled the virtues of the Old West, Ford undertook a revisionist’s take on his view on heroism in The Searchers, a darkly purposed and brooding saga into one man’s soulless ambition to avenge the death of his entire family. Ford is undoubtedly the ideal director to take on this formidable challenge. After all, he practically invented America’s western mythology, exploiting its arid and starkly surreal backdrop as a tableau, populated by honorable men, desperadoes, saloon-styled whores wearing hearts of gold on their sleeves, and, blood-thirsty 'red skins' looking to exact their pound of flesh in human scalps from the innocent settlers, guiding their wagon trains across this new frontier. Such, at least, was Hollywood's concept of 'how the west was won'. And so, it has largely remained as a main staple of the screen since Ford's time, the legacy of Ford's fabrications eclipsing the morally ambiguous historical record. So, perhaps it was Ford’s entitlement – practically to own the copyright on the Hollywood western – that lent him the chutzpah to mature it now, from the precepts he alone had made famous. For decades, historians have suggested Frank S. Nugent’s screenplay was inspired by the 1836 raid and kidnapping of 9-yr.-old, Cynthia Ann Parker by Comanche warriors. Parker would spend 24-yrs. with the Comanches, be wed to a war chief and bear him three children, before being ‘rescued’ against her will by the Texas Rangers. The girl’s uncle, James W. Parker, spent much of his life and fortune in an obsessive search for his niece, mirroring Ethan Edwards’ unrelenting quest to reclaim the fictional, Debbie (Lana Wood, as a child, Natalie Wood as an adult) in the movie.

The Searchers stars Wayne as that solitary seeker, Ethan Edward - a rover who returns to his brother, Aaron’s (Walter Coy) ranch house somewhere in Death Valley. Upon his arrival, Ethan is welcomed by Aaron’s wife, Martha (Dorothy Jordan), son, Ben (Robert Lyden), and daughters, Lucy (Pippa Scott) and Debbie (Lana Wood). Alas, their happy reunion is short-lived. When Ethan is called to investigate an assault by Comanche on a nearby cattle ranch, he returns to Aaron's farm a few hours later only to discover the homestead smoldering and his entire kin massacred. The pain over this loss turns rancid when 'half breed', Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), taken in by the family and reared as their own, decides to accompany Ethan on his revenge. Ethan is a racist who, even on his good days, barely tolerates the Indians as people. Now, he is out for blood and looks upon Martin as a traitor to the white race, lurking in his midst. The one body not among this brutal slaughter is Debbie. Ethan suspects the Comanche have carried her off. The rest of The Searchers is basically Ethan’s descend into the darkness of his own soul as he sets out to reclaim Debbie. Alas, the recalcitrant desire that dogs his investigation is hardly noble, overridden by an all-consuming, inculcated and unconquerable rage. Debbie’s abduction has given Ethan carte blanche to exercise his racist views – or so he believes. For years, Martin and Ethan travel lonely trails, visiting trading outposts in search of Debbie, but to no avail. Martin's girl, Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles) grows weary, fearing Ethan's search will turn Martin into the same hollow shell of a man she perceives Ethan to be. In truth, Laurie is not too far off the mark where Ethan is concerned. He is burnt through to his core by an unquenchable hatred, incapable of maintaining any relationship that does not resolve itself at the point of a gun.

Ford’s impressions here are sobering reminders of the early lawlessness and incivility of the American west, until then, as yet unexplored in American movies. Arguably, Ethan belongs to that vast openness that once typified the ‘new frontier’ but has already, by the time of this movie, begun to give way to the struggles of establishing peace and justice. Ethan thrives best in untapped soil. Alas, Martin is not meant for this life. Eventually, Ethan and Martin meet with Scar (Henry Brandon) the Chief of the tribe that slaughtered Aaron and his family. And although the years have matured Debbie into a young woman, Ethan and Martin clearly identify her among the other Indian women, reared perhaps, though hardly one of their own. Ethan believes Debbie has been brainwashed to forget her family. Hence, his more prescient thirst now is to devastate the tribe. There is no reprieve for Debbie. Mercifully, Martin prevents the inevitable from happening. Forced to choose between saving or murdering the girl, Ethan reaches for his pistol, but cannot bring himself to commit the act, seizing Debbie in his arms before informing her he has finally come to take her home. She relents and is returned to her own race, the tragedy of her upbringing, seemingly to have been instantly reversed as Debbie collapses into Ethan’s arms. The final shot in The Searchers remains forever bittersweet. Having restored Debbie to the white race, Ethan turns away from the completion of his singular ambition, lumbering into the distant, uncompromising and sun-baked horizon of absolute uncertainty. There is no closure here, rather uncharacteristic - not only of the western, but Hollywood's affinity for absolute resolution before the final fade to black. For this finale, Wayne’s back is to the camera, framed by the darkened recesses of an entrance to the cabin, the door slowly closing behind him. Has the experience drained Ethan Edwards of his dinned prejudice, or has it prepared his bigoted mind for an even more insidious taste of revenge? Ford offers us no clues, refusing the audience one last close-up of Wayne to set our minds at ease. Instead, we are asked to weigh the ballast of a man's inner torment - the thorn, at last, and seemingly, removed - against the spectacle of his altruism and infer what we will about what the experience alone has taught him, or ultimately meant to the salvation of his own soul.   

In hindsight, The Searchers is one of those devastating gestalts, to mature the entire western genre from its time-honored bang-bang, ‘cowboys vs. Indians’ tradition. The movement away from these intrinsic values, however, was not entirely Ford’s doing, as other filmmakers, most notably, Anthony Mann, with Winchester ’73 (1950) and Fred Zinneman’s High Noon (1952) had already sought to reexamine the fallibility of these ‘warrior-like’ escapades that galvanized the western’s wild popularity with American audiences, even as it was kept hermetically sealed and firmly ensconced within such myopically situated ideologies. John Wayne is the ideal choice to mark Ford’s revision – Wayne, already earmarked as the legendary hero of these mythologized promised lands. His was, in fact, the archetype all others had tried to copy. Now, Ford and Wayne were moving that marker ahead of the pack – hopefully, yet again, to reestablish Wayne’s preeminence as Hollywood’s premiere protagonist – with flaws, primal doubts, and, at least in The Searchers, some fairly repellent traits, a sobering precursor to the more anti-heroic figures yet to emerge on the cinematic horizon in the mid-60’s and beyond. It is fairly observant to suggest that without Wayne’s Ethan Edwards, Clint Eastwood’s ‘man with no name’ would not have been possible. In The Searchers, Wayne becomes the antithesis of his own legacy. He inverts our expectations with a truly haunting, often unlikable, and, fairly un-glamorous portrait of a man consumed by a very ugly, if passionate discrimination. Winton C. Hoch's cinematography, in magnificent VistaVision, is sumptuous. It may sound strange to refer to it as lush, given the stark and arid landscapes of Monument Valley, but Hoch's camera lens evokes a moody, even elegant isolation. Max Steiner gives us yet another memorable score – marking his supremacy inviolate as the dean of American film scoring. In the final analysis, The Searchers remains one of John Ford’s most prodigious pictures – an attempt to re-address, even rewrite, the iconography of the genre he, almost single-handed, helped to create.

Warner Home Video’s Blu-ray from 2010 yields a visually resplendent VistaVision image. The benefactor of a 2002 ground-up photo-chemical and digital restoration, what we have here is a dramatically arresting visual presentation, truly to live up to VistaVision’s claim in motion picture high-fidelity. Interestingly, the Blu-ray, culled from the same restored source materials used to create a DVD release, struck a full 2-years before it, favors a more yellow-leaning palette. Earth tones that were ruddy orange and brown on the DVD appear almost sepia-tinted and much truer to life. Curiously too, blues and reds are more prominently featured. Flesh tones are superb. Background information is clean and razor-sharp, and, film grain is indigenous to its source. Contrast is slightly darker on the Blu-ray than the DVD with more deeply saturated blacks. The audio is re-channeled 5.1 Dolby Digital. VistaVision was only capable of mono or Perspecta Stereo. On this remastering effort, Max Steiner's score is the real benefactor. Dialogue is still very frontal sounding. But Warner Home Video has done an outstanding job re-purposing these tracks for a faux stereo presentation. Extras on the Blu-Ray are all direct imports from Warner’s lavish DVD box set and include ‘an appreciation’ featurette, the 1990 feature-length documentary on Wayne and Ford’s collaborative efforts and personal relationship, an audio commentary from Peter Bogdanovich and vintage ‘behind the scenes’ segments from Warner Bros. Presents television show. What we lose here is the swag that accompanied the original DVD set. So, no deluxe packaging, no reproductions of lobby cards or poster art, and, no reproduced comic book of The Searchers originally made available to coincide with the movie’s theatrical release. Oh well, I suppose we can't have everything! Bottom line: The Searchers is a seminal western – and not just from Ford and Wayne. This is truly, one for the ages, looking years younger in hi-def and still, very much sure to please.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

4