The Searchers

You would imagine a famous film, regularly voted one of the best films of all time, would not cause gratuitous offence. But The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) certainly does that.

The character of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) is guaranteed to offend. From his first appearance on screen, he says a racist remark to young Martin Pawley, who has some Indian blood in him – something that in Ethan Edwards’ eyes makes him less than human. When an innocent family is massacred by Indians and one of the daughters, Debbie, is kidnapped, Edwards vows to find her. More than five years later he finally finds her, but instead of capturing her, he tries at first to kill her. Now she is an Indian’s wife, she is no longer human either.  

For almost the entirety of the film, Edwards casts his obsessive, anti-social pall over the other characters, up to the very last moment when he turns away from a house that represents community and companionship. For many commentators, his turning away, when he has nothing left to search for, is a moving moment. For me, it exposes the limitations of the Western’s moral universe. 

Characters like Ethan Edwards are common in modern literature. He has much in common with Esteban Trueba in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. Like Alan Ladd in Shane, Ethan Edwards arrives from nowhere, and disappears into nowhere. But unlike Shane, Ethan Edwards could never belong in a community, not even for a moment. There is a wonderful moment in Shane where Ladd joins in an activity: a tree stump has to be removed, and it has proved impossible for Van Heflin, the small-scale farmer, to get it out of the ground. For a joyous moment, Ladd joins the homesteader and the tree stump is conquered. Sadly, you could not imagine Edwards abandoning his obsession even for a moment. Such a character is deeply disturbing. It is certainly the best acting role I have seen for John Wayne, although that’s not saying much, seeing the trivial parts he was so often expected to perform.  

The Searchers is a film full of questions. It simply doesn’t add up in so many respects. The film is set in the most inhospitable desert where no farming would be possible, yet we are expected to believe a farmer and his family live there. We see an Indian massacre and believe it appalling, but later in the film an entire Indian village is wiped out, without, it seems, any comparisons being made. Nobody asks what Wayne has been doing in the three years since the end of the Civil War. Nobody asks what Wayne is going to do as he heads away at the end of the film. There is nothing civilised he can do. This is a film that celebrates a sociopath; it makes you question what kind of person John Ford, the director, was. Is this the kind of film you would watch for entertainment? Hardly. It ranks with Taxi Driver, for moral unease, in that you initially enjoy the excitement of the shooting, but then you realise it has left a bad taste in your mouth.