Shane Watches the Greatest Movies Ever Made: The Searchers

1956 cowboy and Indian movie

Rating: 19/20

Plot: A confederate soldier returns home after the Civil War and shows everybody how to piss. When some damn Indians kill some of his family and kidnap his niece, he forms a posse--the titular searchers. His real motive, however, is to get back a doll that belonged to his niece but that he may have been having sexual relations with. The Duke! Meanwhile, there's a guy with a rocking chair fetish.

"What makes a man to wander? What makes a man to roam?" These dopey theme songs for Westerns always make me feel nostalgic. At first, I'm thinking, "This is really stupid," but by the middle of the song, I'm on board, ready to get myself a horse and a spittoon. There might be too much music in this movie. I mean, I really want it during all the ride-around montages. Monument Valley doesn't exactly need music, but it compliments the searching well. I definitely don't need music when the characters are having supper. I can figure out supper without music.

John Wayne's character is big and complex. He's hard not to like even when he's at his most despicable. He's really a villain here, but at the same time, he's a war hero and a loving family man. Well, and he's a racist, the kind of guy who'll shoot out a dead Injun's eyes just for spite. And he calls his friends things like "Blanket Head" or "Chunk Head" which doesn't seem very nice. The movie centers on his obsession when it's not focusing on Mose's obsession with rocking chairs, and although it's easy to say that his character is just racist or pissed off that his side lost the big war, it's really more complex than that. Wayne's performance, simple on the surface, and the ambiguity with his character gives this movie a complexity and along with Ford's visual brilliance and the beauty of Monument Valley, it helps elevate the Western to an art form.

Was Buddy Holly a fan of this movie? Wayne's recurring "That'll be the day" catchphrase is cool, but I really liked his "Put an amen to it!" better. Can't tell you how many times I've wanted to yell that in church. My favorite line might be when Ethan says, "A man rides a horse until it dies. Then he goes on afoot. A Comanche comes along, gets that horse up, and rides it twenty more miles. Then, he eats it." I think I read that in a history book when I was in sixth grade actually. Oh, and I like the exchange after the Futterman ambush:

"What if you'd missed?"
"Never occurred to me."

That is so cool. The dialogue's good and more than likely authentic. What I don't understand is the voice of Charlie played by Ken Curtis. I took a linguistics class in college, but it doesn't help me understand how people, in just a few generations, can lose a British accent and talk like Mose and Charlie do in this movie. They're around for comic relief, and the comic relief doesn't work perfectly all the time. John Wayne's lines are often funny, but a goofy fight between Marin and Charlie, Mose and his rocking chairs, and especially the inept Northerners who ruin some of the tension in the final moments, do a lot more harm than good.

My favorite character just might be Ward Bond's Reverend Captain Samuel Johnston Clayton. During a terrific scene where the posse is surrounded, I could have sworn he said, "I want you to move out here like Baby Jesus," but I could have just been confused.

Oh, wait a second! He's not my favorite character. I forgot that this movie's got a log lady!

Another quick question: As beautiful as this setting is--especially filmed by Ford with its yellow dusk, gnarled foliage at an inexplicable swamp, and the Dali-esque landscape--why would anybody want to live there?

This movie's got arguably one of the best closing shots of all time, but I'm not going to write about it.