The Searchers

Ethan Edwards, an embittered veteran, returns to Texas after the Civil War and discovers that Comanche Indians have killed his family and kidnapped his niece. Along with Martin Pawley, who was adopted by the Edwardses after his own parents were killed by Comanches years earlier, Ethan sets out to find his niece, Debbie. The movie's title refers to the duo's five year search for the young woman, and their struggle to rescue her once she is adopted by the tribe and married to Chief Scar. John Wayne gives perhaps his finest performance in a role that predated screen antiheroes of the 1970s; by the film's conclusion, his single-minded obsession seems less like heroism and more like madness. Wayne bravely refuses to soft-pedal Ethan's ugly side, and the result is a remarkable portrait of a man incapable of answering to anyone but himself, who ultimately has more in common with his despised Indians than with his more "civilized" brethren. Natalie Wood is striking in her brief role as the 16-year-old Debbie, lost between two worlds, and Winton C. Hoch's Technicolor photography captures Monument Valley's savage beauty with subtle grace. The Searchers paved the way for such revisionist Westerns as The Wild Bunch (1969) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and its influence on movies from Taxi Driver (1976) to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Wars (1977) testifies to its lasting importance.


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