| Brogan Earney |
The Searchers plays on a rare 70mm print at the Heights Theater on Monday, October 7th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information.
There’s a lot to admire about The Searchers; the beautiful landscapes, the exhilarating action scenes, the complex characters. It’s all enough to have this film continuously mentioned as one of the greatest ever made, as it should be. The first time I saw the film was just a few years ago (give me a break, I’m only 27), and my takeaway was… Ethan Edwards is a psychopath. I’m sure anyone who views this film for the first time will walk away with a similar sentiment. Ethan may be one of the most complex protagonists ever to be put on screen. He is harsh, mean, stuck in his ways, and definitely not a typical role model. From the jump we don’t learn much about him; he has been gone for years, he is returning from a war that he doesn’t want to talk about, and he absolutely hates “Indians.” Which is a broad generalization these days, but back then guys like Ethan didn’t care.
In the opening scene we experience a lot of tension around Ethan returning home and seeing his family. Martha Edwards is the first to see him strolling in, and her face quickly turns from a look of wonder into a look of shock. Ethan disappeared 8 years ago without notice to go aid the Confederate army in their fight against the Comanche. Deep in the weeds of this film there is a lot of speculation that Ethan and Martha developed an affair and that’s why he ran away for 8 years. No one has ever confirmed or denied that this is true and that Ethan is secretly in love with Martha, but Martha’s daughter Debbie is 8 years old, so I’ll leave it at that. The whole opening scene is meant to show us a hero returning from war, but it doesn’t feel that way. Instead, it feels like Ethan is still working through some of his feelings on the war and what he did with his time there. This all starts to come to light when Martin Pawley enters the scene. Ethan quickly takes notice that he is part Native American and even questions him on it, eventually refusing to acknowledge him as a true relative due to his “Indian blood.” This is the first time we start to see Ethan’s true colors.
While Ethan Edwards is unlikeable and harsh in his actions, his mission is justified. After a Comanche attack on his family’s ranch, Ethan’s brother and Martha are killed and the nieces are taken hostage by Scar and the rest of his tribe. Ethan sets out to find his two nieces, Lucy and Debbie. Motivated by his love for Martha and a homicidal rage against the Comanche, he is unaware that this is the start of a five year journey. Mrs. Jorgenson pleads with Ethan to not seek vengeance before he begins his obsessive search. Of course he doesn’t listen, and Ethan, Martin and other rangers set off to find Scar and his tribe. Along the way Ethan’s rage and hatred for the Comanche is revealed even more. A notable scene is when the crew finds a Commanche buried under a rock and Ethan proceeds to shoot two bullets at the corpse, aiming for his eyes as an effort to prevent him from entering the spirit lands and forcing him to wander between the winds for the remainder of eternity.
Ethan is so filled with hatred for these people that he has bothered to learn their ways in order to violate them—at the time, one of the most psychopathic acts to ever be put on screen.
A lot of the tough to watch aspects of this film come from Ethan Edward’s blatant rage and racism towards the Native American people. This was a common theme in most Westerns of this era, but John Ford brought it to a whole other level with The Searchers. For the most part, Westerns before this leveled at the fact that the “Indian” was the bad guy and that the white man was the hero. But when it comes to Ethan Edwards, is he the hero? That’s for the viewer to decide.
John Ford does something interesting with symbolism in this film, especially with the color of hats. Prior to The Searchers, heroes and villains were more identifiable in Westerns. Usually, the heroes wore the white hats and the villains wore the black hats as a visual cue, to show who is on what side. From the start of this film, however, John Wayne appears in a black hat, and Martin Pawley in a white hat. But this changes. Both of our lead characters start to rub off on each other and corrupt each other’s ways. Martin, for example, gradually becomes more aggressive with his actions. He boots his Indian wife out of his bed and down a hill and gets in a fight with the man who is marrying Laurie. If you pay close attention, his white hat gradually starts to slide off his head throughout the film. When he sneaks into the Comanche camp, his hat is completely off, leaving him at the end of the story in a morally gray area.
Ethan is slowly corrupted by Martin as well. He starts to constrain his hate for the Comanche, he is kind to Martin’s Comanche wife, and he agrees to meet with Scar to discuss a trade rather than strike first. During this scene, he arrives in a white hat and keeps it on through the whole exchange. But once he sees his niece Debbie for the first time in 5 years, completely adapted into the Comanche ways, his hatred resurfaces and the black hat stays on throughout the rest of the film. This is an effort by John Ford to have you question the hero of the story, and allow the film to say “hey, we don’t think this guy is a role model either.”
I’m sure some of you first time viewers will walk out of this film disliking or disturbed by the racism displayed from Ethan Edwards. But understand that this theme is important, and The Searchers’s commentary on the subject helps it stand the test of time and remain one of the great American classics in cinema. Released at the height of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, John Ford made this film to let you know that people like this are out there. They are stuck in their ways, they are corrupted by hate, and unfortunately, they will never change. People like Ethan Edwards might come along from time to time; they might even do some good or heroic things. Either way, it’s best for them to get left behind, and for us to not acknowledge them, and leave them in the ether. At the end of the film, Ethan finally rescues Debbie and leaves her with Martin, Laurie, and Laurie’s parents. As they all wander back into the house, Ethan refuses to walk through the door, not allowing himself to enter into the spirit world. Instead, he turns around and wanders into the wind, where he will remain for eternity.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon