The Searchers (1956)
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Perhaps John Ford's worst cinematic offense is one of those films that was indifferently reviewed when released, but has since achieved such revisionist stature that it's almost heresy to utter anything negative about it now. Obviously in 1956 John Ford the legend could do what he wanted. It's too bad he didn't want to make a movie featuring complex characters and a thought-provoking story. Instead we get a plot populated by sentimental simpletons doing hokey comedy: Swedish rancher Jorgensen in his gingerbread house, dense Charley McCorry, and simple-minded Mose Harper are exactly the types of stock characters that detract from John Ford's considerable virtues as a director. But the histrionics of all the other actors confirms that Ford was after an extremely melodramatic tone. In addition, he wastes a lot of film on Ward Bond's Ranger captain and Patrick Wayne's cavalry officer, characters who do not add to the story's development and slow the pace considerably. One can only assume John Wayne's son appears because Wayne wanted him to.
The landscape is harsh and beautiful, but although barren Monument Valley can easily stand in for Apache country, it cannot take the place of the Great Plains where both the novel and movie are set. Am I the only one who cared that there was no grass in cattle country, or that ranchers in the 1860s were eating dough-nuts for breakfast? And what is it with these Indian captives who go insane in Comanche villages? Couldn't Ford show a little subtlety in his treatment of the interaction between Euro and Native Americans? His sympathetic portrayal of Cochise in FORT APACHE introduces a note of complexity in that movie, creating a dramatic tension that is missing in the melodrama of THE SEARCHERS. It is impossible not to hate Comanche chief Scar, the villain of THE SEARCHERS. Ford's only other attempt to humanize Native Americans came in CHEYENNE AUTUMN (1964) when he had lost his powers altogether. What a shame!
The landscape is harsh and beautiful, but although barren Monument Valley can easily stand in for Apache country, it cannot take the place of the Great Plains where both the novel and movie are set. Am I the only one who cared that there was no grass in cattle country, or that ranchers in the 1860s were eating dough-nuts for breakfast? And what is it with these Indian captives who go insane in Comanche villages? Couldn't Ford show a little subtlety in his treatment of the interaction between Euro and Native Americans? His sympathetic portrayal of Cochise in FORT APACHE introduces a note of complexity in that movie, creating a dramatic tension that is missing in the melodrama of THE SEARCHERS. It is impossible not to hate Comanche chief Scar, the villain of THE SEARCHERS. Ford's only other attempt to humanize Native Americans came in CHEYENNE AUTUMN (1964) when he had lost his powers altogether. What a shame!