The Searchers (1956)
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My daughter and I decided to watch all the AFI top 100 films of all time and "The Searchers" was listed around #50. I am quite a western film fan and was surprised to see this movie on the list since I'd never heard of it. This film was terrible and a huge disappointment.
This film features stereotypical characters, a lousy script, terrible casting and acting and incredulous scenes. Tab Hunter? Please...he has got to be the worst actor on the planet. A thriving ranch in the middle of the Utah desert with no water and no plants? Wayne gets shot in the left shoulder in one scene and favors his right shoulder in subsequent scenes. "That'll be the day" is the favorite line spoken ad nauseum. There are no redeeming qualities to this film.
There were so many other excellent John Wayne - John Ford collaborations it is beyond my comprehension why this film is so highly rated. It belongs on my top 10 worst film list.
Racist Nonsense Set Against a Beautiful Monument Valley
jayraskin121 November 2009
There are more racist movies than "The Searchers." There is "Birth of a Nation" and there is the original "Rocky". So this is only the third most racist film in Hollywood movie history. John Wayne looks constipated and angry in most of the scenes. Ford mixes in bad comedy and undercuts whatever dramatic tension he establishes. The movie is only two hours but seems like three. One gets excited because it seems to be approaching a climax, but it just keeps going and going, a baroque Western. Jeffrey Hunter and Vera Miles are fine, but Natalie Wood is completely wasted in a bit part. If you want to see a true classic Hollywood Western that is well acted, far more exciting, with better cinematography, see William Wellman's 1944 masterpiece "Buffalo Bill." It is also wonderfully anti-racist, portraying Native Americans with sensitivity and intelligence.
This 1956 Western "The Searchers" can be seen as a reaction to the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in favor of school integration ( Brown Vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) and the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 started by Rosa Parks. Obviously Hollywood could not make a contemporary film attacking integration, but by setting their film in Western times and showing the unprovoked savagery of the Native Americans, the staunch message against contemporary race integration was clearly made.
This film features stereotypical characters, a lousy script, terrible casting and acting and incredulous scenes. Tab Hunter? Please...he has got to be the worst actor on the planet. A thriving ranch in the middle of the Utah desert with no water and no plants? Wayne gets shot in the left shoulder in one scene and favors his right shoulder in subsequent scenes. "That'll be the day" is the favorite line spoken ad nauseum. There are no redeeming qualities to this film.
There were so many other excellent John Wayne - John Ford collaborations it is beyond my comprehension why this film is so highly rated. It belongs on my top 10 worst film list.
Racist Nonsense Set Against a Beautiful Monument Valley
jayraskin121 November 2009
There are more racist movies than "The Searchers." There is "Birth of a Nation" and there is the original "Rocky". So this is only the third most racist film in Hollywood movie history. John Wayne looks constipated and angry in most of the scenes. Ford mixes in bad comedy and undercuts whatever dramatic tension he establishes. The movie is only two hours but seems like three. One gets excited because it seems to be approaching a climax, but it just keeps going and going, a baroque Western. Jeffrey Hunter and Vera Miles are fine, but Natalie Wood is completely wasted in a bit part. If you want to see a true classic Hollywood Western that is well acted, far more exciting, with better cinematography, see William Wellman's 1944 masterpiece "Buffalo Bill." It is also wonderfully anti-racist, portraying Native Americans with sensitivity and intelligence.
This 1956 Western "The Searchers" can be seen as a reaction to the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in favor of school integration ( Brown Vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) and the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 started by Rosa Parks. Obviously Hollywood could not make a contemporary film attacking integration, but by setting their film in Western times and showing the unprovoked savagery of the Native Americans, the staunch message against contemporary race integration was clearly made.