The Searchers is another movie praised quite highly by AFI. Not only was it #12 on the ‘100 Years, 100 Movies’ list, they also selected it as the greatest Western of all time.
Directed by John Ford, it was released almost twenty years after Stagecoach.
The Positives: Visually, The Searchers was really impressive. Ford clearly took great pains to find remarkable shots and angles, and it was most certainly a beautiful film from that standpoint. There were moments where I found myself enjoying the film in spite of myself, which is no small praise.
The movie, up until the last ten minutes or so, was also far more ambiguous about racism than Stagecoach. Much of the racism was named and some even condemned in the text of the film.
There was also ambiguity in the morality of the characters. Wayne’s character was a thief with legitimate rage issues, and they never apologized or demonized it, they just let the character be. That’s something I didn’t expect, and it was refreshing.
The Negatives: For one, I’m decidedly not a John Wayne fan. I wonder if perhaps it is just different sensibilities in different eras, but to me all of his characters just seem drunk most of the time. His long, drawling speech coupled with his clumsy and awkward gait and movements just come across as being a lush, not an everyman.
Also, while I commend Ford for even attempting to address the racism in society and film, he ultimately failed. The racism was so deep that even the attempt to condemn racism was racist. For goodness sake, the main villain of the film was a Commanche war chief played by a German man painted a bronzish tan color… that’s right, a painted German guy.
Also, any ambiguity the film lets sit in the air during the movie falls apart during the climax, when all the white people kill off all the Indians and live happily ever after. Hooray!
It was almost as if Ford was saying, ‘Hey racism makes me uncomfortable, it’s downright sad even. But, they are savages, so what are you really going to do about it? If they refused to become “Americans” like us, they needed to be dealt with eventually.’
I guess for me, it doesn’t really matter how well a movie is made when its messages are this ugly, whether that was the intent or not.