John Ford, in some ways, was the most American of filmmakers.
You know, this Irish immigrant...
...who so captured the best of America...
...what we think of as the American spirit...
...the can-do attitude, the optimism, the enterprise.
And here, in The Searchers...
...he really looks to the dark side of America.
This was, I think, an attempt of Ford's to come to terms...
...with something deeper in the human psyche...
...and, in particular, the American human psyche.
And I think that comes from Ethan Edwards.
He's not a villain.
But at times, he's despicable.
You know, and, yet...
...you'll love him when he says, "Let's go home, Debbie."
What is that all about?
He did bring her back, you know.
And it's a very powerful thing.
I think it really...
...strikes us in that place in our soul that needs to be justified.
There is some meaning to our lives.
I was 13 years old, and we had just been graduated from elementary school...
...St. Patrick's Old Cathedral elementary school.
And myself and two friends...
...we felt we were adult enough to go up to 42nd Street or 44th Street...
...whatever it was, the Criterion Theater, have dinner in a restaurant...
...and then go to see this new Western that was starring John Wayne.
We were aware of Ford's name from time to time...
...in other Westerns that we had seen.
We saw, actually, a lot of them on television.
And this, however, was different. I mean, this was a different situation.
There's no doubt, I think, we went as young people.
We went for the star, for Wayne.
It was at a theater called The Sherman in the San Fernando valley.
The Sherman was a theater that my family particularly liked...
...because it was a second-run theater, meaning it was cheap.
And, in fact, kids of my age could get in free.
They would just wave you, and you would duck under the turnstile.
And I remember walking into the theater.
N that “me...
was we did for Vertigo, as we did for any major movie...
...we just walked in, in the middle.
The first time I saw The Searchers was in the theater.
And it was in Westwood Village.
And I was completely blown away.
I mean, I'd never seen a movie like it.
I absolutely was convinced that this was, you know, the real West.
Somehow, whoever made the movie was channeling...
...an experience of the real West directly to me.
And, of course, you know, that's what I wanted.
I wanted to live in the real West, you know.
I didn't just wanna be one of those characters.
I wanted to be Scar, is what I wanted be.
And from the opening moment where she opens the door...
...and the camera goes out, suddenly, we were all very moved.
I remember it, because it made such an impression on me.
You know, it was...
...so different...
was a Western, you know.
It was so dark and, in fact, frightening.
And, yet...
...John Wayne was so engaging...
...graceful, heroic, but full of anger and violence.
It always stays in my mind. It's very disturbing.
All this stuff, watching it even more on a big screen, is very disturbing.
Stand aside, Martin.
He was frightening, but that was attractive.
It was, I think, probably confusing to me.
And yet I loved it, you know, and wanted to see it again...
...and again and again, as I have through the years.
I think I saw it four times in a row.
And then I didn't see it again for many. many years...
...until I was in cinema school.
And I was convinced for all those years that I had dreamed it.
This is one of the most beautiful films ever...
...even if you see it in 35mm, which is the only way you're gonna see it today...
...if you ever see it projected. Because it was shot in VistaVision.
I cannot tell you what that Vistavision looked like projected.
There's nothing today that can equal that.
First of all, the extraordinary space on the screen.
Monument Valley has never been photographed any better.
John Ford introduced us to Monument Valley.
Us, movie fans.
But many people have filmed Westerns in Monument Valley...
...and other spectacular locations.
But, again, the way in which Ford used those locations is unique.
I've never seen figures in a landscape that wide...
...to have such an emotional resonance.
And the poetry of his language, the visual language that he--
They can say, "Well, yes, the cameraman."
Obviously. But it's the relationship that he had with the cameraman.
You know, you gotta speak the same language.
You know, you have to really work together.
Ford had the best eye.
The visuals in Ford movies have never been surpassed by anybody...
...including Kurosawa or David Lean. Certainly, none of the people today.
Kurosawa absolutely said--
They said to him, they said, "How did you learn to--?
Did you study particular painters'? Were there Japanese painters?
Were there European painters?" He said, "I studied John Ford."
A combination of, you know, Ford and VistaVision and that three-strip color.
VistaVision was the best format ever created for cinema.
What was great about it was that it was...
...not only just a widescreen, which was also higher...
...but had an extraordinary depth of field, everything in crystal-clear focus.
You could see the expressions on the actors...
...the faces, the body movements much clearer...
...than a normal widescreen film.
And so...
...two things happened:
One, they didn't go in for many close-ups.
You could see from, usually, full figure, below-the-knee up.
And, somehow, it became more of an actor's medium.
You really appreciate the actor. The actor could just move to the left.
You say, "Wow, that was great.“
Some of the more extraordinary, deeper...
...scenes are all done in medium shot and wide shot...
...so that when Ward Bond takes that cup of coffee...
...in the foreground staring straight ahead...
...and John Wayne comes out and goes to say goodbye to Martha...
...there's a slight hesitation. He kisses her on the forehead.
Ward Bond has never seen a thing. He's staring ahead, drinking that coffee.
But, clearly, the moment is so charged...
...with mutual longing.
And, you know, that's pure moviemaking.
That's pure John Ford.
He forces you to use your imagination.
When you think back to how Ford told this story...
...one of the things you realize is that the violence in the movie...
...is so dark and affecting...
...partly because you don't see it.
We see John Wayne come down from the canyon...
...where he discovered Lucy's body.
And we're left to imagine what he saw there.
The raid on the farmhouse.
Harry Carey Jr.'s suicidal attack on the Indians.
The killing of Scar at the end of the movie.
It's not about the violence.
It's about the effects of the violence.
- Was she...'.7 - What do you want me to do?
Draw you a picture? Spell it out'?
Don't ever ask me!
One of the most powerful moments in the film...
...and most violent moment I remember ever in film...
...is when they come to the burning house.
You know, here's the dress with blood on it.
This ragged dress...
...meaning that she was nude and that she was raped.
And Wayne comes out.
Jeffrey Hunter comes up, and he says, "Don't go in there.“
And he says, "But is that Aunt Martha?"
He says, "Don't go in there," and he hits him.
Because he can't go in there again.
They're just gonna let the place burn, because he didn't wanna see it again.
And whatever it is that's in there is too much for the Duke.
Well, I don't wanna see it either.
It showed me right then, as a filmmaker...
...that it's often much better not to see things.
Ford created that language.
He started when movies started.
And it's a very refined and sophisticated grammar.
And as we grew and we watched the film on television...
...and I'm not talking about film critics, I'm talking about, you know...
...average guys, average kids, average young men.“
...who were basically filmgoers and film lovers...
...we would suddenly become aware of more subtext...
...and more subtext in the picture. And once we caught on...
...and Ethan Edwards's character, what was really going on inside of him...
...it became a whole different picture.
There are so many things in the script that are so specific and so brilliant...
...the way it ties together all the various themes...
...the way it deals with religion...
...in a conflicted way.
John Ford's films are very Catholic. This is another issue.
And they deal with morality.
And they deal with what's right and what's wrong in a very powerful way.
The Reverend Samuel Johnson Clayton.
Mighty impressive.
Well, the prodigal brother.
The constant thing is that...
...the language reflects the Old Testament throughout the whole movie.
The reverend, played by Ward Bond, is also a captain.
Here, you have the double-edged sword-- Almost like a God of the Old Testament.
Comments on religion are throughout the picture, you know.
It's Ethan Edwards's attitude toward religion.
When they find the dead Indian...
...and he, shockingly, especially given that it's John Wayne...
...shoots the dead Indian twice in the head...
...shooting out his eyes.
And Ward Bond, who's not only the captain...
...but also a preacher, you know, says:
- What good did that do you'? - By what you preach, none.
He doesn't say, "By what we believe."
He says, "By what you preach.“
But what that Comanche believes...
...ain't got no eyes, he can't enter the spirit land.
Has to wander forever between the winds.
You get it, Reverend. Come on, blanket head.
He's knowledgeable about both religions, but, clearly, does not embrace either.
And there's even that wonderful moment when Nesby, who gets shot...
...Ward Bond gives him the Bible to hold on to.
Hold it. Make you feel good.
And it's very moving.
Well, also right in that same sequence...
was the Indians are about to charge across the river, Mose says:
For that which we are about to receive, we thank thee, O Lord.
The Mose Harper character...
...played by Hank Worden, is some of the more eccentric readings in history.
Don't want no money, Ethan. No money, Many.
Just a roof over old Muse's head...
...and a rocking chair by the fire.
The fool who keeps coming in and out. But winds up helping them find Debbie.
He's got the most poetic and the most fascinating language.
And his mind works interestingly.
Mose, how far is the river'?
I've been baptized, Reverend. I've been baptized.
Shut up, you old fool.
And it reflects the country, it reflects what America was, at that time...
...we think, or what the image that Ford was giving of it, because he was born--
Ford was born in the late 19th century.
He still had aspects-- The roots were there.
He probably knew people who were alive in the 1860s.
I always said about Ford and Hawks...
...that they were closer to the West than we were.
I mean, when Ford was starting his career...
...there were still bandits in the San Fernando valley.
We see a world that was so rooted in the Puritan way.
And, yet, dealing out there in the West, trying to create the civility...
...the marriage, where they're wearing their best clothes...
...the way they move a certain way, that's all disrupted by the fight.
What's interesting is the nature of the image that Ford creates.
That is that Ken Curtis and Jeffrey Hunter...
...are just covered with red dust.
Even when they go in the house and start to fight again...
...the red dust goes flying. The authenticity and beauty of that.
But the red dust is the earth. It's what they're living on.
They're settling on. It's the nature of the conflict, itself.
One of the things about The Searchers is you get a sense...
...of the unremitting power of the land.
That all of this drama is played out against this vast landscape.
It's this very, very harsh West, where distances are great, you know.
They travel all the way down to Mexico, you know...
...and all the way back up to somewhere else.
There's an extraordinary sequence of the letter...
...where Vera Miles reads the letter. And, interestingly enough...
...for the master of this level, John Ford...
...where you think, "Well, in the old days they used to do flashbacks...
...with rippling dissolves and irises in and out and zooming in and out."
Watch this picture. She starts reading the letter, and you cut directly...
...to the action. it's a cut.
This begins to intercut. There's a story within a story.
Talking about technique, the intercutting of the flashback...
...or the narrative is very straightforward.
The audience is not catered down to.
And I think what was very effective...
...I liked in that, was that she starts reading the letter...
...and then it goes into Jeffrey Hunter's voice.
So, you know, if you think about that...
...that's a sort of daring thing to do.
But it works perfectly smoothly because it's logical.
The way the letter is used in The Searchers...
...is kind of a unique storytelling device...
...because it serves in the sort of foreground...
...to illuminate what's going on back home, as it were...
...and also, structurally, is used to condense...
...the enormous passing of time.
The letter also lets us see that Vera Miles...
...while still yearning for Jeffrey Hunter's return...
...is getting increasingly angry and frustrated.
There's an innocence to Martin Pawley and Vera Miles...
...that plays out almost as children, in a way. He's a boy.
The women are around them, she loves him. He doesn't get it.
I think that is the counterpoint to the truth...
...to the truth of what Ethan knows and--
In the most dark way, you know.
Interestingly enough...
...she, later, turns in her wedding dress and sounds just like Ethan Edwards.
You're not going. Not this time.
- You crazy'? -It's too late.
She's a woman grown now.
We suddenly see that she's a racist too.
Fetch what home?
The leavings of Comanche bucks, sold to the highest bidder...
Remember, she's saying these things to Martin, who's part Indian himself.
And not only does she say that Ethan Edwards will kill Debbie...
...but she says Martha would want him to.
The emotion over this issue runs so deep...
...that a woman would want her own daughter killed.
Ethan.
What about Debbie?
I think the reason, or one of the reasons, that The Searchers...
...is such a rich, rewarding experience...
...to have again and again through life...
...is that we all see ourselves in this character.
I think to a certain extent-- You can make a mistake and say:
"Ethan Edwards is John Ford.“ But I think it's not that simple.
By that time I think he was looking for something more in himself.
To express himself a different way.
How far could he go as a filmmaker?
And I think for this he had to turn inward.
He was a man like Ethan Edwards...
...who also knew what it was like to be an outsider...
...a stranger from hearth and home.
Having gone through the war...
...the way he did. Having seen the sights he saw.
Having directed over 140 movies.
This was a man who had a lot of Ethan Edwards in him.
This was a man who knew what it took to keep going...
...when everyone else wanted to stop.
Who had the strength and perseverance...
...that must have been both intimidating and also inspiring.
So from what he did with Ethan Edwards in this picture...
...is take the Wayne persona somehow...
...start to give it a more interestingly deeper psychological complexity...
...and develop it in later films he made.
I don't know if it was successful...
...but he was trying to go in that direction, to push himself.
That is the man John Ford changing over time.
And it's also the culture changing. And him being impacted by it.
You certainly don't feel he dealt with race...
...the way he does in The Searchers...
...because the culture was changing and he wanted to make a hit.
There's nothing about this decision that seems commercial in its intent.
All of this was deliberate. It begins with Martin Pawley...
...who is of mixed blood, which he wasn't in the novel.
And the first time we see him, he rides up...
...and jumps off his horse Indian-style...
...and Ethan Edwards says to him very disparagingly:
Fella could mistake you for a half-breed.
Not quite. I'm eighth Cherokee. And the rest is Welsh and English.
At least that's what they tell me.
Questions of race run through every minute of The Searchers.
And we see the violence and racism of our society...
...from which none of us is immune.
You speak pretty good American for a Comanche.
Someone teach you'?
The similarities between Scar and Ethan Edwards...
...are so numerous that one feels Scar is his alter ego.
You speak good Comanche. Someone teach you'?
He was dealing with a subject that was important to him.
And undoubtedly he had deep feelings...
...about the way he had dealt with this subject in the past.
We're all used to hearing the sound of the bugle...
...and having a certain reaction to it.
He comes the cavalry. Here come the good guys.
John Ford celebrated this in several movies...
...most notably in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
But here in The Searchers he turns this on its head.
Ethan Edwards and Martin Pawley hear the bugle of the cavalry.
And what do they find after the cavalry is gone?
They find a massacre.
This had never been seen in a Hollywood movie before.
And the very thing that he's accused of, being a racist...
...is proof that he isn't a racist.
That he does this movie because he deals with this.
He shows that the humanity goes way beyond us.
That he wants Martin Pawley to have the tainted blood.
He wants Ethan to look and say, "She ain't white anymore."
And then to save her at the end. And this kind of thing.
He wants to go beyond that. He's anything but racist.
This is 1956 when it came out. It was shot in '55...
...it was right around the time of the Cold War...
...it really was the breakdown of censorship in Hollywood...
...which was beginning to confront and deal with these issues...
...and here it is up on the screen.
There's a kind of savagery in the film.
You understand the hatred. You understand why he's hated.
You understand that we hate, if we read the book or see the film.
But you understand why he's reacting that way.
And the tragedy of the destruction of the Native Americans...
...the tragedy of the clash of one culture and civilization taking over another.
Tribalism, that's what the movie's about, not race but tribe.
They're so far apart.
...that they look upon the Native Americans as not even human...
...or from outer space. Look at the scene with the white “captives"...
...at the fort, with that extraordinary and very telling line...
...where the soldier says, "It's hard to believe they're white.“
And he says, "They not. They're Comanche."
And as he's walking out of the room...
...he suddenly pauses and wheels around...
...and the camera just dollies right in on his face.
And one of the great close-ups in movies...
...when the camera moves in on Wayne's face.
There's no light on his eyes. It's just from here on down.
And it's just unbelievable shot.
And you just see this look that you can read in contempt.
You can read in loathing. And just the coldest, hardest eyes one could ever see.
And it's like looking into the eyes of hell.
And you see that he's twisted there. By that point he wants to kill.
Wayne does it so wonderfully, just conveys so much with his expression.
But it is also enhanced by the camera move.
And John Ford as a director is so spare in his camera movement...
...that when he moves the camera it has a meaning.
Also the language.
Human rides a horse until it dies, then he goes on afoot.
Comanche comes along, gets that horse up, rides him 20 more miles...
...then eats him.
Wayne's extraordinary cadence, his pacing of the language.
His security in the language, which is very interesting...
...because he was always underrated as an actor.
- Totally underrated as an actor. - Only the Duke could do it.
And I love the fact that people actually have the audacity to say:
"Oh, the Duke wasn't a really great actor."
Who but John Wayne actually could say it the way he says it.
"The turning of the earth.“ "As sure as the turning of the earth."
It's just-- It's biblical.
So we'll find them in the end, I promise you.
We'll find them.
Just as sure as the turning of the Earth.
It feels when we watch The Searchers...
...and watch John Wayne's performance in this movie...
...that we are seeing the truth...
...and because the truth is ugly and increasingly deranged...
...and completely contrary to the movie-star image of John Wayne...
...it seems like an incredibly brave performance.
You watch the disintegration of this man throughout the picture.
He becomes crazier and crazier. It's very shocking.
This is what made the film grow.
I think ifs really the character of Ethan.
His relationship ultimately with Marty Pawley.
The father-son relationship there, how that develops.
The relationship between Ethan Edwards and Martin Pawley...
...is clearly at the core of The Searchers.
The Searchers, it's plural.
And you see through the course of the movie...
...this character grow up, literally.
He has blossomed into the one...
...that we look to, to in fact stop Ethan Edwards...
...from the horrible act that he's contemplating.
It ain't gonna be that way. She's alive. She's gonna stay alive.
John Ford for many years...
...was in fact Ethan Edwards to John Wayne's Martin Pawley.
The stories that you hear of the way that he would tease him.
The way that he would sort of abuse him...
...and yet the way that he would also give to him...
...in the way that Ethan Edwards gives to Martin Pawley.
Everybody has told me how hard Ford was on John Wayne...
...but I don't think that was so by that time.
You get a sense-- They hadn't done a film in a while.
And so you get a sense that maybe they didn't know...
...how many of them more they were gonna be able to do.
The collaboration between John Wayne and John Ford...
...is one of the great actor-director collaborations in movie history.
And every once in a while, we'll see a picture...
...where an actor-director collaboration...
...produces both a performance and a movie...
...where we feel that the truth before us...
...that the actor's delivering in his performance...
...is so raw and so real...
...that for the first time...
...we're actually seeing the essence of that man.
And in fact the essence of the filmmaker with whom he is working.
From Stagecoach, 1939, when Johnny Ringo...
...played by the American Western hero...
...the mythological hero-- The gunfighter who's really a good guy. --to the cavalry.
And this is John Wayne's progression as an actor, to playing Captain Brittles...
...the older man, to finally The Searchers...
...was the arc that he took this young actor.
And went with him and used him as, in a way, his device...
...to explore himself changing.
I think Brittles to a certain extent had a lot to do with Ford himself too.
From She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
You can also see a change in America.
You can see the change-- His perception, I should say, of America.
He couldn't understand today.
He couldn't understand the whole concept that we have everything...
...and we don't know what to do with it.
The biggest thing to him was not this movie or not any other movie.
The biggest thing to him was World War ll.
Was being in the OSS and being an admiral.
That was much bigger than being a director.
There's no amount of Oscars that even came close...
...to what it was for him to serve his country.
That generation that fought World War ll...
...and the generation that was raised in the Depression and everything...
...they had that attitude, that sort of stoic John Wayne kind of thing.
You never crowed about anything you did.
You just walked away. That was John Wayne in The Searchers.
He'd walk out the door at the end.
I've done what I did, now I'll go on to what's next.
It's like a generation has passed.
There was no more room.
The generation that was necessary to defeat the Indians...
...the generation that could carve out this homestead on the frontier...
...was now no longer applicable.
The next generation would have children and raise cattle and oil.
It is sad at the end.
And yet it's more than that...
...because I do feel that he has progressed...
...to a place, the beginning at least, of a kind of peace.
It's not a quote “happy“ ending.
He didn't come through the door, and he's not going to live there at the house.
But who would ever believe that. He's not one of those people.
And he walks away--
And of course John Wayne had the most beautiful walk in movies.
He walks away with that incredible grace.
And you feel that there is a kind of peace.
At least the beginning of it, about him, an acceptance of certain things.
I think, ultimately, besides the visual power that his pictures still have...
...and his ability to throw images on the screen...
...that are just so stunning...
...and to know intrinsically how the people should be moving...
...in the frame, within those images, to give you the point of view of the story...
...to tell you what's happening... Ultimately, I think the reason...
...why he'll always be remembered as a great artist...
was a filmmaker, is that it's about the people...
...and how he dealt with the people...
...that he really loved the people. And he has a lot of heart.
And it's the way the people overlap. It's the family at the table.
It's the overlapping of dialogue.
And it's just one shot. The camera doesn't move.
But watch and study what each of those actors is doing in that frame.
Wait a minute, sister.
I didn't get any coffee yet. Just-- Oh, doughnuts. Thank you, sister.
I'm sure fond of them doughnuts.
I started to get moved just watching that scene...
...because I lived that way. I saw that way.
Everybody would come into your apartments.
In the summer the doors were open.
If there was a party, you go into the other person's--
If there was an argument, you'd stop them.
All this is going on, and that's the kind of thing that affected the work I do a lot.
When we were growing up and looking at those films...
...we said, you've got to do that. You've gotta use the things in your own life.
You've gotta use your own feelings about things.
You've gotta go back to them again and again.
You could tell how much he loved that.
And that's what we tried to put in all of our films.
The inspiring thing about seeing a movie...
...like The Searchers again or thinking about it...
...or talking about it...
...is it takes one back to all the reasons that one wanted to be a filmmaker.
And while I don't see a direct influence...
...on me, stylistically certainly, from John Ford...
...what is unquestionably an influence on me...
...is the example he set.
The courage he showed in making this movie.
And that's a great thing to be reminded of in this era of focus groups...
...and all the importance that's put on the opening weekend.
Here you have this movie, 50 years later we're looking at it...
...and we're talking about it and we're finding relevance in it...
...and new meaning in it. And yet at the time it was made...
...overlooked by the critics for the most pan.
Overlooked by the Academy, no Academy recognition.
It tells us once again, if we needed to be reminded...
...that time is on the side of the artists.
And time is the only true criteria by which a work of art can be judged.
Let's go home, Debbie.