The Searchers
Feb. 3rd, 2019 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloAn odd film to schedule at tea time. My mother was watching it- or rather was facing towards a TV that was showing it and I was carrying dishes in and out- and stopping to watch the occasional scene. Sometimes, I think, you get more of the essential flavour of a movie by watching the odd scene than you do from sitting through the whole thing. I missed the initial massacre and its aftermath- and came in for the chucklesome scene in which Ethan and Martin brutalise Martin's inadvertently acquired Native American wife. As soon as my mother went up to bed I turned the TV off. I didn't want to be half watching The Searchers, or have it playing in the background like muzak- it's, too demanding, too horrible. I can't think of a movie that so remorselessly drags a steel comb through one's tender 21st century sensibilities.
It's a story about bigotry and cruelty made by a bunch of guys who- to use a phrase Ford liked to apply to himself- were "hard-nosed" about those sort of things. The landscapes are beautiful- mostly Utah pretending to be Texas- but the things that are going on in the foreground are foul. Violence and rape- the memory of them, the fear of them- are never far away. They get frosted over by lumpish attempts at humour- which, like the equally lumpish humour in Shakespearian tragedy- only serves to point up the ghastliness. Ethan Edwards- with whom we can't help identifying- (and please don't tell me John Wayne couldn't act- because this is one of the greatest performances on celluloid) comes with the bigotry baked in- and acts accordingly; his sidekick Martin is just as cruel- but out of insensitivity and ignorance (his treatment of women is abominable.) Ethan knows too much, Martin knows too little. Together they cut a swathe across the West but at least Ethan knows what he's doing- and why.
I didn't watch the ending this time round but I remember vividly how the preacher and his vigilantes go tearing through the teepee village, killing indiscriminately- and how Ethan scalps Scar and finally walks out of the knees-up at the end, clutching his arm, having returned Debbie to the chintziness of Mid-Western civilization. The wilderness reclaims him. The door swings to behind him. He's helped make America and it wasn't pretty and those who can stomach it can keep it.
It's a story about bigotry and cruelty made by a bunch of guys who- to use a phrase Ford liked to apply to himself- were "hard-nosed" about those sort of things. The landscapes are beautiful- mostly Utah pretending to be Texas- but the things that are going on in the foreground are foul. Violence and rape- the memory of them, the fear of them- are never far away. They get frosted over by lumpish attempts at humour- which, like the equally lumpish humour in Shakespearian tragedy- only serves to point up the ghastliness. Ethan Edwards- with whom we can't help identifying- (and please don't tell me John Wayne couldn't act- because this is one of the greatest performances on celluloid) comes with the bigotry baked in- and acts accordingly; his sidekick Martin is just as cruel- but out of insensitivity and ignorance (his treatment of women is abominable.) Ethan knows too much, Martin knows too little. Together they cut a swathe across the West but at least Ethan knows what he's doing- and why.
I didn't watch the ending this time round but I remember vividly how the preacher and his vigilantes go tearing through the teepee village, killing indiscriminately- and how Ethan scalps Scar and finally walks out of the knees-up at the end, clutching his arm, having returned Debbie to the chintziness of Mid-Western civilization. The wilderness reclaims him. The door swings to behind him. He's helped make America and it wasn't pretty and those who can stomach it can keep it.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-03 01:37 pm (UTC)Contrary to what gets believed, most of us are not 'hard guy' freaks.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-03 03:56 pm (UTC)The man behind the persona wasn't all that "hard". He didn't like horses, he loved to shop and he could quote Shelley by the page.
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Date: 2019-02-03 07:39 pm (UTC)He wasn't necessarily asked to, and not all of his efforts to play outside his comfortable range worked (although one of them that did was The Long Voyage Home (1940), another reason I love that movie), but within a band that wasn't as narrow as his mythos makes it look, he could absolutely act.
The door swings to behind him. He's helped make America and it wasn't pretty and those who can stomach it can keep it.
That's well said.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-04 08:12 am (UTC)Another of his great performances is in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon- when he is wholly convincing as kindly, paternalistic Captain Brittles.