The Searchers, a cinematic masterpiece directed by John Ford, stands as a quintessential example of the Western genre. However, the film’s underlying premise and its racist undertones have its origins in an influential Victorian production produced half a century earlier. The Searchers has inspired many Western movies after it.
Kidnapping By Indians, produced in 1899, is often cited as the first Western film. Kidnapping By Indians is not an American but a British film, shot in Blackburn, England, features a group of cowboys rescuing a young girl from a Native American raid. Far from a realistic portrayal of the American frontier, The Searchers has been called “just ridiculous” by a historian. However, it ignited an audience’s appetite for such stories.
John Wayne’s The Searchers Follows The Same Basic Premise As Kidnapping By Indians
The Premise Uses A Trope Dramatized In The First Western Movie
The Searchers is lauded as a cinematic masterpiece and a cornerstone of the Western genre. Directed by John Ford and adapted from Alan Le May’s novel, the plot follows Ethan Edwards, a grizzled former Confederate soldier, on a relentless quest to rescue his niece from a Comanche tribe. The Western icon John Wayne delivers plays a troubled anti-hero. The film’s critical acclaim and commercial success solidified its status as one of the greatest Westerns ever made.
Its basic premise goes back to the true origins of both the Western genre and an unfortunate trope. The first Western movie was a British film Kidnapping By Indians, filmed in Blackburn, Lancashire. The plot centers around a brutal Native American raid on a white settlement. The attackers torch the camp and abduct a young girl. A group of cowboys intervenes, leading to a gunfight. The captured girl is eventually rescued by the cowboys. Its runtime was under two minutes. Its themes reflected an appetite for Wild West stories at the time.
Is Kidnapping By Indians Really The First Western Movie Ever Made?
Far From The Wild Frontier, Kidnapping By Indians Was Filmed In The UK
While the notion of a British-made film pioneering the Western genre may seem laughable, the origins of Kidnapping by Indians can be traced to co-director James Kenyon’s youthful encounters with Americans. These interactions kindled his fascination with the mythology of the Wild West, and coupled with the hungry public interest in such stories, led to the creation of this early Western film. The Blackburn production had a local cast. Overall, it is far from the authentic American frontier it sought to portray, whereas The Searchers is has partial real-life inspiration.
Fiction of this period is characterized by escapism and world-weariness…
Following the American Civil War, numerous cotton workers from Blackburn migrated to America, drawn by the promise of a new life. Their return to England was accompanied by tales of the untamed frontier, igniting a sense of curiosity and adventure among the local population. The release of Kidnapping By Indians in 1899 was part of a wider fin de siécle culture – fiction of this period is characterized by escapism and world-weariness, as well as decadence. The perceived exoticism of the film’s plot fits perfectly.
Other Western Movies That Follow The Kidnapping By Indians Story Formula
The Trope Has Persisted In Movies Right Through To This Decade
The decidedly racist Kidnapping By Indians abduction trope has been influential on a number of film plotlines, some of them surprisingly recent. However, it was not invented by the 1899 film – it has its roots in folk tales predating even the printing press and is known as the “Captivity Narrative” (TV Tropes). This makes the trope much more deeply rooted and persistent. The Searchers, with its 1950s social mores, was the ideal movie for the stereotype to play out. Against a Crooked Sky (1975) also uses the trope.
The premise has been reworked in some more modern titles – for instance, in The Missing (2003), Mexicans replace Native Americans as the kidnappers. A recent example of using the original trope is the Paul Greengrass movie News of the World, released in 2020. The movie follows the journey of an aging Civil War veteran tasked with returning a young girl, raised among the Kiowa tribe, to her sole surviving relative. The girl, torn between her birth family and her adopted Kiowa family, faces the difficult prospect of leaving her only known home.