A lone rider, dust-caked and grizzled, approaches a ranch house in the distant reaches of West Texas. Ethan Edwards — played by John Wayne in perhaps his most powerful role — is a former Confederate soldier returning to the home of his brother Aaron three years after the Civil War has ended. Where he has been and what he has done is not clear, but his saddlebags are stuffed with freshly minted Yankee dollars.
His arrival precedes a series of tragic and traumatic events. His brother and beloved sister-in-law and two of their children will be slaughtered in a brutal Comanche raid, and his 9-year-old niece, Debbie, abducted by their killers. Ethan and his adopted nephew, Martin Pauley, will launch a five-year search to get her back.“The Searchers,” which will be shown again to Washington audiences on the big screen at AFI Silver Theater on Saturday afternoon, is set in the waning days of the 40-year struggle between Texans and Comanches .
But the 1956 movie is anything but a museum piece. It explores themes of gender, race and sexual violence that are stunningly modern.A lone rider, dust-caked and grizzled, approaches a ranch house in the distant reaches of West Texas. Ethan Edwards — played by John Wayne in perhaps his most powerful role — is a former Confederate soldier returning to the home of his brother Aaron three years after the Civil War has ended.
Where he has been and what he has done is not clear, but his saddlebags are stuffed with freshly minted Yankee dollars.His arrival precedes a series of tragic and traumatic events. His brother and beloved sister-in-law and two of their children will be slaughtered in a brutal Comanche raid, and his 9-year-old niece, Debbie, abducted by their killers. Ethan and his adopted nephew, Martin Pauley, will launch a five-year search to get her back.
“The Searchers,” which will be shown again to Washington audiences on the big screen at AFI Silver Theater on Saturday afternoon, is set in the waning days of the 40-year struggle between Texans and Comanches — the longest war ever fought on American soil — and it unflinchingly depicts the terrible price that each side represents on the other. But the 1956 movie is anything but a museum piece. It explores themes of gender, race and sexual violence that are stunningly modern.
Despite the best efforts of Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and a handful of other Hollywood directors and stars, the Western is largely forgotten genre in these morally led times, its narrative simplicity and black-and-white verities elbowed aside by 150 shades of gray . Yet the taming of the frontier, even as portrayed in the Western, was never as morally straightforward as it seemed. We’re still wrestling with its legacy in the controversies over the Washington Redskins and Johnny Depp’s portrait of Tonto.
Directed by John Ford, “The Searchers” is widely recognized not only as the greatest American Western but as one of the best Hollywood films of all-time. It is beloved by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Martin Scorsese, all of whom saw it when they were aspiring young filmmakers and were deeply influenced by it. Largely ignored in its time — it got no Academy Award nominations — it has captivated three generations of filmgoers.