Review: Does John Ford’s “classic” film THE SEARCHERS promote or challenge America’s racist and anti-egalitarian traditions?

All Things Being Equal is fortunate to have contributing writer Debbie Albano dispatched to the Roger Ebert Film Festival in Champaign, Illinois. She will be providing us film reviews that help understand the role of culture in perpetuating or helping us challenge the forces that engender and normalize inequality in U.S. society and political economy. Enjoy!

“The Searchers," John Ford, dir., released 1956. 

This film may be responsible in no small measure for the persistent racism of the U.S. towards the native people of North America. The lead character, Ethan Edwards, a former Confederate soldier, played by John Wayne, embodies the dictum, "Better dead than red" in his pursuit of the Comanche leader who kidnapped his niece, and who is shown as terrorizing (and killing) her family of lone settlers on the frontier. Roger Ebert's 2001 review says, "...it has been called the most influential movie in American history,"  and "[t]he greatest Western ever made," while also identifying Wayne's character as being "racist without apology."   When finally locating his niece five years later, she has  become one of the warrior leader's wives. Ethan kills the Comanche leader Scar in a massacre that includes many tribesmen, and decides to kill his niece, too, for having been contaminated by a "savage." 

 For historical context, "The Searchers" was released just two years after the Brown vs the Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court that ruled the segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and therefore unconstitutional.  It was also ten years before the Loving vs the State of Virginia decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that held Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, prohibiting interracial marriage, unconstitutional. Additionally, the obsessive chase by Joseph McCarthy and his supporters, including John Wayne himself, had not yet ended its ruthless pursuit to find and destroy the careers of every communist and communist sympathizer in America,  another dangerous group of "reds."

However, some have argued that John Ford intended to push back against the brutal prejudice of those times by showing the virulent and violent racism that fueled genocidal actions.

If that is the case, then "The Searchers" continues to be relevant to our current American and world politics. It is  also understandable then why the curators decided to open the four day festival  with Ford's 70 year-old Western. John Ford is also unquestionably a master director of panoramic cinematography.  In fact, the spectacular Monument Valley of the Utah desert is more than a backdrop to the story of   the searchers. It is an intentional character itself: beautiful, stark, powerful, relentless, and unforgiving.

Nevertheless, Ford's big screen "cowboy and Indian" extravaganza is very painful for a person with enlightened sensibilities to watch.