THE SEARCHERS (1956) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: John Ford
John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles,
Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, John Qualen,
Olive Carey, Henry Brandon, Ken Curtis,
Antonio Moreno, Harry Carey Jr., Hank Worden
The first thing that happens in this movie, a ranch-house door opens on a shot of John Wayne riding in out of the desert on a horse. The last thing that happens, John Wayne walks out into the desert as the ranch-house door closes behind him. In both cases, it's Wayne in the desert, alone. Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Confederate Army veteran who embarks on an obsessive quest to rescue his niece from the Comanche raiding party that kidnapped her (and murdered her family) as a young girl. When he learns she's become the wife of a Comanche war chief, his mission takes on a darker objective: to kill her. It's one of Wayne's most iconic roles, and one of his toughest performances: haunted and bitter, an avenging angel and a seething psychopath. He might've won the Oscar for "True Grit", but he deserved it for this. A signature line of dialogue repeated several times by Wayne in the movie inspired a hit rock-&-roll song by Buddy Holly.
