Subtle

Not a word THC would normally apply to movie directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne but a recent viewing of The Searchers (1956) revealed more going on than seen in my earlier casual viewing.

Today, The Searchers is acclaimed as Ford's best movie and Wayne's finest performance as the dark, bitter and obsessive Ethan Edwards.  The American Film Institute voted it the best film Western (2007) and in 2008 the 12th best American film ever.  In 2012 the British Film Institute rated it as the 7th best film based on a survey of international film critics.

The movie starts with Ethan's return, in 1868 after eight years away in the Civil War and then Mexico, to the isolated Texas farmstead of his brother Aaron and Aaron's wife Martha, played by Dorothy Jordan.  After a Comanche raid in which Aaron and Martha are killed and their daughters, including 8-year old Debby kidnapped, Ethan embarks on a years long quest to find, and possibly kill, them.

Watching the movie recently what jumped out at me was the suggestion that Ethan and Aaron's wife, Martha, had a relationship and the possibility that Debby was Ethan's daughter.  There is no direct reference to this in the film but it all fits in with the Wayne character and his reaction to the murders and kidnapping.

Here is a very short scene from early in the film when Ethan and the Reverend Captain (of the Texas Rangers) Samuel Johnson Clayton (played by Ward Bond, who those of a certain age remember from the TV series Wagon Train) are preparing to leave in response to the report of a Comanche raiding party nearby.  Watch the interaction between Ethan and Martha and the studious way that Rev Clayton avoids looking at them.
And this is the opening scene of the movie when Aaron, Martha and their family welcome Ethan back after years away.

And just for the joy of watching great film making here are the opening and closing sequences which mirror each other.  Don't forget to watch John Wayne's pigeon toed walk away at the end.

An extra added bonus is, like many of the Ford westerns, it's shot in Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border.  The location is part of the Navajo reservation.  THC and family had the opportunity to visit Monument Valley in June 1998 and bounce around in the back of a Navajo pickup truck for three hours touring the Valley.  It was spectacular and we saw many locations clearly identifiable from Ford's films. Go there.

We stayed at Gouldings Lodge, the only motel within 30 or 40 miles and where Ford's cast would stay when shooting the films nearby.  When you step outside your door you felt you were in one of his movies.