by Allan Fish
(USA 1956 119m) DVD1/2
What makes a man to wander?
p Merian C.Cooper, C.V.Whitney d John Ford w Frank S.Nugent novel Alan le May ph Winton C.Hoch ed Jack Murray m Max Steiner art Frank Hotaling, James Basevi cos Frank Beetson, Ann Peck
John Wayne (Ethan Edwards), Jeffrey Hunter (Martin Pawley), Vera Miles (Laurie Jorgensen), Ward Bond (Capt.Rev.Samuel Clayton), Natalie Wood (Debbie Edwards), John Qualen (Lars Jorgensen), Harry Brandon (Chief Scar), Ken Curtis (Charlie McCorry), Hank Worden (Mose Harper), Harry Carey Jnr (Brad Jorgensen), Olive Carey (Mrs Jorgensen), Antonio Moreno (Emilio Figueroa),
A common question in quizzes, which 1957 Buddy Holly hit took its title from a phrase oft-repeated by John Wayne in a film of the previous year? Answer, of course, ‘That’ll be the Day’. The Searchers has become, in the eyes of modern Hollywood, the prototype John Ford western and one of the great undoubted masterpieces of American cinema. Though such adulation is well-deserved, it is perhaps slightly ironic. It may be John Ford’s finest film, but it’s by no means my favourite and by no means representative of his earlier career. My favourite Ford film is also his most representative, My Darling Clementine. But as a final major statement in a genre and location he knew so well, as a moving and sharp reversal of the idealistic screen persona of John Wayne, and into the racism at the heart of modern America, it’s powerful stuff in anyone’s language.
In 1868, three years after the Confederacy surrender, Ethan Edwards returns home for the first time to his brother and sister-in-law and their children. While there he goes off with some Texas Rangers to check into some Comanche activity, only to realise that they have been tricked. Returning home he finds the whole family massacred, aside from the two daughters, who are abducted. He vows to get them back, but the family’s adopted half-breed son goes with him to make sure he doesn’t vent his racist fury on the girls, who he sees as contaminated. Their quest takes them many years.
Make no question about it, The Searchers is not a pretty film, indeed in places it becomes brutal, even sadistic. Wayne’s character goes beyond being plain ambiguous; he’s a racist, misogynistic bully who one senses is almost using this mission as an excuse to vent some fury left over from the Civil War defeat he has never accepted. He valiantly, at least in his eyes, tries to go against the trend and preserve what he believes the South stood for. In the end, though, just as he condemned the dead Comanche to wander the spirit plains after shooting his eyes out, he himself is finally doomed to wander, symbolised by the opening and closing scenes of the darkened doorways. Mind you, you can’t help but feel for him on occasion; who wouldn’t be appalled at seeing the corpse of his eldest niece – raped, murdered and left as carrion for the birds in a canyon – tossed aside like the lifeless doll of younger sister Debbie.
Yet Ford’s film is not just set in the dark places, Winton Hoch’s gorgeous photography revelling in the golden sunsets and blue skies in a way perhaps even outdoing his earlier work on She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. With this film Ford is not only preserving the myth of the old west, but reinventing his own myth and that of his star. A feeling intensified by Max Steiner’s majestic use of folk tunes to accompany his own mournfully immortal score, which makes the heart soar of every film buff who hears it. Not forgetting that cast, dominated by Wayne’s most layered performance, full of pent up bitterness, prejudice and regret and, in his final walk away, a nod to Harry Carey. And if Hunter and Wood are rather shallow, Miles is a delight as the eternally waiting Laurie, Bond his joyously exaggerated self as Clayton, Curtis suitably annoying as the gormless alternative suitor and Hank Worden immortalised in his rocking chair as prairie mooncalf Mose Harper. It’s the Ford film that even those who dislike Ford venerate. A monument to Ford, Wayne, American homesteaders and Monument Valley itself, The Searchers is a film that calls out to you to take it home, now and for all time.
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The greatest “western” film in the entire history of the cinema; one of John Ford’s greatest films ever (perhaps #2 behind THE GRAPES OF WRATH) and a crowning jewel of American cinema.
John Wayne’s iconic, existential performance (the most complex turn of his career) and the film’s sweeping on-location cinematography are on the highest level of craftsmanship.
“That’ll be the day.”
It is titanic piece of cinema, as wide in interpretation as the Monument Valley backdrop where it’s story of revenge is played out.
Allan Fish does the film justice here.
Controversy has swirled around this western ever since its release in 1956. Chief among the criticisms leveled at it is John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards’ “racist” hatred of the Comanches, manifested from the first minute he sees his brother’s stepson, who is one-eighth Indian. In this day and age, when anything that smacks of “racism” is deemed to lower a work of art’s rating, Edwards’ freely voiced antipathy to the Indians is considered by many to be more than sufficient to demote this film from “Best Western of all time,” which some have called it.
I don’t feel that way about “The Searchers.” Ethan Edwards was a product of his time and society, and thus would not have stuck out as particularly “different” among Southern and Western men of that day. After all, it is made clear that he fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.
The only flaw I find in the depiction of Edwards’ racial views is that the movie never makes quite clear why he holds them to such an extreme degree. None of the other settlers appear to share his smoldering hatred of the Comanche. I have read a review which says that one can catch a fleeting glimpse of a tombstone in the scene in the cemetery; the epitaph states that a woman with the last name “Edwards” was killed by the Comanche years earlier. Could this have been Ethan’s mother? His wife? No clue is ever given.
All that having been said, the film is, I think, probably the greatest western ever made, partly because of the intense character study it does of Ethan Edwards. It does not condemn him as a “racist,” or as anything else. It merely shows him to us; the decision is ours to make. And I disagree with some reviewers who believe that Edwards seems to see the “error of his ways” in the final scenes. He sees no such thing. Look at his face in the more intense scenes leading up to the attack on Scar’s camp, and you can see both rage and hatred etched in that face. Then look at his face again, in the brief shot just after he has exited Scar’s tent, the dead Indian’s scalp in his hand, and you’ll see the hatred and anger gone; it has been purged by Scar’s execution. When he approaches his niece, kidnapped five years before by the Indians and presumably having been “sleeping with a buck” — Edwards’ reason for wanting earlier to kill her — one can tell by his manner that he now comes only to carry her home safely.
Perhaps it’s the mark of a great movie when people can disagree, often strongly, about its characters and meanings. “The Searchers” is one of those great movies.
I don’t deny this as a great, if flawed, movie. It’s beautiful expressed.
But to call this the best western of all time does the genre an immense disservice, if after a hundred years, one can be put above the others.
I think, the following films may have something to say about that;
My Darling Clementine
Shane
High Noon
The Wild Bunch
Unforgiven
The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Though I admire Ford’s films and love The Long Voyage Home, How Green Was My Valley, The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, The The Quiet Man…
I have reservations about his depiction of the mythical west he was to put up on the screen and others to copy until the revisionism of the mid to late ’60s. From his first westerns, through to his breakthrough ‘Stagecoach’ (1939) and virtually throughout his entire cannon, his westerns (apart from Clementine and Cheyanne Autum) depicted a startling shallow canvas of motivations. The military was good, the homesteaders noble, the intentions of politicans good, the Native Americans a mindless mass – ‘the other’, ‘on the warpath’, savages without rythm or reason.
I think it was Howard Zinn, in ‘A People’s History of the United States’ (one of finest of historical books) who cited, if memory serves me right, that Fascism consists of miltarism, racism and imperialism. I would add – myth.
The trilogy of films focusing on the US Cavalry and ‘Stagecoach’, ‘Wagon Master’, ect, ect, depict the varnished myth that genocidal presidents would have wholeheartedly applauded. Ford’s westerns tick all the boxes for Fascism and his statement, issued from the mouth of a neoconservative newsman in ‘Valance’ proclaims – “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Myths and legends allow for a group-think mindset in the populace.
In this manner, Ford is the Leni Riefenstahl of the American cinema, the supreme propagandist of some of the most unconscionable, insidously evil crimes betrayls in the annals of history. It’s all bathed in beauty – Maureen O’Hara soft, flowing red hair, good-natured brawls and a bathing of cosy communal life.
One of the weakness’ of the westerns from the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s – is not that their characters expressed racist overtones, vibes and attitudes of prejudice of the frontier times, but that they DIDN’T. It was always a gun runner that would sell them guns and booze (echoes of ‘Taxi Driver’) and Errol Flynn would have rescue the situation. In this way Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is bracing breath of fresh air. I very much doubt that there was any
As an adult, I’ve always thought of the ending as a bit of con, a turn-about to and unworthy everything that’s gone before. But I’m interested to see it again to spot if Bill Riley’s reading of the death of Scar, makes any diffenrence to the feel of the final change of mind of Edwards’ bloodlust.
Anyway, the beautiful final shot of the door closing out Ethan Edwards from the civilised community because of his wild nature; it’s a lovely lyrical ending but yet more Ford Fascist propaganda – in the real world he would have been chief sherrif, breaking bones ‘Dirty Harry’ style in the back cells.
Still, a great film and far more subtle than ‘Birth of a Nation’ or ‘Gone with the Wind’.
I’ve just read the my above comments, and I think I should add that I don’t think that Ford was a intentional racist, just that some of his historical re-writing did him no good. He did have a profoundly good positive relationship with a tribe of Indians, for whom he used his military contacts to drop food parcels when they were frozen in. And he made the apologetic ‘Cheynne Autum’.
Well, I certainly don’t love HGWMV or TQM, both of which I loathe with a hearty passion. Ford was about perpetuating the myth, and if that’s inaccurate, is it any more inaccurate than Unforgiven. Don’t get me wrong, Unforgiven is a great film, but is it authentic to the 1880s when Morgan Freeman’s colour is not commented on once. That’s right for this day and age, but back then, it undermines its authenticity quite sharply. Shane and High Noon are, like Stagecoach, model westerns, but they aren’t fresh westerns, and better have been made elsewhere…
Was glad to see Jesse James listed, however, which is a great one…
Bill, yes it does provoke some strong feeling, good and bad, but it’s as good a film of its genre as we’re likely to see.
This is without any question whatsover the greatest western film of all-time.
The films that “Bobby J.” list above as westerns that are possibly “greater” than “The Searchers” simply are not. There is a reason why over the past three decades the Ford film is being called the “greatest western” and while everyone has their own aesthetic, this position is the one most widely embraced.
Saying so is only backing the widely-held position.
I admire HGWMV it’s artistry though I don’t love it, TQM has a quite different qualities, it’s romanticsm. The others mentioned, I love.
There’s a huge difference, a world of difference between not mentioning Morgan Freeman’s colour, which was possibly not written for a black character and therefore a mistake (who’s to say it wasn’t mentioned in his off-screen death) and rewriting the west to remove all culpbility in the mass renaging of treaties, the first concentration camps (reservations), biological warfare (microbes that were placed into blankets provided to a tribe of Indians), religious conversions and ethnic cleansing and wholesale butchery. It took two television mini series to depict any semblance of the actuality that occured; ‘Roots’ and meticulously researched ‘Centennial’. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last time that such things occur and it’s probably happened in every country that existed. I think there is a titanic difference between that and ‘Unforgiven’. Which tries to dispel myths; about killing, about who to shoot at first, about there being anything noble about the old west’s myths of the fearless as written by the chubby reporter.
Yes, I agree that both ‘Shane’ and ‘High Noon’ are model classical westerns but have resonances that make them great. Their reputations only dropped with coming of the auteur theory. ‘Stagecoach’ doesn’t have that complexity but was with ‘Destery Rides Again’ at the vanguard of the establishment of the genre for adults. I doubt better have been made than the other two, but we’ll have to agree to disagree. The three great westerns of the golden age of the western, the 1950s, are for me ‘Shane’, High Noon’ and ‘The Searchers’. The very pinnacle, vibrant and captivating on each viewing.
Well, folks, I have believed ‘The Searchers’ to be the greatest of all westerns for many years, and Ethan Edwards is John Wayne’s best performance. To put ‘High Noon’ or ‘Shane’ with it is insulting, and the jury is still out on ‘Jesse James’ and ‘Unforgiven’.
Many of my drawings have appeared on laserdiscs of western films including ‘The Alamo’.
If one film can be regarded as the best in any genre, then I’d consider that genre very poor, indeed. If one performance can be lauded over 200 others by that actor/star, than it says all more than enough.
The juries have made the verdicts, history will do the rest. No mention of ‘The Wild Bunch’.
As for ‘The Alamo’ – a big raspberry. Not worthy of comment.
Wow!
Coming to this thread is tantamount to booking a ticket to the GUNFIGHT IN THE O.K. CORRAL.
I admire Bobby J’s audacity and typically brilliant grasp of cinema and it’s varying influences. I do particular like (and agree with him) that the auteurists diminished the once-vaunted pre-eminence of both SHANE and HIGH NOON in the western pantheon. With all due respect Mike, (and I thank you for visiting today!) I do NOt think it is an insult to compare HIGH NOON or SHANE with THE SEARCHERS, even if I ultimately agree that THE SEARCHERS is probably the greatest western film of them all, both for its complexity and it’s ravishing beauty.
Bobby J. makes some irrefutable points, and his mention of DESTRY RIDES AGAIN and STAGECOACH (not to mention that authoritative contexual reference of those celebrated television shows) in the wider picture is most convincing.
Bill R: Your longer comment today is simply one of the best we’ve had at the site (up there with about 15 or 20 of Bobby J’s!!!) and I must admire your passion and brilliant observations.
Louie: Well, tell me something I didn’t know! LOL!!
Joe: Thanks for your daily chime-in, always much appreciated.
Mike: Again with all due respect to you, and please no insult intended, (and I’d love to see some of your drawings if that is possible,) I must agree with Bobby J. that THE ALAMO is a major disaster as a film.
Sam, I’m not insulted. I know critics have diced this for a long time, but I think they missed the boat. This is a much greater film than many realize.
The Wild Bunch is excessively violent and redundant. I do not consider it even a good western, much less a great one.
This is a fascinating thread gentlemen, and I would like to add my two cents. I agree with Bobby J. that it’s not a given that the Ford film is the greatest western ever made. Yes, it does makes use of it’s outdoor vistas better than just about any outdoor film, but it does have some issues. The film is an example of myth-making, or revisionist history from Hollywood. I don’t believe Indians would steal cattle only to kill them; its not cost-effective and goes against human nature. This novel was serialized in `The Saturday Evening Post’, a popular literary magazine of that time. Its stories were often filmed.
It’s a very good film, yes. The Greatest Western Ever? Well, I am not in that camp.
Kudos to all of you for an enlightening revisit of a great film that few haven’t seen a number of times through their lives. I believe it to be the pinnacle of Western filmmaking, but I don’t feel that it necessarily is the absolute #1, “best,” which is a concept that is counterproductive in theory. It’s fun to make such assertions and lists, but they shouldn’t cloud the more important analytical issues in examining the film as a work of art.
What may have been lost in the shuffle here is Allan Fish’s tremendous review, which couldn’t be bettered. His capsules remain the standard of all all internet movie blogsites.
I must say I am thrilled with the activity on this thread today as I’m sure Allan is.
Mike: I know you have always revered THE ALAMO, and you are more than entitled to feel that way. Plus, you are indeed “connected” to it.
Frederick: You have never entered a response at this site that fantastic, and we are enriched by it.
Frank G: Indeed, Allan’s review shoul dnot be forgotten!
Bobby J: I’ll say to you that I neither find the end of THE SEARCHERS as a “con” nor John Ford as a Leni Riefenstahl of sorts (this may well be overeading) but there’s no question your insights hear again are extraordinary and should be read by all movie lovers. This especially:
“I have reservations about his depiction of the mythical west he was to put up on the screen and others to copy until the revisionism of the mid to late ’60s. From his first westerns, through to his breakthrough ‘Stagecoach’ (1939) and virtually throughout his entire cannon, his westerns (apart from Clementine and Cheyanne Autum) depicted a startling shallow canvas of motivations. The military was good, the homesteaders noble, the intentions of politicans good, the Native Americans a mindless mass – ‘the other’, ‘on the warpath’, savages without rythm or reason.
I think it was Howard Zinn, in ‘A People’s History of the United States’ (one of finest of historical books) who cited, if memory serves me right, that Fascism consists of miltarism, racism and imperialism. I would add – myth.
The trilogy of films focusing on the US Cavalry and ‘Stagecoach’, ‘Wagon Master’, ect, ect, depict the varnished myth that genocidal presidents would have wholeheartedly applauded. Ford’s westerns tick all the boxes for Fascism and his statement, issued from the mouth of a neoconservative newsman in ‘Valance’ proclaims – “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Myths and legends allow for a group-think mindset in the populace. ”
Utterly fantastic.
Some really fascinating and varied opinions–all of them quite knowledgeable and passionate–were expressed here. WitD must inspire the best comments of any movie site on the Web!
As for “The Searchers,” I’ve seen it only once, fairly recently, and still haven’t made up my mind about it. It didn’t immediately strike me as the greatest Western ever made or even as the greatest Western ever made by John Ford. It has some undeniably great elements, like the opening and closing shots through the doorway pictured at the beginning of the review. That scene where Wayne and J. Hunter are riding through the fog might have come from a Kurosawa film It’s easy to see why Kurosawa adulated Ford. Maybe the reputation of “The Searchers” raised my expectations too high. I’m just going to have to reserve final judgment on it until later, and after watching it again.
As for Ford, I have mixed feelings about him also. Too many of his movies are undermined by cloying sentimentality and his cornball notions of comedy. Prime examples are the cavalry trilogy of the late 40’s. Unlike Allan, I don’t quite loathe TQM. I can live with its “Taming of the Shrew” attitudes, but along with its typical Ford flaws, I do find its incessant blarney a bit hard to take (another annoying thing that occurs in a number of Ford films).
I recently saw “Mister Roberts.” Many people have commented that it is impossible to tell when Ford stopped directing the movie and Mervyn LeRoy took over. I thought it was pretty easy to tell. About midway through, I did a double take and then realized that for the first time in the entire movie the camera had moved. And it kept on moving for the rest of the picture. Up to that point, the film consisted solely of beautiful but static compositions–no tracking, no panning, no camera movement at all. I also realized that the crew of the boat had stopped being treated like a group of colorful comrades and that Ward Bond had stopped acting like the cheerleader for buffoonish comedy relief. And I thought, “No wonder Fonda was displeased. Ford was turning his movie into a typical John Ford vehicle.”
As for Ford’s racism. Does anyone recall the scene in “Liberty Valance” when Wayne and Woody Strode walk into the saloon and the bartender acts like he’s going to refuse to serve Strode and Wayne cuts in and orders him to serve Strode? And in “Stagecoach,” the Native Americans are treated as objects of fear, but also with authenticity and a degree of respect. It would seem that Ford’s “racism” wasn’t so cut-and-dried after all. It’s not always easy to distinguish the attitudes of the director from the attitudes of the characters.
My parents were from the South, and when I was growing up about the only thing my father would watch on TV was Westerns. So I grew up sated with them and it has never been a film genre I’ve been overly fond of. Recently, though, I’ve been rediscovering it and finding much to like. For the record, my favorite Westerns are 1)”Stagecoach,” 2)”My Darling Clementine,” 3)”The Naked Spur, 4)”Ride the High Country.”
“Liberty Valance” may extol the value of myth over accuracy, but there are many (and not all of them reactionaries) who agree. This has been the prime method to transform history into literature since Homer! And the movie makes some powerful defenses of the basic institutions of democracy like free speech, free education, freedom of the press, and representative government chosen through free elections. Those are things valued not just by political conservatives, but by libertarians like me.
One other example from a Ford film that brings into question Ford’s perceived racism. In “Fort Apache” the villain is Henry Fonda’s Lt. Col. Thursday, who treats the Native Americans with disrespect, calling them pejorative names like “savages” and refusing to deal with them honorably or even treat them as human beings equal to himself. Here Ford’s sympathy clearly lies elsewhere, and his condemnation of Fonda’s attitude is palpable.
More superlative contributions here from our esteemed friend and fellow movie buff R.D. Finch; his word economy is simply remarkable, as are his bountiful insights. We have all been very fortunate to have his wisdom and authoritative knowledge boost a number of threads at WitD.
And that compliment in the opening sentence, well, even if we’re remotely within distance of such a declaration we would be celebrating.
As to the summary judgement, I neither have mixed feelings about Ford, nor of THE SEARCHERS, which for me is a flat out masterpiece of cinema. I point to THE GRAPES OF WRATH (one of the two or three greatest American films ever made) MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, STAGECOACH, THE INFORMER, and HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY as examples of truly great films crafted under his guidance. Allan has unceasingly railed against TI and HGWMV, but I am prepared to mount a spirited defense of either or both. TI may be dated for some, but it’s a powerful piece of cinema, while the latter film is lyrical and moving in an old-fashioned way.
I definitely can see R.D.’s arguments as per the cornball notions of comedy and that annoying blarney, but the ‘cloying sentimentality’ doesn’t at all come off that way for me. Semtimentality is the fabric of his vision and sensibility, and it enriches and enhances many of his films, including the aforementioned HGWMV. His sense of comedy is a statement of the time, rather than any inherent flaw, methinks.
At the end of the day Ford makes a strong claim as the greatest American director of all-time, and only a few can possibly match or eclipse him: (both in his prolific output and the preponderance of great films)
Charles Chaplin
Alfred Hitchcock
Orson Welles
Buster Keaton
Billy Wilder
Frank Capra
Preston Sturges
Ernst Lubitsch
Stanley Kubrick
I completely agree with you R.D. on your position regarding Ford’s suggested ‘racism’ which is indeed more of a comment on his characters than anything else, and I most certainly do remeber the excellent reference point you provide here in that scene from THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERT VALANCE with John Wayne and Woody Strode. I agree with what you say here completely.
The final paragraph of your longer first comment is masterful, with that Homeric inference of literature into history! And yes, I again concur on your listing of the many democratic institutions the movie presents.
Wonderful point there from FORT APACHE. My ‘sympathies’ as they are would also be with Ford.
D.W. Griffiths could rightfully be placed with teh directors I mentioned in my above list.
Sam, thanks for your compliments. I found your list of the great American directors (based on your own stated criteria) pretty much on-the-mark. Since I’m a great lister myself, I would add the following comment: I agree with everyone on the list with the exception of Kubrick. For me his films went downhill after “Dr. Strangelove”. I have mixed feelings about both Ford and Capra; for me the quality of their movies is inconsistent (sometimes within the same movie). I would definitely add George Cukor and William Wyler (again based on the number of great films they directed). Like Kubrick, Woody Allen, Vincente Minnelli , and Howard Hawks had periods of great inspiration but not to the extent of the others on the list.
Hi! Allan Fish, Sam Juliano and WitD readers,
Let me start by saying…What a really nice! review Allan, of the 1956 film The Searchers… Starring John Wayne Alright! now let me turn to the discussion at hands…
…First of all, my mother really “like” the 1956 film The Searchers and actor John Wayne, is her favorite actor. (She own “all” his films…and I do mean “all!”) 😯
Personally, I’am not familiar with director John Ford’s work on film.
(I must admit T.S., even had to chastise me (…in a ever so “very gently” manner) and for lack of a better word)…. when I tried to “dismiss” Ford (work on film) while I was “singing “ Director Alfred Hitchcock praise(s), but of course!
Even though I discover both men work on film when I was college. I guess that I was more fascinated by director Alfred Hitchcock’s work than Ford’s work on film, but of course!)
I must also admit that Allan Fish, and rightfully so…have addressed the most important details about director John Ford 1956 film in his review. (and I most definitely, share his opinion about what “facts’ surrounding this film that I’am familiar with at least.) and I ‘am always challenging the “myth(s)” surrounding the 1956 film The Searchers.
Therefore, I have listed some additional information about Cynthia Ann Parker, The 1956 film The Searchers, and a couple of links. (The responses in “bold” print are my thoughts.)
According to Dede from Askville….
Several film commentators have suggested that The Searchers was inspired by the 1836 kidnapping of nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker by Comanche warriors who raided her family’s home at Fort Parker, Texas. She spent twenty-four years with the Comanches, married a war chief, and had three children, only to be rescued against her will by the Texas Rangers. James W. Parker, Cynthia Ann’s uncle, spent much of his life and fortune in what became an obsessive search for his niece, like Ethan Edwards in the film. In addition, the rescue of Cynthia Ann, during a Texas Ranger attack known as the Battle of Pease River, resembles the rescue of Debbie Edwards when the Texas Rangers attack Scar’s village.
Parker’s story was one of 64 real-life cases of 19th-century child captivities in Texas that author Alan Le May studied while researching the novel on which the film was based.
Near the end of the story, Debbie’s apparent willingness to leave Scar’s household with Marty represents a significant departure from most historical models.
This most definitely, can be challenged because she (Cynthia Ann Parker)most definitely didn’t want to leave those who(m) captured her household. (Eventually starving herself to death after the death of her daughter,but on the other hand, her last surviving son (She had 3 children) Quanah Parker, survived to later go on to become one of the last Comanche Chief.)
http://www.meyna.com/caparker.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Ann_Parker
(I purposely omitted the http:// due to the fact, that I would be recognized as a “spammer” if I post links.Which I’am so very prone to do, but of course!)
According to the websites… (above) and (my (H)istory instructor), … that I linked above this account is much more closer to the truth about her real-life story.
According to Dede, “In real life, abducted children who spent more than a year with the Comanches typically became highly assimilated and did not want to leave their adoptive people.”
This most definitely, was the case when it came to Quanah Parker’s mother Cynthia Ann Parker, because she didn’t want to leave those who(m) captured her.
From the Facts Vs. Fiction Dept.
According to Dede, “In the film, Scar’s Comanche group is referred to as the Nawyecka. The more common names for this Comanche division (with whom Cynthia Ann Parker lived) are Nokoni or Nocona.
Some film critics have speculated that the historical model for the cavalry attack on a Comanche village, resulting in Look’s death and the taking of Comanche prisoners to a military post, was the well-known Sand Creek massacre of 1864. The sequence also resembles the 1872 Battle of the North Fork of the Red River, in which the 4th Cavalry captured 124 Comanche women and children and imprisoned them at Fort Concho.
At one point in the story, Ethan Edwards and Martin Pawley receive information about Debbie’s whereabouts from a trader named Jeremiah Futterman, who is portrayed as venal. However, several real-life frontier traders, including Marcus Goldbaum and Jesse Chisholm, attempted to recover kidnapped children without expectation of reward.”
The information (above) was provided by Dede from askville. (Not this DeeDee, (meaning me…but of course!… but a Dede from Milan, Italy.)
A minor detail (and I do mean very “minor” about my interest in Native American culture .
When I was college, I majored in Art History with (h)istory being my minor…Therefore, I was enrolled in several (h)istory courses (and several courses were in Native American studies and from my interests in Native American(s) studies, I have “garnered” a vast collection of books about Native American(s) and least… I fail to mention their very beautiful Turquoise Jewelry, that I have collected at a “record” speed with the assistance of my mother and aunt, but of course!… )
Deedee 😉
Cont…
Hi! again, Allan Fish and Sam Juliano,
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Ahh!…Your moderation still “caught” me and I didn’t even post “direct” links….I guess the “spammer police” caught that _ttp…Oops! I want type those 4 letter again!…Oops! I also see were I linked a website.
Allan Fish said, “My favourite Ford film is also his most representative, My Darling Clementine. “ I like this film too! Allan,…due to the Victor Mature factor!…:)
Sam said,”I think it was Howard Zinn, in ‘A People’s History of the United States’ (one of finest of historical books) who cited, if memory serves me right, that Fascism consists of miltarism, racism and imperialism. I would add – myth.”
Right you are!…Sam Juliano, your “memory” serves you very well….
because I own Mr. (Howard) Zinn, book ‘A People’s History of the United States’…a very interesting read…indeed!
DeeDee 😉
Bloody hell, this thread is like a St Trinian’s lacrosse match; turn your back for one minute and all hell breaks loose.
Some excellent comments all round, too many to list individually – and I have to dash out to work, too – but R.D., Bobby, DeeDee, Mike B. and Bill R. have all made good cases. Sam, old buddy, you might want to quantify that list of great American directors to “directors of American cinema”, considering there’s two Austrian and two Brits in the list. And, if dealing with American cinema, not merely American directors, then other emigres like the duo Welles described as the two ersatz Vons, Sternberg and Stroheim, have to be at the absolute pinnacle, and of course Curtiz, and then any list without Howard Hawks is redundant, while Wild Bill Wellman deserves a mention as the most underrated director of the lot. R.D. already mentioned Wyler and Cukor, and they have to be in the mix, too, as would Scorsese and, of course, the father of them all, D.W.Griffith, along with Vidor, Huston and Mamoulian. No-one on your list doesn’t deserve to be there, though. No question.
I will be back later this afternoon to address R.D. and Allan’s comments on American directors. Dee Dee, you have really gone to the full distance with those exhaustive references! Incredible!
R.D.
I love both Wyler and Cukor, but they simply don’t have enough “masterpieces” to compete with the others. I could be persuaded to add Hawks – as per Allan’s argument – he does make a good point, and certainly the great “Vons” are very close to the elite group. As far as Scorsese, Spielberg, Allen and Coppola, they are all “on-deck” Hall of Fame members, who could make the final cut.
Where I strongly disagree with you R.D. however is on Stanley Kubrick. You contend that it was “all downhill” after DR> STRANGELOVE, yet AFTER that he made 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which so many consider among the greatest films of all-time, and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is a supreme masterpiece which ranks among the three greatest films of the 1970’s. (the film won Best Picture that year from the N.Y. Film Critics Circle)
Add to that two films that have been gaining steadily in critical circles years after their release, BARRY LYNDON and THE SHINING, the former one of the most visually beautiful of all films and the latter now considered one of the greatest of all horror films.
I’d dare say his true greatness as a director came AFTER Dr. Strangelove, not before.
But as always, I greatly admire and respect your own sentiments, which are never informed with anything less that authoritative knowledge and exceptional taste.
Von Stroheim is to me the most underrated master director of them all. He made only seven films (eight if you count the lost part 2 of The Wedding March separately). Only the first, Blind Husbands, and the later The Merry Widow survive remotely as he wished, and one of them The Merry-Go-Round, he was taken off early in the shoot and received no credit.
I firmly believe that in its full version Greed would have been the greatest film ever made, and the loss of The Honeymoon is a loss almost as great.
Have to agree with Sam re Kubricks, Paths and Dr Strangelove are stupendous films, but his next three were his greatest…
From the moderns, Scorsese ranks ahead of Coppola, Spielberg and Allen in terms of great films made, but in the future I expect two of their contemporaries to surpass all in film scholarship – Lynch and Malick.
Sam, thanks for your well-reasoned response. And Allan, I realized when I saw Lubitsch and Wilder on Sam’s list that it was really directors who worked in America, not American directors per se–so a good call on that one. I won’t get into Kubrick except to say that after “Strangelove” his films became for me a matter of style over substance. I mean, who would expend such artistry on a junk story like “The Shining”? To me that’s just artistic overkill.
Sam, as for Wyler: “Dodsworth,” “Jezebel,” “Wuthering Heights,” “The Letter,” “The Little Foxes,” “The Best Years of Our Lives,” “The Heiress,” “Roman Holiday”–in my estimation these are all masterpieces or near-masterpieces. I even like “Dead End,” “The Westerner,” and “The Desperate Hours.”
And Cukor: “Little Women,” “David Copperfield,” “The Women,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “Dinner at Eight,” “Holiday,” “Adam’s Rib,” “A Star Is Born” (1954), his uncredited work on “One Hour with You,” “The Animal Kingdom,” “Gone with the Wind” (you can tell which parts he directed–all those ante-bellum parts at the beginning), and “Lust for Life,” arguably also “My Fair Lady,” “Gaslight,” “A Double Life,” and “Born Yesterday.” Even the curmudgeonly Andrew Sarris acknowledged, “When a director has provided tasteful entertainments of a high order consistently over a period of more than thirty years, it is clear that said director is much more than a mere entertainer.”
Among the also-rans I might also add to my original three (Minnelli, Hawks, and Woody Allen) John Huston.
Allan, I should add that I completely agree with your assessment of “the moderns.” I have written on Lynch and Malick at The Movie Projecter.
Wyler is up there with any American director.
‘Dodsworth’
‘Jezebel’
‘Wuthering Heights’
‘The Letter’
‘The Westerner’
‘The Little Foxes’
(let’s exclude ‘Mrs Miniver’ and the docs that were war times efforts, here for a moment)
‘The Best Years of Our Lives’
‘The Heiress’
for some in the ’50s, when he seemed to be slumming it a bit, tho not up there with his greatest work…
‘Roman Holiday’
‘Ben Hur’
The ’60s had
‘The Collector’
‘Funny Girl’ (which in it’s genre and with Barbra Steisland I expected to endure but was a revelation)
anyway,
I damn Ford’s mythogising of the west into simple terms of good and bad, shorn of complexity. The fastest way to get a dicatorship in a democracy is to mythogise a history. Then you a get a ‘free’ press that think alike – or in Orwell’s famous pharse, ‘group-think’:
Here is the famous British based Australian journalist John Pilger: “During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. ‘I have to tell you,’ said their spokesman, ‘that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?'”
The westerns of Ford, Hawks and a whole slew of others lead to a myth, a Big Lie that took until the ’60s, Bobby Kennedy, books on Wounded Knee, revisionist westerns, Marlon Brando, Indian activism, Centennial (1978), ‘Dances with Wolves’ and Ken Burns’ ‘The West’ to dent.
Ford’s myth-making of the west is akin it.
Here is a quote from an Native American Vietnam vet, from Howard Zinn’s magisteral volume:
“The same massacres happened to the Indians 100 years ago. Germ warfare was used then. They put smallpox in the Indian’ blankets….
I got to know the Vietnamese people and I learned they were just like us….What we are doing is destroying ourselves and the world.
I have grown up with racism all my life. When I was a child, watching cowsboys and Indians on TV, I would root for the cavalry, not the Indians. It was that bad. I was that far toward my own destruction….
Though 50 percent of the children at the country school I attended in Oklahoma were Indians, nothing in school, on television, or on the radio taught anything about Indian culture. There were no books on Indian history, not even in the library….
But I knew something was wrong. I started reading and learning my own culture….
I saw the Indian people at their happiest when they went to Alcatraz or to Washinton to defend their fishing rights. They at last felt like human beings.” – Evan Haney, A People’s History of the United States, Page 531.
Always remember….that
“If we don’t learn our history, we’re doomed to repeat it”
Hello Bobby J.
Well, you have submitted yet another comment that will immediately enter the Wonders in the Dark Hall of Fame for it’s cinematic expertise and beautiful transcription.
I would venture to add two films to the Wyler mix that may rank among his best:
Councelor-At-Law
The Good Fairy
Both are out on very fine Kino DVDs, which I am happy to have in my own collection.
Of the film sthat you present as indisputable Wyler masterworks, I would most assuredly embrace:
Wuthering Heights
The Little Foxes
The Letter
Dodsworth
The Heiress
Those five are masterworks.
And I would add:
Ben-Hur
….well for reasons I articulated on in my review of a few weeks ago here.
And I’ll admit, I rather do love:
Funny Girl
For me, “Best Years of Our Lives” is a very overrated film, and I don’t quite consider the fine genre piece “The Westerner” nor “Jezebel” as masterworks, as solid and entertaining as they are.
But I realize you are not trying to argue the case for any of these specifically, but rather as a case for Wyler as one of the top American directors. He was certainly VERY close to the titans, I agree, and your argument on this thread almost convinces me to include him. I may.
But I still have Chaplin at the very top. Three of his films are masterpieces (City Lights, Modern Times, The Gold Rush) and not a single Wyler film (and God do I love “Wuthering Heights” and also “Ben-Hur”) can come up to the level of those three.
Still, Bobby J. you make a very very very good case here, it’s tough to refute.
That said, I personally do love Wyler’s cinema exceedingly.
The epitome of “sit on the fence” commenting from the supreme master of all-time of having one’s cake, eating it and eulogising over it, too…
And Allan reprimanded me today on the phone from the U.K. for calling Chaplin an “American director.”
Allan says he’s a “Hollywood director.”
Good point, especially since we can consider Lubitsch, Von Stroheim, Von Sternberg, and sveral other in that special category…..Hitchcock too, of course.
OK Bobby, you’ve won me over!!!!
Here is my list again:
(of the greatest HOLLYWOOD directors)
Chaplin
Hitchcock
Welles
Ford
Keaton
Capra
Wilder
Cukor
Wyler
Griffith
Lubitsch
Sturges
Spielberg
Kubrick
Scorsese
And these ten are knocking at the door:
Whale
Sirk
Allen
Dieterle
Kazan
Coppola
Malick
Lynch
Cutiz
Preminger
Bobby, R.D., Alexander, Tony, Kaleem, Allan, Dee Dee, Joe, David Noack, Jon, or anyone else here:
do we have a defense for any of those ten to make the Hollywood Hall of Fame?
OK wise guy, (Allan) read the above comment!
LOL.
I actually forgot to acknowledge those late-breaking superlative submissions here from R.D.!!!!!
I will within the next hour. Sorry about that.
Sam, re: Wyler, I’m pleased to see you added him to your list. I didn’t mention “Mrs. Miniver” or “Ben-Hur” (both of which got him Oscars) because I just don’t like them as much as the ones I did mention. I’ve read great things about “Counsellor-at-Law” and hope to see it one day. I believe “The Good Fairy,” which I’ve also not seen, is airing on TCM soon, and I’ll be sure to catch it, as I’m also a great fan of Margaret Sullavan. (She and Wyler were married briefly.) Ditto, Cukor. I forgot to mention Cukor’s “Camille” as one of his masterpieces (my favorite Garbo performance), so I will now.