The way Ethan whips the buckskin sheath from his rifle is poetic. He doesn't just pull it off the rifle, he throws it away, as if summoning all the wrath in the world, the wrath that will drive him not to rescue the girl, but to kill every Comanche he possibly can
What made this so brilliant and chilling was that we didn’t see the bodies but we could tell the horror that was done to them from Wayne’s reaction and inferences.
:44 - The operatic gesture as Ethan flings off the rifle cover; 1:10 - 1:24 The stillness and body language as Ethan looks inside the building and finds Martha; you don't see facial expressions in either. John Ford was a poet, and smart enough to trust that the audience DIDN'T need every single emotion spelled out for them.
Flinging the rifle scabbard off is such a simple yet powerful statement - the gloves are off, the trappings of civilization are off. This is war to the death.
+sivvybee It's the best role he ever did IMO, and he should have gotten an Oscar for this instead of True Grit, which IMO was just a gimme award at that point for him and his long career.
Gigantic movie, as The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance, but some less celebrated old Westerns were also little pearls, such as Tribute to a Bad Man and The Ride Back.
The look on Jeffrey Hunter's face when he first sees the devastation gets to me every time I see this movie. It's still my all time favorite western ever made.
It does not matter how many times I watch this film I still enjoy it.... The story the pace... All first class. I must admit I don't know how John Wayne didn't get best actor.. Quite outstanding.
Yes the movie and John Wayne and John Ford should of all gotten the Oscar. Funny how The Searchers wasn’t even nominated yet after 66 years most everyone knows about and loves this classic film but couldn’t tell you what movies were nominated back in 1956. Best western ever.
Ford has more oscars than any director in history it's fine. What about Howard Hawks and Hitchcock? They have had just as many influential films/greatest films ever but NEVER won a competitive award
Interesting how much of this film shows up in other movies. There's the obvious visual parallel to "Star Wars," where Luke comes home to find his family's home burned and his aunt and uncle murdered (the shot is framed almost exactly as Ford frames Wayne, right down to the wind blowing his hair and clothing). But look a bit deeper. The basic premise here - a man obsessed with saving an innocent (white) girl from savages, is also present in "Star Wars," and is the basic plot behind Travis Bickle's quest to save the young prostitute in "Taxi Driver." Tarantino also echoes the opening and closing shots from this film in "Kill Bill 2" (check the scene where the Bride walks out onto the porch of the wedding chapel to find Bill, and when she leaves Budd's trailer after defeating Elle Driver - she walks out into the desert and the door closes behind her, just as it does on John Wayne's character at the end of this film).. This is immortal stuff.
Next time you watch this movie, look how John Ford uses doorways at various times to focus and frame the action. Masterful. That's why he is John Ford, and I'm not.
1:07 Ethan finds Martha's dress with the implication being she was raped before being murdered. (When Ethan later meets the man he holds responsible for that deed, the look of pure HATE on his face is awesome to behold.)
Harry Carey, Jr., one of the most stalwart and visible members of the John Ford Stock Company (who also played Brad Jorgensen in this film) said that during the shoot of "The Searchers" there was a look in Duke Wayne's eyes and a somber sense of isolation in the normally jovial and outgoing actor that was never there before and he never saw again. Evidence of that look begins at :32.
Yeah, I noticed the similarity to Hammer's movies as well...but one of the scenes I always remembered was when they found Jorgenson's cattle killed. Ethan decides the Commanches were either going to burn out Jorgenson's farm or Ethan's brother. So they set off to Jorgenson's place because it's closer. Now look at Ethan's eyes as he waters & feeds his horse. Sure it's tearing him apart knowing what MIGHT be happening but there ain't a damned thing he can do and he knows it.
@@johndanielharold3633 The FIRST time I saw The Searchers and it 'stuck' with me was 1982, when I went college in Greece. Every Tuesday night was 'Western Movie' night on one of the Two channels I had available, and the Duke was always popular to talk about the next day. I remember that Wayne played Ethan Edwards as an utter bastard, and me and all my mates were totally struck by this.
Dear Daniel Singleton, THANK YOU for posting this sequence of "The Searchers," one of the most powerful, thus Dear to the Heart of film-viewing public worldwide, especially to American soul (u_u)... Take Care, ~ KIMY
Noyuuka raiders would've killed the dog too. They and the Penatekas were absolutely brutal. Ethan had enough of a heart to not let Martin see Martha's violated, scalped corpse...
I connect this film with the other great western "Jeremiah Johnson"both are about men whose family was destroyed by natives and their vendetta against them.
Gets me by the throat every time, a brief hymn to the hundreds, nay thousands, of Texans who died in Comanche raids identical to this. The rights and wrongs of U.S. policy towards the Indians hardly matter, the result was constant raiding by the warriors, death for settlers and also the taking of hostages by the hundred.
Nick Loquellano - it is implied that Ethan loved Martha and they had an affair which led to Debbie. Recall the scene where Martha so gently folds Ethan's coat and Ethan gives her a kiss on the forehead while Ward Bond diverts his eyes.
This is where we see John Wayne acting. Something critics complained was lacking in their explanation of why he was denied the academy award, up to this point. They could no longer use that excuse.
The Comanches didn't leave anybody alive unless they were very well hidden! They were either all killed, or some were killed and the rest kidnapped. Usually it was children who were kidnapped, and adopted. Adults were sometimes captured alive and carried back to be tortured.
They later make three gravestones, for the parents and son. Wayne later reveals he found *and buried* the older daughter. Meaning only the younger daughter, Debbie, is still out there.
Star Wars is a montage of film influences assembled to make a new story. There are very few people who can make a unique story without borrowing some other elements from a film, George Lucas borrowed extensively to put together his Star Wars film and because of it it created a cultural phenomenon. Quentin Tarantino has become a master of this in his films and his master thesis Kill Bill uses it extensively.
Why were they still making westerns that blackened the Indians name in 1970ish?? when all this was over 100\200 years ago, and one indian woman said it was way back in 1600, she said the indian people were almost wiped out then. I don't believe that the Indians were savages because of all the people from other countries that American people have wiped off the face of the earth. But what was going on with those horrible movies??
The Comanche were just as brutal in real life. They were a war tribe that showed no mercy to their enemies, even downright cruelty. The peaceful picture of natives living in harmony is a false narrative. Even before westward expansion, the tribes engaged in bloody conflicts with themselves, with some groups taking in slaves to trade. The introduction of horses by the Spanish made the native war cultures all the more dangerous. This movie shows the harshness of the American West, which had always been romanticized.
In hindsight, this should have been an Oscar for John, he is brilliant.
You are right! This was JW at his finest!
the way John Wayne droops in the doorway.. God that was powerful..
That look from John Wayne is powerful. He goes from sadness to pure rage in a matter of seconds. 0:40
Let us not forget the musical score==it's right out of a Hammer Horror movie.
The way Ethan whips the buckskin sheath from his rifle is poetic. He doesn't just pull it off the rifle, he throws it away, as if summoning all the wrath in the world, the wrath that will drive him not to rescue the girl, but to kill every Comanche he possibly can
Very well put in words
You may be right, but it also may just be a repeat of a gesture Wayne did during the first time he worked with Ford in Stagecoach.
As Ethan should.
One of John Wayne's most powerful films. Another one in which he was robbed of the Oscar.
What made this so brilliant and chilling was that we didn’t see the bodies but we could tell the horror that was done to them from Wayne’s reaction and inferences.
Sadly a lost art today. Modern films must show every act and result of violence in explicit detail.
I never get tired of watching this film.
None of us do.
Yep.
This film explored the complexity of human beings and how they live. A masterpiece.
:44 - The operatic gesture as Ethan flings off the rifle cover; 1:10 - 1:24 The stillness and body language as Ethan looks inside the building and finds Martha; you don't see facial expressions in either. John Ford was a poet, and smart enough to trust that the audience DIDN'T need every single emotion spelled out for them.
Beat me to the same scene by a mere 4 weeks. It is always one sequence I always try to catch whenever viewing "The Searchers".
:)
Flinging the rifle scabbard off is such a simple yet powerful statement - the gloves are off, the trappings of civilization are off. This is war to the death.
A fantastic performance from Wayne I can feel sorry and rage
Spot on..
Awesome scene. John Ford was a master. Don't know how John Wayne didn't get a Oscar for this.
+sivvybee It's the best role he ever did IMO, and he should have gotten an Oscar for this instead of True Grit, which IMO was just a gimme award at that point for him and his long career.
Noone knows.
The BEST western ever made hands down, a true masterpiece for the ages, like will NEVER be made ever again.
A racist old school movie
For a few dollars more outlaw Josey Wales high plains drifter or Rio bravo are equally if not better then the searcher's in my humble opinion
Lonesome Dove is up there as well in my opinion,but yes this tops them all
Gigantic movie, as The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance, but some less celebrated old Westerns were also little pearls, such as Tribute to a Bad Man and The Ride Back.
@@alamudesky1959that the protagonist is racist does not make the movie racist. The cavalry massacres of innocents are criticized in the movie.
The look on Jeffrey Hunter's face when he first sees the devastation gets to me every time I see this movie. It's still my all time favorite western ever made.
It’s the moment Martin loses his innocence.
It does not matter how many times I watch this film I still enjoy it.... The story the pace... All first class. I must admit I don't know how John Wayne didn't get best actor.. Quite outstanding.
I wanna learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father, PILGRIM.
bastlake indeed, that scene in STAR WARS was an homage to this masterpiece
This isn't just a western, this is an opera of a western!
Probably the greatest one ever made!
The brilliant Max Steiner music really shines in this scene.
Starting at :40 Ford's low angle shot of Ethan flinging his rifle cover is very powerful as well as Ethan's expression just prior to it.
Yes the movie and John Wayne and John Ford should of all gotten the Oscar. Funny how The Searchers wasn’t even nominated yet after 66 years most everyone knows about and loves this classic film but couldn’t tell you what movies were nominated back in 1956.
Best western ever.
Ford has more oscars than any director in history it's fine.
What about Howard Hawks and Hitchcock? They have had just as many influential films/greatest films ever but NEVER won a competitive award
@@guileniam You’re absolutely right. It’s political in Hollywood.
Interesting how much of this film shows up in other movies. There's the obvious visual parallel to "Star Wars," where Luke comes home to find his family's home burned and his aunt and uncle murdered (the shot is framed almost exactly as Ford frames Wayne, right down to the wind blowing his hair and clothing). But look a bit deeper. The basic premise here - a man obsessed with saving an innocent (white) girl from savages, is also present in "Star Wars," and is the basic plot behind Travis Bickle's quest to save the young prostitute in "Taxi Driver."
Tarantino also echoes the opening and closing shots from this film in "Kill Bill 2" (check the scene where the Bride walks out onto the porch of the wedding chapel to find Bill, and when she leaves Budd's trailer after defeating Elle Driver - she walks out into the desert and the door closes behind her, just as it does on John Wayne's character at the end of this film)..
This is immortal stuff.
Clint gives a few doorway nods in The Unforgiven too
1:58 "don't let im look in there Mose, it won't do im any good"...right words there!...(along with other words/scences in this film....) great picture
This scene was the influence for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).
This film doesn't age. One of the best westerns ever to hit the cinemas. George Lucas remade it in 1977.
Uncle Owen! .... Aunt Beru!... Uncle Owen!...
So that's the influence for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).
The greatest movie ever made.
Next time you watch this movie, look how John Ford uses doorways at various times to focus and frame the action. Masterful. That's why he is John Ford, and I'm not.
The beautiful Monument Valley area appeared so often in John Wayne movies.
1:07 Ethan finds Martha's dress with the implication being she was raped before being murdered. (When Ethan later meets the man he holds responsible for that deed, the look of pure HATE on his face is awesome to behold.)
Harry Carey, Jr., one of the most stalwart and visible members of the John Ford Stock Company (who also played Brad Jorgensen in this film) said that during the shoot of "The Searchers" there was a look in Duke Wayne's eyes and a somber sense of isolation in the normally jovial and outgoing actor that was never there before and he never saw again. Evidence of that look begins at :32.
The score at 0:32 even sounds like a horror movie cue like from one of the Hammer movies.
Yeah, I noticed the similarity to Hammer's movies as well...but one of the scenes I always remembered was when they found Jorgenson's cattle killed. Ethan decides the Commanches were either going to burn out Jorgenson's farm or Ethan's brother. So they set off to Jorgenson's place because it's closer. Now look at Ethan's eyes as he waters & feeds his horse. Sure it's tearing him apart knowing what MIGHT be happening but there ain't a damned thing he can do and he knows it.
@@nickmitsialis First time I saw that scene - school matinée - I got it. Stayed with me ever since.
@@johndanielharold3633 The FIRST time I saw The Searchers and it 'stuck' with me was 1982, when I went college in Greece. Every Tuesday night was 'Western Movie' night on one of the Two channels I had available, and the Duke was always popular to talk about the next day. I remember that Wayne played Ethan Edwards as an utter bastard, and me and all my mates were totally struck by this.
Yes one of his best performances if not the best
I have to say this is the darkest film that John Wayne has ever been in.
No WAIT John Wayne, it's too dangerous!
GREAT MOVIE
Dear Daniel Singleton,
THANK YOU for posting this sequence of "The Searchers,"
one of the most powerful, thus Dear to the Heart of film-viewing public worldwide,
especially to American soul (u_u)...
Take Care,
~ KIMY
Incredible film. Best western ever made
I watch it all the time best film for me shane
Martin was a world class runner. Showed up only seconds after the horses.
He was already there not far from the house, and they stopped on that hill too before going down.
@@stevem2323then why did Martin ask Mose to ride double?
@@Jomartproducts To get there sooner??? Wtf dude 🤦
Thank you kindly
Best actor of all time John Wayne
Noyuuka raiders would've killed the dog too. They and the Penatekas were absolutely brutal.
Ethan had enough of a heart to not let Martin see Martha's violated, scalped corpse...
Maybe they didn't had time to be running after a dog.
Ethan slinging the rifle scabbard away is burned in my brain forever.
Este filme é fantástico.
Titanic. Once every million years in this life - a John Wayne comes along.
Dukes finest moment on screen
Melhor faroeste de todos os tempos. Assisti a primeira vez em preto e branco, quando tinha uns 10 anos de idade. Maravilhoso.
0:34 that music. *That music.*
The brilliant Max Steiner
Hey that's how George Lucas got the idea for Luke's aunt and uncle were killed by Stormtroopers in Star Wars (1977)!
I connect this film with the other great western "Jeremiah Johnson"both are about men whose family was destroyed by natives and their vendetta against them.
Gets me by the throat every time, a brief hymn to the hundreds, nay thousands, of Texans who died in Comanche raids identical to this. The rights and wrongs of U.S. policy towards the Indians hardly matter, the result was constant raiding by the warriors, death for settlers and also the taking of hostages by the hundred.
John Ford $ Duke always stunning
Dukes greatest moment in cinema
David Lean, director of "Lawrence of Arabia" was inspired, influenced by John Ford's "The Searchers".
Don't let him go in there mose it won't do him any good..........
notice he shouts out Martha, instead of his brother or nieces or nephew
That's because he and his brother were both in love with Martha, but she chose Aaron to marry.
well yeah lol, I was just pointing out how it's slick they never actually say that but you can tell through these clever clues
The reason he looked for Debbie so long , was, in reality, she was his daughter
Charles Canterbury are you sure because in the movie she is his niece.
Nick Loquellano - it is implied that Ethan loved Martha and they had an affair which led to Debbie. Recall the scene where Martha so gently folds Ethan's coat and Ethan gives her a kiss on the forehead while Ward Bond diverts his eyes.
....Uncle Owen?! Aunt Beru???!!!
That was a paid homage for The Searchers (1956) in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).
Didn't know this movie was based on a true story
the dog is alive
The Searchers was made in 1956 not 1959. John Wayne should have had an oscar for his role as Ethan Edwards, and not for that rubbish True Grit.
This is where we see John Wayne acting. Something critics complained was lacking in their explanation of why he was denied the academy award, up to this point. They could no longer use that excuse.
"Uncle Owen?... Aunt Beru?"
Yes, George Lucas learnt from the best.
A classic.
How you dealt with dear horse in The Godfather 1...
Don't let him in there Mose it won't do him any good
Don't let him look in there Mose won't do him any good
Warum zeig man den schwarzen Falke nicht in Spielfilmlänge...was soll das...und den Western gibt es auch in Deutsch...man fùhlt sich verarscht😮
read the book, print the legend, the life and times of john ford..by scott eyman
What happened to the dog?
he was sleeping with his brothers wife..debbie was his kid with her.
Nope, his brother married his women because he was in the war and probably didn't even know that she was Ethan's women before.
Don’t think you got it.
This is somthing right out of Star Wars (1977)!
Um, no, Star Wars was something right out of The Searchers (1956)!
Made in 1956
W mi pzks
Did they really have to kill Debbie ' family.
They did, it's what happened back then.
How do we know the whole family is dead?
Its implied...
The Comanches didn't leave anybody alive unless they were very well hidden! They were either all killed, or some were killed and the rest kidnapped. Usually it was children who were kidnapped, and adopted. Adults were sometimes captured alive and carried back to be tortured.
They later make three gravestones, for the parents and son. Wayne later reveals he found *and buried* the older daughter. Meaning only the younger daughter, Debbie, is still out there.
We know...
A respected film...but what the heck were they expecting to ranch or farm in that desert? The Commanche probably ran them out for being unsensable.
I know I need to watch it, but it's so dated it drives me nuts. I'll have to watch it with the sound off!
LaJewel LameAss Liberal remark 😒
Nah...just stick with your Twilite and guardians of the galaxy.👍
I can believe Star Wars was a rip off lol
Star Wars is a montage of film influences assembled to make a new story. There are very few people who can make a unique story without borrowing some other elements from a film, George Lucas borrowed extensively to put together his Star Wars film and because of it it created a cultural phenomenon. Quentin Tarantino has become a master of this in his films and his master thesis Kill Bill uses it extensively.
The words of someone who has never seen the squadron of Mosquitos flying down a Norweigan fjord to bomb a Nazi wunderwaffe factory in _633 Squadron_
The whiskey soaked, racist, the one and only-
Mr. Marion Robert Robinson.
Racist? What you doing here leftie loon? Huh?
Why were they still making westerns that blackened the Indians name in 1970ish?? when all this was over 100\200 years ago, and one indian woman said it was way back in 1600, she said the indian people were almost wiped out then. I don't believe that the Indians were savages because of all the people from other countries that American people have wiped off the face of the earth. But what was going on with those horrible movies??
The Comanche were just as brutal in real life. They were a war tribe that showed no mercy to their enemies, even downright cruelty. The peaceful picture of natives living in harmony is a false narrative. Even before westward expansion, the tribes engaged in bloody conflicts with themselves, with some groups taking in slaves to trade. The introduction of horses by the Spanish made the native war cultures all the more dangerous. This movie shows the harshness of the American West, which had always been romanticized.