I’ve always loved this “explaining The Searchers” scene from Martin Scorsese‘s Who’s That Knocking At My Door? (’68). Filmed in ’65, the 26-year-old Harvey Keitel is trying to make Zina Bethune, 20, with his knowledge of and passion for John Ford‘s The Searchers (5.16.56).
It’s really Scorsese talking, of course. You’re left with a presumption, in fact, that Scorsese probably attempted any number of seductions along these lines.
Over the decades many people have proclaimed their knowledge of and passion for The Searchers. The first significant “we need to take a fresh look” piece was written in ’79 by New York contributor Stuart Byron. His money phrase was calling it the “Super-Cult Movie of the New Hollywood,” and that certainly stirred the pot for a lot of folks.
On 8.9.11 the late Peter Bogdanovich sought to re-start the engine with an IndieWire piece in which he The Searchers “not only among the very best, but also among the final Western masterworks of the movies’ golden age.”
Largely for the sake of obstinacy I posted a counterpunch piece a couple of days later (“Hard-To-Love Searchers“) and I was mostly hated on for doing so. You’re worthless, stupid…kill yourself! Sure thing.
And then on 3.18.13 Scorsese himself posted a conflicted, yes-and-no Searchers love essay in The Hollywood Reporter.
That was ten years ago, and I think that as time moves on it’s going to be less and less dangerous or dicey to assess The Searchers in less-than-glowing or semi-religious terms. Scorsese’s wisest observation in the THR piece was that director John Ford personally related to John Wayne‘s Ethan Edwards, the gruff, scowling, racist-minded loner at the heart of this 1956 film. This is precisely why the present-tense viewers are considerably less enamored (if in fact they ever were enamored) of this rather thorny and at times cruel-hearted film.
Scorsese’s basic thought is that while The Searchers has some unfortunate or irritating aspects, it’s nonetheless a great film and has seemed deeper, more troubling and more layered the older he’s become. Which is well and good but you always have to take Scorsese’s praise with a grain of salt, I think. A lifelong Film Catholic, Scorsese has always been a gentle, generous, big-hearted critic. Show him almost any mediocre film by a semi-respected director and nine times out of ten he’ll look on the bright side and turn the other cheek. Has he ever written anything even the least bit mean or cutting or dismissive?
My basic view of The Searchers, as I wrote in ’07 or thereabouts, is that “for a great film it takes an awful lot of work to get through it. I don’t know how to enjoy The Searchers any more except by wearing aesthetic blinders — by ignoring all the stuff that drives me up the wall in order to savor the beautiful heartbreaking stuff (the opening and closing shot, Wayne’s look of fear when he senses danger for his brother’s family, his picking up Natalie Wood at the finale).
That said I can’t help but worship Winston C. Hoch‘s VistaVision photography for its own virtues. And speaking of the lush lensing, the last and only Searchers Bluray popped 16 and 1/3 years ago (12.8.06). It’s well past time to issue a remastered 4K version.
