> >>> furuhashi.1 at osu.edu 11/15/05 6:01 AM >>>
> The Searchers looms large because it basically broke the genre. In
> what other Western would the protagonist declare something like this:
> "I figure a man's only good for one oath at a time. I took mine to
> the Confederate States of America"?
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <<<<<>>>>>
>
> nah, above looms large because of comment that ethan edwards (john
> wayne) makes at the funeral: 'put an amen on it, there's no more
> time'...
>
> or maybe as example of western with plot revolving around family
> unification (biggie theme across genres in post-ww2 period)...
>
> or, perhaps, because of narrative of neurotic/obssessed white guy
> trying to rescue someone taken by 'aliens' who doesn't want to
> be rescued, (geez, 'the duker' tries to kill his niece earlier in
> film,
> but at end, well, there's that family unification thing, lifting
> her in
> his arms, our hero says: 'let's go home, debbie'...
>
> [[theme of rescuing one who doesn't desire rescue, itself, became
> obssession for host of '70s directors influenced - in various ways
> - by
> ford's film: martin scorcese (mean streets/taxi driver), john milius
> (dillinger/wind and the lion), spielberg (close encounters), lucas
> (star wars), cimino (deerhunter), schrader (hardcore)]]...
>
It seems to me that Taxi Driver is the closest in spirit to The Searchers. Maybe The Searchers is not so much a Western as a "damaged veteran" film.
> or might be that portrayal of white/indian relations in film was
> actually closer to 'racial question' issue of 1950s and emerging
> civil rights era... michael hoover
The Searchers didn't get any Oscar nomination, though John Ford won many Academy awards for other films (I don't know how it fared at the box office). The film's portrayal of Ethan was too disturbing for critics then. I don't know when and how the film began to climb up to its current exalted status in film criticism. Probably it was "discovered" by the French (Cahiers Du Cinema, etc.) like many other American films were.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>