The Searchers

Aaah John Wayne. The Duke. It's been awhile since I've seen any of his stuff. Such a good actor. And "The Searchers" is no exception. The reason for viewing this film was because we have been given a list/assignment of all the films we need to see before we start our semester at the LAFSC. And this film was one of them.

What stuck me most about this film was how pretty the cinematography was of this film. Naturally in westerns there are beautiful anamorphic shots throughout the film, and this as well, was no exception. It was a gritty piece, starting off slow in the beginning, then quickly tragedy strikes, and it's up to John Wayne and his partner to seek retribution for the murdering of their family and capture of one of the girls from the family by a neighboring Indian tribe. In all of the mix is a love story, comedy, and reconciliation.

Supposedly this was one of the first films that really dealt with the issue of racism. Although I see how this can be so, I can think of another film made right around the same time that much more directly tackled racism which was "Giant". So, I'm not exactly sure why this film was set apart from all the other numerous John Wayne westerns on the list of films for the LAFSC. It simply seemed like an above-par western, but maybe I'm missing something. Oh, and another thing about it, it seemed sooo long! Old westerns seemed to have a theme of just dragging along in the middle of the story, and "The Searchers" is not exempt from that. But, then again, audiences used to feel cheated if a movie wasn't at least 2 1/2 hours long back then, so whatcha gonna do? Overall a pretty cool film that I don't think anyone would do harm by watching. But certainly did not make it on my "favorites" list.