The Searchers

One film, and the man at the centre of it is the villain.

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Where to start with The Searchers

One film, 119 minutes, and nothing before or after it. The one thing worth carrying in is that the film knows what Ethan Edwards is. He spends five years looking for his kidnapped niece and a good part of that time intending to kill her rather than bring her home, and the picture is clear-eyed about his hatred rather than endorsing it. Watched as a straightforward adventure it reads badly; watched as a portrait of a man who cannot be let indoors it is something else.

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    The Searchers (1956) The Searchers

    John Ford directing John Wayne in the part Wayne is least comfortable in and best at. The American Film Institute named it the greatest American Western in 2008.

Then what? There is no sequel and no real remake. Alan Le May's 1954 novel is the source and is harder and plainer than the film. A 2016 Canadian film called Searchers reworks the story with an Inuk man searching for his wife and daughter, and drops the original's racial conflict entirely; it is its own film rather than a remake.

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The Film

  • The Searchers 1956

The Novel

  • The Searchers 1954

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