Movies |
The Searchers
By
Published: Jun 28, 2018
Category:
Drama
We open on a man and his 13-year-old son fleeing the death squads in El Salvador [population: 6.3 million; there are between 30,000 and 60,000 gang members, and another 500,000 people are allegedly linked to criminal structures; there are 50 murders a year per 100,000 inhabitants; suicide now accounts for 57 percent of deaths of pregnant females ages 10-19 in El Salvador.] They take a bus through Mexico, get out near the Arizona border. Fearing that the boy will lose his cell phone, his father takes it. Then everything goes wrong. Instead of asylum, the father is deported. The weeping boy is whisked off to a converted Walmart in Arizona, where he’s caged with other migrant children. And the father resolves: no matter what it takes, he’ll find his son. He sneaks across the border and begins searching. Meanwhile, his son walks out of the detention camp to look for his father. The rest of the movie is their search.
That movie doesn’t exist. The plot occurred to me last week, for obvious reasons. [Interested producers can reach me at HeadButlerNYC@AOL.com.]
This plot may remind you of a film plot that actually exists. After the Civil War, a Comanche raiding party massacres a family and takes a prisoner: Debbie, the youngest daughter. Her uncle begin a 5-year quest to find her. Yes, that’s “The Searchers,” released in 1956, directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne.
“The Searchers” is the most honored Western ever made. (Alternative opinion: it’s #2, after “High Noon.) It was voted the Greatest Western of All Time and the #12 Greatest Movie of All Time by the American Film Institute. It was amongst the first 25 movies to be selected by the Library Of Congress for preservation in The National Film Registry. One award it didn’t win: an Oscar for Ford or Wayne. [To buy the DVD from Amazon for $8, click here. To rent or buy the streaming video, click here.]
Fun fact: “John Ford made a point of hiring American Indians for his films, and this one was no exception. The Navajo actually called him “Tall Leader” as they appreciated the fact that he brought employment to an impoverished people.”
Fun fact: “Natalie Wood was still a student in high school when this film was being made, and on several occasions both John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter had to pick her up at school on days when she was required on the set. She does not appear until 1 hour and 21 minutes into the film. She has less than ten minutes screen time.”
Surprise: Wayne has undertaken his search not to rescue Debbie. He wants to kill her — she’s surely become a squaw by now. When he finds her, what will he do? I could show you the famous ending, but then you’ll have to shoot me. Let’s just say: Do not leave this earth without seeing “The Searchers.”
BONUS VIDEO
David Lean watched this movie several times before making “Lawrence of Arabia” to help give him a sense of how to shoot a landscape. Jean-Luc Godard called this film the fourth-greatest American film of the sound era, and once also compared its ending with “Ulysses being reunited with Telemachus.” Here’s Martin Scorsese on its power…
