Synopsis:
SEARCHERS - A classic Western regarded by many as the best of the genre, John Ford's THE SEARCHERS has been acknowledged by several directors who came into their own in the 1970s, including Martin...
SEARCHERS - A classic Western regarded by many as the best of the genre, John Ford's THE SEARCHERS has been acknowledged by several directors who came into their own in the 1970s, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Paul Schrader, and George Lucas, as a powerful influence on their work. The film stars John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, a case-hardened Civil War veteran returning to his brother Aaron's (Walter Coy) Texas home in 1868. When Rev. Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond) arrives to raise a posse to run down the Comanche who have stolen the cattle of neighbor Lars Jorgenson (John Qualen), Ethan is among those who join him. They return to find the Edwards family slaughtered and the two girls, Lucy (Pippa Scott) and Debbie (Natalie Wood), missing. The posse continues to search for the girls but turns back as winter settles in. However, Ethan and his reluctantly accepted companion, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), the girls' part-Cherokee stepbrother, press on for another seven years, with the Indian-hating veteran becoming ever more fanatical as the hard seasons pass. In his epic meditation on racism, obsession, paranoia, and the myth of the West, Ford explores the ugly underside of a genre that he had imbued with optimism in his early career. Wayne gives perhaps his most powerful performance as the embittered Edwards, but it's the visual poetry of what are possibly Ford's most carefully framed, lit, and composed images that shape this masterwork from beginning to end. As Wayne walks through the doorway at the film's end, he grabs his elbow in a tribute to his and Ford's close friend Harry Carey Sr., a Western film icon who had passed away a few years before.
STAGECOACH - Regarded by many as the best Western ever made, STAGECOACH shot John Wayne to stardom and elevated the prestige of a genre that had hitherto been considered a B-movie province. With rumors in the air of a possible Apache attack, a motley group of travelers in a small New Mexico town board the Overland Stage bound for Lordsburg. Among them are the pregnant Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt); timid liquor salesman Peacock (Donald Meek); Hatfield, an aloof gambler (John Carradine); Gatewood (Berton Churchill), a pompous, embezzling banker; and two who have been exiled from town, alcoholic Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell) and Dallas (Clair Trevor), a lady of the evening. Along the trail, they pick up the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), an outlaw who's escaped from prison to take revenge on the Plummer brothers for destroying his family and framing him for murder. As their journey progresses, the hypocrisy of the supposedly respectable passengers becomes clear, and it's the tainted outsiders who display courage and humanity. Described by Orson Welles, who watched the film innumerable times before making CITIZEN KANE, as his cinematic textbook, STAGECOACH is superbly made in every respect, layering humor and sharp characterization into an exciting plot that includes a spectacularly photographed chase in Monument Valley.
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