July 5th: THE SEARCHERS (John Ford, 1956)

NOTE: This film will be shown on the high-definition HD-DVD format.

The relatives of a family massacred by Indians venture out to recover the kidnapped survivors.



Critic Dave Kehr said: "We may still be waiting for the Great American Novel, but John Ford gave us the Great American Film in 1956. The Searchers gathers the deepest concerns of American literature, distilling 200 years of tradition in a way available only to popular art, and with a beauty available only to a supreme visual poet like Ford. Through the central image of the frontier, the meeting point of wilderness and civilization, Ford explores the divisions of our national character, with its search for order and its need for violence, its spirit of community and its quest for independence."



John Ford was one of the most prolific and decorated filmmakers in American cinema history, getting his start in the silent era in the 1910's and continuing to work into the mid 1960's, with over 130 films to his credit. While Ford worked in every genre from dramas to literary adaptations to war films to historical dramas to adventures, he is best known for his groundbreaking Westerns and their depiction of Utah's Monument Valley. In 1939 Ford cast John Wayne as the lead in his now-classic Stagecoach, beginning a collaboration that would last over 25 years across 14 films and turning Wayne into a movie star and icon.



The Searchers was based on a novel supposedly inspired by true events. Ford worked with many actors and technicians in his "stock company" made up of many former collaborators, including screenwriter Frank S. Nugent and cinematographer Winton C. Hoch. The film was shot on location in Arizona, Utah, Los Angeles, and Alberta, Canada.



While the film is not considered a revisionist Western, it looks deeper into issues of racism and presents a significantly more complicated moral perspective compared to previous works in the genre. Wayne, used to playing the hero in most of his films, is here given a darker and heavily flawed character.



The film was a moderate success, but has grown in stature with each passing decade. It has inspired many filmmakers including George Lucas, David Lean, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Jean-Luc Godard. The film was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, and is often referred to as the greatest Western ever made.



Running time is approx. 2 hours.