re: The Searchers: THe Myth, the Movie, the Message

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The Searchers segregates the initiated from the uninitiated; and so it is widely considered, by the initiated, at least, to be among the four or five best movies of all time. At his maiden screening, a young Cahiers du Cinema critic named Jean-Luc Godard wept, later adding, "How can I hate John Wayne … and yet love him tenderly … in the last reel of The Searchers?" Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader routinely name The Searchers as one of their favorite films, adding, "I see it once or even twice a year" (Scorsese), or, "I make sure to see The Searchers at least once a year" (Schrader), though such encomia have the curious effect of making the movie sound dutiful and unpleasant, like a prostate exam. Maybe the analogy isn't so outlandish as it seems.

Why did The Searchers become, as one critic has put it, the "Super-Cult movie of the New Hollywood," inspiring such '70s classics as Star Wars, Taxi Driver, and Hardcore? In styling themselves as something other than well-credentialed nerds, the first generation of film school grads to take over Hollywood had two archetypes of directorial cool to draw upon—the sly European émigré (Wilder, Lubitsch, von Stroheim, Lang) or the homegrown American he-man (Ford, Huston, Hawks). They sampled liberally from both, of course, but in Ford's Ethan the avatars of New Hollywood found a very romantic allegory for the director as monomaniacal obsessive, on a quest that others along the way may only find perverse. Ethan was reborn in Travis Bickle, et al., because Ethan and Travis Bickle were means for allowing otherwise unworldly men to live out, vicariously, an earlier romance of moviemaking, before filmmakers pedigreed themselves with advanced degrees.

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Differing view on the Searchers for those that don't like it despite its apparent importance... LINK

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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was better as well.

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I love this movie. Watched it with my grandfather when I was a kid, and it's been one of my favorites ever since.

The Searchers is a visually powerful movie and a great western. I enjoy Liberty Valence more, but I dont detract from Searchers because of it. Not a movie I find I can watch too often.