The Searchers [Blu-ray]
![The Searchers [Blu-ray]](/images/The-Searchers-Blu-ray-B000JLSM00-L.jpg)
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Blu-ray details
Actor: Harry Carey Jr., Henry Brandon, Jeffrey Hunter, John Wayne, Ward BondBrand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Winton Hoch
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 119 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2006-10-31
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 111532
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Working together for the 12th time, John Wayne and director John Ford forged The Searchers into an indelible image of the frontier and the men and women who challenged it. Wayne plays ex-Confederate soldier Ethan Edwards, a believer more in bullets than in words. He's seeking his niece, captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger, thirst, the elements or loneliness
Blu-ray Reviews of The Searchers [Blu-ray]
Blu-ray Review: A Blu-ray demo disk you /have/ to own.
Summary: 3 Stars
The image quality of "The Searchers" is nothing short of startling. We'll get to that after I've lit into the film. Yes, I'm going to tear to pieces what is generaly considered one of /the/ great American films, and (by many people) the best Western ever made.
John Ford was a great director, but I've never cared much for his Westerns. Maybe I'm tired of seeing Ward Bond play the same role again and again. Or perhaps it's just that I don't care for John Wayne, who is hardly my model of ideal manliness. (Jimmy Stewart was ten times the man John Wayne was.)
"The Searchers" has two major problems, neither of which -- as far as I know -- has ever been pointed out. (After writing this, I browsed the Amazon reviews and found that other people have almost-identical reservations.) They render it a far poorer film than it could or should have been.
The first is that it tries to tell two stories that have little to do with each other, and fail to mesh in any meaningful way. The primary story is Ethan and Martin's five-year search for Ethan's kidnapped niece. This is intercut with the broadly comic narrative of Laurie's frustration at trying to get Martin to come back and marry her. (Note Ken Curtis, later Festus on "Gunsmoke", as her dorky, guitar-strumming suitor.)
It doesn't work. The search is morbidly dark, while Laurie's plight is silly beyond belief. Any possibility of dramatic unity -- this is, after all, a serious film about a serious subject -- is destroyed. (Aristotle would have heartily agreed.)
Which brings us to the other problem. John Wayne was no actor. He was more than a decade from reaching the point where he could turn in a credible/creditable performance (Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit", for which he won an undeserved Oscar). In "The Searchers" he is still John Wayne, with a limited performance range that doesn't extend beyond what John Wayne, the man, is capable of.
True, Wayne had a difficult job for any actor -- he had convey his hatred of Indians and desire to kill Debbie for 99% of the film -- then abruptly change his mind. The problem is that we see no motivation for the change. He picks her up, she looks frightened (she knows what he intends), and then, out of nowhere, "Let's go home, Debbie." *
It just isn't believable. Ford should have shown us John Wayne's face, so that we could have gotten /some/ idea of what was going through his mind. Why he doesn't is anyone's guess. Did he think Wayne was incapable of believably revealing his change of heart? Or did it never cross Ford's mind? Regardless, the film lands with a dramatic "thud" -- Something Important happens, but we don't have the least idea /why/. The moment the story is building up to /never occurs/.
"The Searchers" would have worked far better if it had stuck with the search, and ignored just about everything else. Yes, it would have been an even darker film, but it would have packed a far stronger punch.
I should not fail to mention, if only in passing, Max Steiner's miserable score. "Max Steiner" and "miserable score" are more or less redundant. The few good moments are swallowed up in a lot of unnecessary and trivial music.
So why do people hold "The Searchers" in such high esteem? The reason appears to be that it was one of the first "deconstuctionist" Westerns. ** Ethan Edwards is bluntly racist, and is determined to find his niece so he can kill her. She's been polluted by her five-year contact with the "Comanch", and his no longer a "white" woman. *** She'd be better off dead, and Ethan is the man to do it. But however awful the Indians' behavior is, we are not on Ethan's side. Our broad sympathies lie with the Indians, not the Americans. ****
Unfortunately, "The Searchers" doesn't achieve what it sets out to do. It's all hat and no cattle. You don't get points for trying to be profound -- you actually have to achieve it. In this, "The Searchers" fails quite badly. It's easy to imagine a remake that's far superior to the original.
As for the transfer... Oh... my... God... I couldn't believe it. It appears to have been derived from the VistaVision camera negatives. I have never seen a more exquisitely sharp and detailed video image (and with zero apparent edge enhancement). Ford's use of multiple image planes, some in-focus, the others out -- is clearly displayed. *****
Please note that in the supplemental material, someone describes "The Searchers" as having been filmed in three-strip Technicolor, which it almost certainly wasn't. And Martin Scorsese avers that VistaVision has greater depth of field than conventional 35mm movies. Wrong -- it has less. (It's hard to understand how someone who's been making films for four decades doesn't understand Photography 101.)
If you're a fan of "The Searchers", do yourself a favor and get the Blu-ray. Even if you don't care for the film, buy it anyhow. It's a great demo disk. This was a film /made/ for VistaVision ("Motion Picture High Fidelity") -- the scenery alone is worth the price of admission.
* One critic suggested that it's touching Debbie that causes his transformation. He can't bring himself to kill the flesh-and-blood being he knew as a child.
** It also appears to be one of the first to make a stab at proper cowboy attire. Note the dusters on several characters.
*** Another minor problem... Kidnapped whites almost always preferred living with the Indians. Debbie's willingness to return is not implausible, but it is unlikely. In the very last moments, she does show some apparent fear at being among whites again.
**** According to the supplemental material, "The Searchers" was the first Western to show a lot of dead Indians lying around after having been massacred by whites.
***** This is common in Ford's films.
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