The Searchers

John Ford troubled the genre that he helped define with John Wayne’s portrayal of Ethan Edwards, a character that has come to embody the identity crisis of the white American male following the Civil War. For Edwards, a Confederate veteran, peace is fleeting, and soon he has a new mission: to rescue his niece from the Comanche. Vengeful, racist, and unrelenting, Edwards has no home but his quest and the contested landscapes he traverses along the way. The beauty of the filmmaking clashes with the demeaning portrayal of Indigenous characters, but the film remains an essential reflection of myths and prejudices that have yet to be overcome.