”A man has to learn to forgive himself,” Amos said, his voice unnaturally gentle….”Or he can’t stand to live. It so happens we be Texans. We took a reachin’ holt, way far out, past where any man has right or reason to hold on. Or it we didn’t, our folks did, so we can’t leave off, without giving up that they were fools, wasting their lives, and washed in the way they died.” The moment of realization.Amos Edwards and Marty Pauley are helping to retrieve some cattle that have been stolen from a neighboring homestead when they discover that it was a feint by the Comanches to pull as many guns away from the settlements as possible. They are too far away to do much but watch helplessly as plumes of smoke ascend into the sky confirming their worst fears. When Amos comes to the homestead he is calling for his sister-in-law Martha not his brother Henry. His secret, that isn’t so secret, is that he carried a torch for Martha and she carried a torch for him so elegantly portrayed in the movie with a scene showing her brushing his coat lovingly with her hand. I know a lot more people have seen the truly magnificent movie made of The Searchers than have read the book, for the movie they changed the name of Amos to Ethan. The scene continues with Ethan/Amos about to kiss Martha. You can see that he wants to kiss her lips and she would let him, but with willpower he kisses her forehead instead. The sexual tension crackles. With what happens, I’m sure he wished he’d folded her in his arms and locked onto her lips for all he was worth. Martha, played by Dorothy Jordan, with Ethan's coat.In the movie John Wayne comes up on the homestead on fire. He finds Martha’s dress in tatters outside. He goes inside to look for her. He comes back out a shattered man. He refuses to let Marty go into the burning building. In fact he slugs him to keep him out because he doesn’t want to go back in there either. I remember the chills that went up my spine when I first saw the movie and thinking to myself if John Wayne couldn’t handle it I don’t want to see it. All the brutality is brilliantly kept off screen throughout the whole movie leaving our own active imaginations to conjure the scenes for ourselves. This begins an epic search for Debbie Edwards, the young girl taken by the Comanches. It spans many years and many miles as Amos and his not so welcome companion, Marty, track down every band of Comanches hoping to find her so they can work out a trade or if need be take her back by force. Well, that is Marty’s plan. Once she’s been with “bucks” Edwards believes the only decent thing to do is kill her. Marty knows he might have to stand between Amos and Debbie when the time comes. Marty is an orphan that the Edwards raised after his parents were killed. He thinks of himself as part of the family, but Amos sets him straight. ”Debbie’s my brother’s young’n,” Amos said. “She’s my flesh and blood--not yours. Better you leave these things to the people concerned with ‘em, boy. Debbie’s no kin to you at all.”“I--I always felt like she was my kin.”“Well, she ain’t.”“Our--I mean, her --her folks took me in off the ground. I’d be dead but for them. They even--”“That don’t make ‘em any kin.”“All right. I ain’t got no kin. Never said I had. I’m going to keep on looking, that’s all.” Personally, I don’t want anyone looking at me that way. *shiver*Amos is a hard son-of-a-bitch. Just like with the movie you move from one moment to wanting to kick his rear end up into his neck to the next moment wanting to give him a hug. The conflict between Amos and Marty continues for the entire book between divergent personal philosophies and even who has the right to be on this crusade. ”Like most prairie men, they had great belief in their abilities, but a total faith in their bad luck.”What really comes across in the book is the legitimacy of the writer. The dialogue, the descriptions of the way of life, and the depictions of the scenery are magnificently portrayed. ”Now came the first of the snow, a thin lacing of ice needles, heard and felt before they could be seen. The ice particles were traveling horizontally, parallel to the ground, with an enormous velocity. They made a sharp whispering against the leather, drove deep into cloth, and filled the air with hissing. This thin bombardment swiftly increased, coming in puffs and clouds, then in a rushing stream. And at the same time the wind increased…It tore at them, snatching their breaths from their mouths, and its gusts buffeted their backs as solidly as thrown sacks of grain…” John Ford, using VistaVision, captured some of the most stunning scenes of Monument Valley I’ve ever seen. In fact the scenes are the most amazing shots I’ve ever seen of the epic scope of nature in any movie. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is lifted from the book. There is, of course, more in the book. The search is described in more detail than what Ford had time for on film. For those purists out there you will either not be unhappy with the book or the movie because they do part ways, in particular with the endings. Truly, you have to treat them as two separate entities. Both contribute, adding additional layers, to the overall story. Wonderful framing of John Wayne in the doorway at the end of the movie. He is putting his hand on his elbow as a tribute to Harry Carey Sr. who always held his arm that way.John Wayne’s performance in The Searchers is truly a work of art. For those that think the man can’t act watch this movie. His face betrays loathing, simmering anger, and determination like I’ve never seen him do before. He should have won an Oscar for this role, certainly at least a nomination, but the film was entirely ignored by the Academy receiving zero nominations. It resides high on every serious list of greatest movies ever made. I would have to agree. The book that inspired the movie was well worth my time. It added to my enjoyment of rewatching the movie. You might also like my review of the new biography of John Wayne by Scott Eyman
Okay. Heads-up, friends. This review contains major spoilers for the John Wayne movie The Searchers, as well major ones for the book. I’m not going to tag it, because I hate hiding my entire review under a link, and also because I am 99.98% sure that none of you will actually care if I reveal deep dark secrets about a book you haven’t and probably will never read.But consider yourselves duly warned! Spoilers, they be ahead!So.I have a friend who loves John Wayne. I mean, loves John Wayne. He is in a deep and committed emotional relationship with this man. And thanks to this friend, I have now seen a shocking number of The Duke’s films, including all eight-hundred-and-fifty-seven-million minutes of The Big Trail, that one with Jimmy Stewart that I can’t ever remember the name of, and… The Searchers.Have you seen The Seachers, guys?It’s all very sweeping and epic, and tells the story of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) and Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) as they scour the southwest for years trying to find Ethan’s niece Debbie… his only living family, now that his brother and (SECRET LOVE) sister-in-law and all their kids were killed by the Comanche during a raid. Debbie was stolen and presumed alive, but as the years go by it becomes increasingly obvious that if they find her, she won’t be Nice Little Debbie anymore, but rather Random Savage Squaw Of A Random Savage Indian. This is bad, because Ethan hates him some Indians. Friends, The Searchers is not a short movie, and I spent every minute of its run time convinced—absolutely convinced—that Ethan was going to find Debbie and, in a fit of rage and sorrow, scalp her and leave her to die in the desert.I was in hysterics. I could hardly watch, because at any moment everything would end in DISASTER.As anyone who has seen the film knows, this… does not happen. No, instead, it’s all soaring inspirational music and meaningful eye contact and “Let’s go home, Debbie” and I ended up suffering a sort of collapse out of relief and misguided terror.Good movie, though. You have to handwave away a little tiny bit of fifties-era-racism, but still good.Then a week or so ago, one of my patrons starting waxing eloquent about The Searchers: The Book, which I hadn’t even realized was a thing although in retrospect I guess it makes sense. “But it’s ALAN LEMAY,” the patron gasped, as though this would mean anything to me. “Winter Range?! The Unforgiven?! THUNDER IN THE DUST?!?!?!”No.But I did, on his recommendation, pick up a copy of the book.And color me totally boggled, but… I actually enjoyed it! What the hell!? I mean, I liked True Grit just fine, but mainly for the sassy girl heroine. And I loathed—absolutely fucking despised—Lonesome Dove. Aaaaand… that’s the sum total of my experience with Westerns.So to find myself actively wanting to know what was going to happen next in this surprisingly well-written, not-at-all-pulpy, not-nearly-as-racist-as-expected novel… it was a total shocker.I think it helped that the overall story, while similar to the movie, was different enough to keep everything interesting. Rather than being primarily Ethan’s (here, Amos’s) point of view, it was way more focused on Martin Pauley’s journey. Plus, the writing, like I said, was not nearly as Crappy Dime A Dozen Paperback Novel-ish as I had expected.Jerem Futterman was lightly built, but well knit, and moved with a look of handiness. Had he been a cow-horse you might have bought him, if you liked them mean, and later shot him, if you didn’t like them treacherous.I love it! Or, slightly longer:Night was coming on as they raised the lights of the Mathison ranch two hours away. The sunset died, and a dark haze walled the horizon, making the snow-covered land lighter than the sky. The far-seen lights of the ranch house held their warmest promise in this hour, while you could still see the endless emptiness of the prairie in the dusk. Martin Pauley judged that men on horseback, of all creatures on the face of the world, led the loneliness and most frost-blighted lives. He would have traded places with the lowest sodbuster that breathed, if only he could have had four walls, a stove, and people around him.Perfection.And lulled into a false sense of security, friends, I stopped worrying about what was going to happen when the two men found Debbie. Because obviously, everything would work out okay! And probably be beautifully described in spare prose!SERIOUSLY!? AMOS DIES?!?! I mean, I sort of like that better than in the movie, to be honest, but I WAS UNPREPARED! JOHN FORD, WHY MUST YOU HAVE CHANGED YOUR FILM IN SUCH A WAY THAT LEFT ME TOTALLY BLINDSIDED BY THE NOVEL?!?!Westerns, man.Should have known someone important was going to get themselves shotgunned dramatically, on horseback, in the desert, in a way designed to be the Most Full Of Feels as possible.Lesson learned.
What do You think about The Searchers (1987)?
The film is rightly considered a classic, but the novel on which it is based seems to be rather less well known/regarded. I found this surprising, as Alan le May's novel has so much to offer. The central story seems straightforward - a young white girl is kidnapped and her family killed by Comanche native Americans, her surviving relatives (uncle Amos, Ethan in the film, and adoptive brother Mart) hunt for her. But like Heart of Darkness or Moby Dick, this is a tale about the journey, internal as much as external as well as a vivid portrait of a frontier world already disappearing (and much less sympathetically painted than Dances with Wolves) and a moving story about loss, grief and acceptance. Well worth a read, even if you know the film like the back of your hand
—Matthew Willis
Very good book. Not quite a five star read for me, but certainly a strong four.The book has a different ending than the movie and I think on the whole John Ford's take on the story and the changes he made are a _bit_ better. But the book's story line works too. The last third is just different.spoiler(view spoiler)[The movie hangs with the love story between Mart and Laurie and makes the rescue of Debbie a story of the redemption (half-redemption) of Ethan/Amos. I think this works better.It is also the only way we get that poetic and perfect ending of John Wayne not belonging and achingly turning away from the doorway. One of the best scenes in cinema history.I like the books ending as well, don't get me wrong, pairing Debbie and Mart at the end and killing Amos/Ethan...it does work just fine, just the tighter story change done by Ford is cleaner. (hide spoiler)]
—Greg O'byrne
Quote from Alan LeMay, The Searchers :“The Comanches were supposed to be the most literal-minded of all the tribes. There are Indians who live in a poetic world, half of the spirit, but the Comanches were a tough-minded, practical people, who laughed at the religious ceremonies of other tribes as crazy-Indian foolishness. They had no official medicine men, no pantheon of named gods, no ordered theology. Yet they lived very close to the objects of the earth around them, and sensed in rocks, and winds, and rivers, spirits as living as their own. They saw themselves as of one piece with a world in which nothing was without a spirit.”“ … Perhaps it was that, and knowing where he was, that accounted for what happened next. Or maybe scars, almost as old as he was, were still in existence down at the bottom of his mind, long buried under everything that had happened in between. …”
—Chrisl
