John Ford's The Searchers is one of the great Hollywood westerns, a powerful anti-racist film.
Into the huge landscape of Monument Valley comes Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a leftover soldier from the Confederate army still carrying his sword, though the war is behind him.
Ethan's almost insane hatred for the Comanche Indians expresses itself most forcibly in his disgust at mixed race relationships. Any woman who has 'been with a Comanche' is no longer white but is, in his terms, ruined and deserving only of death.
Made in 1956, the film explores the racist tensions of American society, cross-race relationships being a terror at the heart of it, especially in the former Confederacy of the South.
Ethan arrives at his brother Aaron's home to discover Aaron and his wife dead and his niece Debbie abducted by the Comanche Chief Scar. The raid on the farm was in reprisal for the killing of Scar's two sons by the US cavalry.
Martin, part Comanche but adopted by Aaron's family, arrives back at the farm after visiting his white bride to be, Laurie. The film is the story of Ethan and Martin's four year quest to find Debbie. As their quest unfolds, Ethan's obsessive racism is explored. Ethan is an outsider. A warrior without a war, he has no family ties. Racial purity and white supremacy are the evil anchors of his soul. The quest is his journey towards some kind of redemption.
His youthful opposite, Martin, is describing the journey in letters to Laurie. Their light confused tone overlays some of the bleakest moments of the film. But the relationship between Martin and Ethan is more complex than a simple juxtaposition of good versus evil.
During the quest Martin accidentally acquires a Comanche wife, Look. She is treated as a figure of fun, abused by both Ethan and Martin. Martin's cruel behaviour widens the issue. Ethan's rotten ideas permeate society.
The point is made even more forcibly by the 'good' character, Laurie. Martin and Laurie's relationship seems to offer hope of racial harmony, yet Laurie herself is revolted by the thought of Debbie having sex with a Comanche.
The horror of Ethan's soul reveals itself to Martin as the quest progresses. They learn that Chief Scar has made Debbie his wife. In Ethan's view she would be better off dead.
For Ethan the idea of white women and black men together is so unbearable it must be stopped with a bullet. The racial/sexist paranoia that has passed through American society from slave times is writ large.
The agents of the state and Ethan are shown to share the same brutal impulses. Ethan slaughters the Comanche's buffalo to deny them winter food, while the US cavalry massacres a Comanche village.
Their quest ends when they find Debbie, living as a Comanche. 'These are my people,' she says. Yet earlier in the film we have seen white women who had been captives rescued from the village ransacked by the cavalry presented as gibbering idiots. For Ethan they are mad from captivity and sexual contact with the Comanche, fit only to be put down like rabid dogs. For the viewer the suggestion is that the cavalry massacre may be the cause of the madness, Debbie's integration puts the film on our side. It is a challenge to Ethan's view just as Martin and Laurie's relationship is.
Redemption of a sort is achieved for Ethan in the closing reels. When he finally captures Debbie we expect him to kill her. Instead he lifts her up, holding her as he did when she was a child. Human decency breaks through his murderous bigotry.
The film ends with the homestead restored, Martin and Laurie reunited. But for Ethan there is no home. He stands on the threshold of the farmhouse for a moment, turns and wanders back to the valley. There can be no contentment for him.
The Searchers is fraught with contradictions, not least because the theme of racism is thrashed out in the context of a western, the context in which white supremacy is expected to rule. The casting of John Wayne as Ethan Edwards reinforces that tensionone of Hollywood's most right wing actors gives the performance of his life in a liberal film.
This is epic cinema wrestling with big questions. Watch it on a wide screen if you can.