So immediately, right from the start with Cynthia Ann, you have people coming along, taking the basic story, embellishing it a bit, changing parts of it to fit their needs and their sensibility. There are very few facts that really are reliable that we can count on.
So my book becomes as much about the making of the myth, and how that happens over time, and how each generation comes along and re-tells this thing to fit their own needs and their own sensibility. And what starts as a simple story, becomes the basic Texas foundational myth. What is it that people in the s were latching onto with this captivity story and captivity myth? The same thing that people who were coming to America had been doing with it since really the 17th century.
It raises all of these difficult issues. At the same time, besides all of this sort of personal and psychological tension involved, it becomes a sort of justification for the conquest of the West. Because if these Natives are going to come forward and steal our women and children, then we have the right to conquer them, we have the right to tame them.
It serves both purposes. An important part of all this is the question of sex with the Indians. So there are these psychological, psychosexual tensions involved, there are these imperial notions, and Americans continue to tell these stories. Around the time Cynthia Ann was kidnapped in , if you look at the bestseller list, three of the four top bestsellers in America are James Fenimore Cooper novels, all of which have captivity themes.
And then the fourth one was a non-fiction book about Mary Jamison, a woman who was captured by Seneca Indians in upstate New York in the 18th century.
So this is something that continues on into Texas. And really throughout our history, [the captivity narrative] has been an important genre. But it seems that based on history, there really was quite a lot of--at least with the Comanche tribe--scariness.
Talk about the reality of the Comanche versus the fictional depictions in book and film. Well Comanches were nomadic warriors on the limestone plains of north Texas. It was a tough place to make a living. Their birthrate was low, their resources were scarce.
They became wonderful horsemen, maybe the best horsemen of all Native American groupings. They had huge horse herds, which were labor intensive, so they needed outsiders. They could be enormously kind and generous to each other, but they could be very cruel to outsiders because of this warrior culture. But you have to put it in context, both of what they were up against and that they became involved in a year protracted war with Texans, really the longest war fought on American soil.
And this was a real clash of civilizations. These two cultures shared nothing in common. It was also an intimate war. Well, in the Texan-Comanche wars, the families--in essence--were the targets.
Each side wanted to wipe out the other side, to wipe out its culture, to wipe out its family. It becomes a very intimate war in that sense. How did Alan LeMay the author of "The Searchers" get into writing Westerns, and decide to adapt this story into a novel? I was very happy that I was able to write about Alan LeMay.
Alan began as a novelist out to make money, and he saw Westerns as a pretty lucrative way to cash in. And then there's another fictional character, an adopted younger brother he calls Mart Pauley, and these two guys search in the novel for seven years, and it really focuses on this quest--and the quest is another great literary genre or theme.
Kind of grim, but beautifully written. In the picture, "Amos" has become Ethan Edwards, played by John Wayne, and in the movie, he really hates the Comanche. It does seem reasonable to assume that Ford recognized something of his own loneliness in Ethan Edwards and that the character sparked something in him. Other reviews were less generous. And then, over the years, a lone voice was heard here, another one there, and the general sense of The Searchers within the community of film lovers and then beyond started to change.
For me and for many other directors of my generation, it was a touchstone. I go back to The Searchers all the time. A few years ago, I watched it with my wife, and I will admit that it gave me pause.
For me, the problem was with the scenes involving a plump Comanche woman Beulah Archuletta that the Hunter character inadvertently takes as a wife. Then the tone shifts dramatically, and Wayne and Hunter both become ruthless and bullying, scaring her away.
Later, they find her body in a Comanche camp that has been wiped out by American soldiers, and you can feel their sense of loss. All the same, this passage seemed unnecessarily cruel to me. In this case, the mystery of a man who spends 10 years of his life searching for someone, realizes his goal, brings her back and then walks away. Only an artist as great as John Ford would dare to end a film on such a note.
In its final moment, The Searchers suddenly becomes a ghost story. Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day. March 8, am. Related Stories. Related Story 'Ted' Trailer. The poignancy with which he stands alone at the door, one hand on the opposite elbow, forgotten for a moment after delivering Debbie home.
These shots are among the treasures of the cinema. Many members of the original audience probably missed his purpose; Ethan's racism was invisible to them, because they bought into his view of Indians. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
Reviews Great Movies The Searchers. Roger Ebert November 25, From the famous final shot of "The Searchers. Now streaming on:. Powered by JustWatch. Now playing. Antlers Brian Tallerico. Old Henry Glenn Kenny. Attica Odie Henderson. No Future Peter Sobczynski.
0コメント