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Features: DVD
With The Searchers, John Wayne and director John Ford forged an indelible saga of the frontier and the men and women who challenged it. Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, an ex-Confederate who sets out to find his niece, captured by Comanches who massacred his famliy. He won't surrender to hunger, thirst, the elements or loneliness. And in his obsessive quest, Ethan finds something unexpected: his own humanity. One of the most influential movies ever made, The Searchers contains sequences that are "a brilliant fusing of editing, camerawork and performance as filtered through a master director's eyes" (Ted Sennett, Great Hollywood Westerns).
Editor's Note
A classic Western regarded by many as the best of the genre, John Ford's THE SEARCHERS has been acknowledged by several directors who came into their own in the 1970s, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Paul Schrader, and George Lucas, as a powerful influence on their work. The film stars John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, a case-hardened Civil War veteran returning to his brother Aaron's (Walter Coy) Texas home in 1868. When Rev. Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond) arrives to raise a posse to run down the Comanche who have stolen the cattle of neighbor Lars Jorgenson (John Qualen), Ethan is among those who join him. They return to find the Edwards family slaughtered and the two girls, Lucy (Pippa Scott) and Debbie (Natalie Wood), missing. The posse continues to search for the girls but turns back as winter settles in. However, Ethan and his reluctantly accepted companion, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), the girls' part-Cherokee stepbrother, press on for another seven years, with the Indian-hating veteran becoming ever more fanatical as the hard seasons pass. In his epic meditation on racism, obsession, paranoia, and the myth of the West, Ford explores the ugly underside of a genre that he had imbued with optimism in his early career. Wayne gives perhaps his most powerful performance as the embittered Edwards, but it's the visual poetry of what are possibly Ford's most carefully framed, lit, and composed images that shape this masterwork from beginning to end. As Wayne walks through the doorway at the film's end, he grabs his elbow in a tribute to his and Ford's close friend Harry Carey Sr., a Western film icon who had passed away a few years before.
Plot Summary
An embittered frontiersman engages in an extensive and obsessive search for his niece, abducted years ago by Indians who killed her family in retaliation for a massacre in their village.
| Features | Region 1 | | Snap Case | | Full Frame - 1.33 | | Letterbox - 1.85 | | Widescreen - 1.85 | | Additional Release Material:
| Documentary | | Trailers: Theatrical Trailer | | Interactive Features:
| Interactive Menus | | Scene Access | | Text/Photo Galleries:
| Production Notes |
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| Technical Info
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Release Information
|  | Studio: Warner |
| Release Date: 3/29/2005 |
| Running Time: 119 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1956 | | Catalog ID: 14651 | | UPC: 00085391465126 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
| Cast & Crew
| Memorable Quotes| "That'll be the day."----Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) |
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"...Heads many a list of all-time cinematic favorites....Stunning..." 05/14/1993 p.C28USA Today
"...An audience favorite from the beginning -- and a creative influence on a generation of filmmakers..." 09/25/1998 p.7E Chicago Sun-Times
"...THE SEARCHERS contains scenes of magnificence, and one of John Wayne's best performances. There are shots that are astonishingly beautiful..." 11/25/2001 p.4 Total Film
"...A masterpiece..." 11/01/2000 p.106 Entertainment Weekly
"...The Western that bowled over a generation of film schoolers, from Lucas to Scorsese to Spielberg..." 01/11/2002 p.30 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]ender and insightful. It will cut you up." 07/01/2006 p.121 Total Film
5 stars out of 5 -- "Ford's picture is relentlessly unpretentious; tackling Big Themes without neon-slicking them or telling us what to think." 07/01/2006 p.122 Ultimate DVD
5 stars out of 5 -- "It's a thoughtful, and rather dark piece....Ford used Monument Valley as a canvas for the breathtaking photography." 07/01/2006 p.117 |
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