A funny thing happened on May 26.
I sat down for my first-ever viewing of The Searchers, the 1956 John Ford classic starring John Wayne and a very young Natalie Wood. Unbeknownst to me at the time was that the viewing would coincide exactly with Wayne’s birthday. He would have turned 117.
The movie is as good as everyone says and more. It stands apart because it does something special, something unique to the period in which it was produced: It bridges the new with the old. The Searchers is a masterful blend of silent-era storytelling techniques and talkie-era technological advances.
Nowhere is this happy marriage of narrative and spectacle clearer than in the film’s opening and closing sequences, two perfect bookends to a tragedy masquerading as a Western. With practically no dialogue at all, these two visually stunning moments tell a complex story of unrequited love and loss, of despair and commitment, and of deeply flawed men making heroic and cowardly choices.
The film opens with a shot of a woman silhouetted against an open door as she stares out into the vast expanse of West Texas. It’s homesteader Martha Edwards, played by Dorothy Jordan. She exits her home and moves apprehensively across the porch, the wind whirling all around her. The camera, positioned behind Martha, follows her outside as she trades the pitch-black interior of her home for the gloriously sunny Texas wilderness: endless skies, sunbaked buttes, sprawling desserts, and green foliage scattered across the countryside. She comes to a rest, as does the camera, staring now at the rider in the distance. The rider is her brother-in-law, Ethan Edwards, played by Wayne. There is a narrative to the camera’s movements. As the story opens, the viewer is thrust into the open.
Ethan dismounts and is greeted by his brother Aaron, played by Walter Coy. Joining Aaron are his children, Lucy, Ben, and Debbie. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, they all move indoors, thus ending the opening sequence.
Though it contains hardly any dialogue, this roughly five-minute introduction establishes Ethan’s romantic love for Martha. He is smitten, a fact which becomes more apparent as the movie progresses. It’s possible Martha harbors similar romantic feelings for Ethan. It’s also possible Aaron knows, which may explain the brief pause and tension between the brothers before they shake hands. It may also explain why the brothers, upon shaking hands, look immediately to Martha, Ethan’s face blank but Aaron’s seemingly filled with anxiety. Though the script itself has little to say about Ethan’s passion for Martha, his position is made clear by his every interaction with her. This is where Ford’s background in silent filmmaking is most obvious. It’s the ability to say everything without saying anything at all. From stolen looks to gentle touches to the tenderness Ethan shows Martha, a tenderness he displays nowhere else in the film until — well, we’ll address this later — it is established quickly through nonverbal communication, facial expressions, and gentle hints that Ethan suffers from unrequited love. He is in love with a woman he cannot have. Yet, though Ethan is trapped, he is not a man without a purpose. As long as Martha exists, his life has some meaning.
Then disaster strikes: While Ethan is away, a Cherokee raiding party led by the murderous warlord Scar massacres the Edwards family, killing Aaron, Ben, and, most important of all, Martha. Lucy is captured and murdered elsewhere. Only young Debbie survives, taken as a prisoner by Scar’s raiding party. Ethan and his adoptive nephew, Martin, then embark on a grueling five-year odyssey to bring the girl home. They eventually find the raiding party, kill Scar, and rescue Debbie, placing her with the Jorgensens, a rancher family with whom the Edwardses were close.
This is where we come to the film’s conclusion and the second bookend.
In The Searcher’s closing moments, we watch as Ethan, on horseback, approaches the Jorgensens’ ranch. He dismounts and approaches their front port, cradling Debbie in his arms. At this moment, we, the viewers, watch everything from inside the interior of Jorgensens’ home, looking out the front door at the reunion. The framing is identical to the film’s opening when we first meet Martha. After Ethan places Debbie gently on the ground, she is whisked away inside by Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen. As they retreat into the house, the camera draws back further into the darkened interior, and the shot becomes tighter and pitch black at the margins. Martin and Jorgensen’s daughter, Laurie, who are set to be wed, are the next to enter the home. Meanwhile, there stands Ethan alone. He considers entering the home but decides against it. He turns slowly and walks lonesome into the dusty Texas wildlands.
Finally, the front door closes, with Ethan on the other side. “The End.”
The concluding sequence is a reverse of the opening both in terms of motion and meaning. The movement of the first shot is outward into the Texas wild. It signifies openness, a new chapter, and Ethan’s hopeful return to the familiar. The movement of the final shot is inward, signaling withdrawal. Ethan’s story is over. Moreover, Debbie’s return holds a double meaning for the rescuer and the rescued. For Debbie, it’s salvation or a “rebirth.” For Ethan, it’s death. He’s a pallbearer carrying Martha’s “remains.” When he lays them to rest, he seals his fate as a man destined to wander alone.
When Martha died, Ethan died. By the time he rescues Debbie, he’s already a ghost. With Martha’s death, Ethan loses all hope for a transformational, life-saving love. It’s important to note he has exactly three moments of tenderness throughout the entire movie: when he first greets Martha, when he says goodbye to her before setting off in pursuit of lost cattle, and when he rescues Debbie. Everything else is sarcasm, belittling, casual cruelty, anger, and worse. Ethan is especially venomous toward Martin, whom he rescued as an infant following a deadly Cherokee raid. (Speaking of which, eagle-eyed observers will note the Cherokee likewise murdered Ethan and Aaron’s mother, according to her headstone on the family plot.) When Ethan is initially reunited with Martin, he has no affection for the young man, mostly because Martin is part Native American, an impurity the intensely prejudiced Ethan, by even his contemporaries’ standards, cannot tolerate. Ethan inflicts unnecessary pain and suffering on those around him, particularly the Native American population, his animus shocking even the Rangers.
Yet The Searchers is bookended by Ethan’s gentleness, out-of-character moments in which Martha’s salvific influence is made clear. In the finale, when Ethan rescues Debbie, we witness this civilizing influence in its most powerful form. Prior to the rescue, Ethan vows to “honor kill” Debbie should he ever find her. Better for her to die than to go on living as a war trophy of the hated Cherokee, he reasons. Yet when they are finally reunited, Ethan chooses not to kill his niece. He chooses life not only because he sees the 8-year-old girl he held all those years ago but also because he sees Martha, the person who most inspires goodness in him. He chooses life over even his hate for the Cherokee, and his hate for the Cherokee is a powerful thing. Imagine how much more powerful, then, are his feelings for Martha.
This is why the rescue mission was never about Debbie. It was always about Martha.
Ethan buried Martha in a cemetery, yes, but that wasn’t the end. Her daughters, her “remains,” were still out there somewhere and unaccounted for. Ethan’s Ahab-like obsession with finding Debbie makes sense when one considers his love for Martha. She is his chief motivation. It’s no accident that when Ethan searches frantically for survivors among the smoldering remains of the Edwards homestead, he doesn’t shout for Lucy, Ben, or Debbie. He doesn’t even call out for Aaron, his own brother. He calls out for Martha.
Rescuing Martha’s sole surviving child was all Ethan had following her murder. Having completed this task, though, he no longer has any sense of purpose, certainly not inside Jorgenson’s home. That his love would be returned by Martha was always far-fetched but not impossible. The raid changed everything. By the film’s end, Ethan is a shadow, consumed entirely by isolation and grief. He’s already dead.
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On the surface, The Searchers is a straightforward story: A defeated Confederate officer embarks on a yearslong journey to rescue his niece. Yet there is so much more to the tale thanks to the deft hand of John Ford. The Searchers is about unrequited love and the search for a man’s meaning, as demonstrated beautifully in the mostly wordless opening and closing sequences.
It’s no accident Martha is the first person we see while Ethan is the last. It is, after all, a story about romantic love or, as the Western singing group the Sons of the Pioneers say in the opening title sequence, that which “makes a man to wander.”
Becket Adams is a columnist for the Washington Examiner, National Review, and the Hill. He is also the program director of the National Journalism Center.