The Searchers

Frost's Descent passed seven days ago, the leaves are nearly gone, and the Start of Winter is eight days off — the stretch of the year when the ground comes closest to bare. That is exactly the terrain of these two films. In 1956 two films appeared about a single man crossing hostile ground, pointing in opposite directions: Ford pushed the horizon out with VistaVision, Bresson compressed the frame into one cell and let sound come from off-screen. Taken together they also close the archive's last gap among canonical directors — John Ford and Robert Bresson.

1868 年，德州。内战结束三年后，伊森·爱德华兹骑马回到兄弟的农场。他打过仗，也做过一些不便说明的事，回来时身上还穿着邦联的军大衣，带着一批新铸的金币。他在这个家里既是亲人也是异类：他对这个家的忠诚，和他对这个家的怨恨一样深。 然后一支科曼奇人队伍血洗了农场。伊森和混血的侄子马丁出发去找被掳走的孩子。原以为是一次追击，很快就变成了一场以年为单位的行走——穿过四季、雪原和不断后退的地平线。 越往后走，你越会怀疑：他到底是在找那个孩子，还是在找别的东西。

On release in 1956 it was simply a Western that did good business on a budget of $3.75 million. What turned it into the greatest of its genre happened over the following sixty years: the American Film Institute named it the greatest American Western in 2008, placed it 12th on its 2007 list of 100 greatest American films, and Sight & Sound's 2012 critics' poll ranked it 7th of all time. The real weight lies in what Ford did to the genre's grammar. The Western's default sentence was civilisation against savagery, with a clear border and a clean ending. The Searchers dismantles it: the child Ethan is looking for has grown up on the other side, and his own obsession with blood purity brings him closer to the savagery he names than any of his enemies. John Wayne — the actor who had long embodied the American good guy on screen — plays a man hollowed out by hatred. Ford made him do it, and it remains the least Wayne-like performance of his career. Then there is the image. Winton C. Hoch shot it in VistaVision in Monument Valley, pressing figures into the space between red rock and sky until a person looks like a mistake. The ending that film history keeps quoting — a doorway splitting the dark interior from the bright waste, a man standing on the threshold, at home on neither side — delivers the whole verdict without a line of dialogue.