I’m sorry but while sitting in my third-row seat at the Museum of Moving Image last Saturday evening, I would have been a much happier camper watching John Ford‘s The Horse Soldiers instead of The Searchers.

The former, released in 1959, has never been accused of being a great film — two years ago I called it steady, sturdy mid-range Ford — but it’s very watchable and oddly comforting, and it has no racism or bizarre atmospheric concepts (a family living alone in a water-less, soil-free Monument Valley) or anything that prompts strong disbelief.

That scene in which John Wayne‘s Union troops are hiding in a forest alongside a sizable-sized river as they listen to some Confederate troops sing a marching song, and doing so with the vocal expertise of the Mitch Miller singers and in harmony yet…gets me very time.

HE commenter “brenkiklco”: “Brilliant in patches but quite slight. The action is perfunctory. The charge at Newton Station is rather lamely staged. And there’s scarcely any climax at all. Ford reportedly just wanted to wrap the thing up after a stuntman died on the set. The romance is unconvincing. Most of the performances have that Fordian quality of slight, theatrical exaggeration. A hint of Victorian barnstorming that you either go with or you don’t. But Wayne and Holden make good frenemies, and there are several enjoyable scenes.

Posted on 6.4.22: I’ve had it up to here with the standard narrative about The Horse Soldiers being one of John Ford‘s lesser efforts. I know this sounds like heresy, but it may be my favorite post-1945 Ford film. I know that She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are widely regarded as more substantial and therefore “better”, but I don’t like watching them as much as The Horse Soldiers, and anyone who doesn’t like that can shove it.

A Civil War drama based on Grierson’s Raid of 1863, The Horse Soldiers is steady, solid, midrange Ford — well-produced and well-acted with good character arcs and flavorful Southern atmosphere. Plus it gets extra bonus points for being set in the South (green trees, green grass, plantations, swamps, bridges, rivers) and not in godforsaken Monument Valley.

Handsomely shot by William H. Clothier in a 1.66 aspect ratio, its very easy to watch — every time I pop it in I feel comfortable and relaxed. Partly because it has a minimum of Ford-bullshit distractions. My only real problem is a scene in which rebel troops are heard signing a marching tune exactly like the Mitch Miller singers. I also don’t like a scene in which a furious John Wayne throws down eight or nine shots of whiskey in a row — enough to make an elephant pass out.

There’s a scene in which a boys’ military academy is asked to attack Wayne’s Union regiment — a scene in which a mother drags her 10-year-old son, Johnny, out of a line of marching troops, only to lose him when Johny climbs out of his second-floor bedroom window to rejoin his fellows. It reminds me of that moment when Claudette Colbert collapses in a grassy field as she watches Henry Fonda marching off to fight the French in Drums Along The Mohawk.

I also love that moment in Newton Station in which Wayne senses something wrong when costar William Holden, playing an antagonistic doctor-surgeon, tells him that perhaps a too easily captured Confederate colonel (Carleton Young), an old buddy, isn’t the submissive, easily captured type — “He’s West Point, tough as nails…the man I knew could lose both arms and still try to kick you to death.”

Kino Lorber’s new 4K version of this 1959 film (which lost money, by the way, partly due to exorbitant salaries and producer participation deals) streets on 6.14.22

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Woody Allen‘s Rifkin’s Festival is about (a) a couple who both cat around on each other (i.e., fall for someone else) while attending the San Sebastián Film Festival and (b) the same four people, in the midst of this romantic adventurism, talking, thinking and behaving like Woody or, you know, quintessential Woody characters.

An HE reader is looking for copies of Memphis (Paul Greengrass‘s draft), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lord of Salem, Triple Frontier, Rock of Ages, Dark Shadows, Aryan Papers, Wartime Lies, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (Scott Burns), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Lincoln (Tony Kushner draft only), The Talking Cure (a.k.a A Dangerous Method), Ant-Man (Edgar Wright) and War Horse. So am I. Anyone?

This guy has copies-to-trade of Cogan’s Trade, Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg), Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson), Silence (Jay Cocks/Scorsese), The Last Photograph, Moneyball (latest draft by Zaillian and Sorkin), Drive, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Irishman (Steven Zaillian/Scorsese), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Peter Morgan), Django Unchained, The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson), Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch), Ace in the Hole (David Mamet draft), Four Queens (David Mamet), Ordinary Daylight (David Mamet), Charlie Chan in Horse and Rider (David Mamet), Autobiography of Malcolm X (David Mamet), Hunger (Steve McQueen), Shame (Steve McQueen), Dino (Nicholas Pileggi/Scorsese), Twilight Zones (David Chase), Getting Out (Sidney Lumet), Godless (Scott Frank), A Walk Among the Tombstones (two drafts by Scott Frank), Knockout (Soderbergh), Peach Trees aka Dredd (Alex Garland), Tree of Life (Terrence Malick), 36 aka Animals (Richard Price), Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese), Curveball (Steven Knight), Cloud Atlas (Wachowski Bros/Tykwer draft), Confederacy of Dunces (Steven Soderbergh), Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Gambit (Coen Bros.), Cuba Libre (Coen Bros.), God of Carnage (Roman Polanski), Hoover (Dustin Lance Black/Clint Eastwood),Lone Ranger (Ted Elliott/Terry Rossio), Rosenthaler Suite (Wes Anderson), 77 (James Ellroy), Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin), We Need To Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay), Young Adult (Diablo Cody) and Wettest County in the World (John Hillcoat).

I was deeply disappointed when I caught an allegedly magnificent 70mm print of John Ford‘s The Searchers last July at the Museum of the Moving Image.

“No ‘bump’ at all over the versions I’ve watched on various formats over the years,” I angrily wrote. “No bump whatsoever, fuckers! Plus some shots looked overly shadowed, and some looked a tad bleachy.”

But of course, trusting sap and sucker that I am, I’ve bought the forthcoming 4K Bluray, which looks extra-marvelous according to various reviewers. I don’t trust these whores at all, but I want the 4K to be extra-special so I’m talking the plunge.

If I feel burned again after watching it later this month, there will be hell to pay.

From my 7.21 review:: “Immediately my eyes were telling me that the 70mm restoration is some kind of reverent con job, and that ticket-buying schmoes like myself were being gaslit.

“’This?’, I was angrily saying to myself. ‘Where’s the enhancement? Where’s the extra-exacting detail that a ‘straight from the original VisaVision negative’ 70mm print would presumably yield?”

“The MOMI theatre is seemingly a technically first-rate operation with a nice big screen, but what a fuming experience I had. I was ready to hit someone.

“Technically sophisticated friendo who knows his stuff: ‘In order to present a film print properly — especially 70mm — more things must come together than you might imagine in your worst nightmare.’

“Thanks, powers-that-be! Thanks for lying right through your teeth!”

Last night I hopped on the R train (Times Square to Steinway) in order to visit the nominally pleasant but architecturally dreary neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. Talk about your ethnic downmarket vibe. I took a couple of snaps (SAMO graffiti, a guy openly taking a leak) as I wondered how and why anyone would want to live in this kind of vaguely shitty neighborhood.

The precise destination was the Museum of the Moving Image, where the highly touted 70mm restoration of John Ford’s wildly over-praised The Searchers unspooled at 7:30 pm.

The MOMI host told us we were in for a real treat — a 70mm replication of a genuine, bonafide VistaVision version of a luscious color film (shot by Winston C. Hoch) that very few popcorn-munching Average Joes saw in ‘56.   

What I saw last night looked like a nice but unexceptional 35mm print that could have played in my home town of Westfield, New Jersey.

“Bullshit!”, I muttered to myself as I sat in my third-row seat. “I’ve been took, tricked, scammed, duped, deceived, flim-flammed, led down the garden path, fooled, boondoggled, lied to, taken to the cleaners, sold a bill of goods”, etc.

Immediately my eyes were telling me that the 70mm restoration is some kind of reverent con job, and that ticket-buying schmoes like myself were being gaslit. “This?” I was angrily saying to myself. “Where’s the enhancement? Where’s the extra-exacting detail that a ‘straight from the original VisaVision negative’ 70mm print would presumably yield?”

The MOMI theatre is seemingly a technically first-rate operation with a nice big screen, but what a fuming experience I had. No “bump” at all over the versions I’ve watched on various formats over the years. No bump whatsoever, fuckers! Plus some shots looked overly shadowed, and some looked a tad bleachy.

Technically sophisticated friendo who knows his stuff: “In order to present a film print properly — especially 70mm — more things must come together than you might imagine in your worst nightmare.”

Thanks, powers-that-be!  Thanks for lying right through your teeth!

Have you ever been to Monument Valley? It’s kinda like the moon. Beautiful but barren. No water, no nutritious soil, no grass for cattle to eat, nothing at all to sustain life. It’s a completely ridiculous notion that anyone would have settled there.

Where did Ethan’s canteen water come from? How did anyone clean themselves or wash their clothes, much less take a bath? How did the families “attend to business” in any sort of half-sanitary fashion without an outhouse, much less toilet paper? No one had any perfumes or colognes or deodorants. They all stunk to high heaven.

The racism in this film is beyond odious. It’s appalling how Ford depicted Native Americans as bloodthirsty simpletons…savage, murderous, sub-human. Those shots of captured white women whom Ethan dismisses with disgust (‘They ain’t white!’), howling and shrieking like young witches whose brains had been removed….a ghastly moment.

Plus Scar (played by Henry Brandon, the blue-eyed gay actor who turned up 20 years later in Assault on Precinct 13) surely began to sexually enjoy Natalie Wood’s “Debbie” in her early teens, and she didn’t have children?

Why did Ford never shoot during magic hour? The natural glaring sunlight seems to overwhelm the wonderful brownish-red clay colors in the powdery soil. The only interesting dusky compositions were shot inside a sound stage.

On top of which the toupee-wearing John Wayne had begun his descent into overweight-ness. He was a much slimmer fellow when he made “Hondo.”

I finally couldn’t stand it. I left around the 85-minute mark and forlornly strolled across a mostly vacant 36th Street to Tacuba Cantina Mexicana and ordered some unexceptional grub.

I’m ready and willing to ease up on my John Ford takedowns and I could really and truly go the rest of my life without writing another word (much less another article) on The Searchers.

But yesterday the Hollywood Reporter posted a Martin Scorsese essay on The Searchers — mostly a praise piece — and I feel obliged to respond, dammit. But really, this is the end.

Scorsese’s basic thought is that while The Searchers has some unfortunate or irritating aspects, it’s nonetheless a great film and has seemed deeper, more troubling and more layered the older he’s become.

My basic view of The Searchers, as I wrote three of four years ago, is that “for a great film it takes an awful lot of work to get through it.”

I don’t know how to enjoy The Searchers any more except by wearing aesthetic blinders — by ignoring all the stuff that drives me up the wall in order to savor the beautiful heartbreaking stuff (the opening and closing shot, Wayne’s look of fear when he senses danger for his brother’s family, his picking up Wood at the finale and saying, ‘Let’s go home, Debbie’). That said I can’t help but worship Winston C. Hoch‘s photography for its own virtues.

Scorsese’s wisest observation is that John Ford personally related to John Wayne‘s Ethan Edwards, the gruff, scowling, racist-minded loner at the heart of this 1956 film.

Ford “was at his lowest ebb” when he made The Searchers, Scorsese writes. “Ford’s participation in the screen version of Mister Roberts had ended disastrously soon after a violent encounter between the filmmaker and his star Henry Fonda.

“For Ford, The Searchers was more than just another picture: It was his opportunity to prove that he was still in control. Did he pour more of himself into the movie? 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. It’s interesting to see how it dovetails with another troubled character from the same period. Like James Stewart‘s Scotty in Vertigo, Edwards’ obsessive quest ends in madness.”

Jeffrey Hunter, John Wayne

Film lovers know The Searchers “by heart,” Scorsese writes, “but what about average movie watchers? What place does John Ford’s masterpiece occupy in our national consciousness?”

Wells to Scorsese: In terms of the consciousness of the general public, close to zilch. In terms of the big-city Film Catholic community (industry aficionados, entertainment journalists, film academics and devoted students, educated and well-heeled film buffs, obsessive film bums), there is certainly respect for The Searchers but true passionate love? The numbers of those who feel as strongly as you, most of whom grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, are, I imagine, relatively small and dwindling as we speak.

I’m pleased to note that some of my complaints about Ford have at least been acknowledged by Scorsese. “A few years ago I watched it with my wife,” he writes, “and I will admit that it gave me pause. Many people have problems with Ford’s Irish humor, which is almost always alcohol-related. For some, the frontier-comedy scenes with Ken Curtis are tough to take.

“For me, the problem was with the scenes involving a plump Comanche woman (Beulah Archuletta) that the Hunter character inadvertently takes as a wife. There is some low comedy in these scenes: Hunter kicks her down a small hill, and Max Steiner’s score amplifies the moment with a comic flourish. 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.”

Here’s what I wrote way back when:

“John Ford‘s movies have been wowing and infuriating me all my life. A first-rate visual composer and one of Hollywood’s most economical story-tellers bar none, Ford made films that were always rich with complexity, understatements and undercurrents that refused to run in one simple direction.

“Ford’s films are always what they seem to be…until you watch them again and re-reflect, and then they always seem to be about something more. But the phoniness and jacked-up sentiment in just about every one of them can be oppressive, and the older Ford got the more he ladled it on.

“The Irish clannishness, the tributes to boozy male camaraderie, the relentless balladeering over the opening credits of 90% of his films, the old-school chauvinism, the racism, the thinly sketched women, the “gallery of supporting players bristling with tedious eccentricity” (as critic David Thomson put it in his Biographical Dictionary of Film) and so on.

The closing shot of John Ford’s The Searchers

“The treacliness is there but tolerable in Ford’s fine pre-1945 work — The Informer, Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln , Drums Along the Mohawk, They Were Expendable , The Grapes of Wrath and My Darling Clementine .

“But it gets really thick starting with 1948’s Fort Apache and by the time you get to The Searchers, Ford’s undisputed masterpiece that came out in March of 1956, it’s enough to make you yank the reins and go ‘whoa, nelly.’

“Watch the breathtaking beautiful new DVD of The Searchers, and see if you can get through it without choking. Every shot is a visual jewel, but except for John Wayne‘s Ethan Edwards, one of the most fascinating racist bastards of all time, every last character and just about every line in the film feels labored and ungenuine.

“The phoniness gets so pernicious after a while that it seems to nudge this admittedly spellbinding film toward self-parody. Younger people who don’t ‘get’ Ford (and every now and then I think I may be turning into one) have been known to laugh at it.

“Jeffrey Hunter‘s Martin Pawley does nothing but bug his eyes, overact and say stupid exasperating lines all through the damn thing. Nearly every male supporting character in the film does the same. No one has it in them to hold back or play it cool.

“Ken Curtis‘s Charlie McCorry, Harry Carey Jr.’s Brad Jorgensen, Hank Worden‘s Mose Harper…characters I’ve come to despise.

“You can do little else but sit and grimace through Natalie Wood‘s acting as Debbie (the kidnapped daughter of Ethan’s dead brother), Vera Miles‘ Laurie Jorgenson, and Beulah Archuletta‘s chubby Indian squaw (i.e., ‘Wild Goose Flying in the Night Sky’)…utterly fake in each and every gesture and utterance.

“I realize there’s a powerful double-track element in the racism that seethes inside Ethan, but until he made Cheyenne Autumn Ford always portrayed Indians — Native Americans — as creepy, vaguely sadistic oddballs. The German-born, blue-eyed Henry Brandon as Scar, the Comanche baddie…’nuff said.

“That repulsive scene when Ethan and Martin look at four or five babbling Anglo women whose condition was caused, we’re informed, by having been raised by Indians, and some guy says, ‘Hard to believe they’re white’ and Ethan says, ‘They ain’t white!’

“I’ll always love the way Ford handles that brief bit when Ward Bond‘s Reverend Clayton sees Martha, the wife of Ethan’s brother, stroking Ethan’s overcoat and then barely reacts — perfect — but every time Bond opens his mouth to say something, he bellows like a bull moose.”

Final thought: The more I think about the stuff in Ford’s films that drives me crazy, the less I want to watch any Ford films, ever. Okay, that’s not true but the only ones I can stand at this point are The Horse Soldiers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Grapes of Wrath, The Informer, The Lost Patrol, The Last Hurrah and, believe it or not, Donovan’s Reef.

I feel nothing but admiration and affection for Peter Bogdanovich, and I’ve been enjoying his Indiewire “Blogdanovich” columns all along. But his 8.9 praise piece about John Ford‘s The Searchers doesn’t feel especially fresh and in fact has a tired pulse. Bogdanovich is a Ford scholar par excellence, of course, but we’ve been hearing this same old stuff about The Searchers for decades (“not only among the very best, but also among the final Western masterworks of the movies’ golden age”). So why re-state it?

The first significant “take a fresh look at The Searchers” piece was written 32 years ago by New York contributor Stuart Byron. In it he called Ford’s 1956 film the “Super-Cult Movie of the New Hollywood.” And here we still are in the Age of Withered Obama, and The Searchers Bluray is a ripe and luscious thing to have and hold. We get it, we get it. Or I certainly do.

Here’s a counter-punch piece I posted a little more than five years ago:

“John Ford‘s movies have been wowing and infuriating me all my life. A first-rate visual composer and one of Hollywood’s most economical story-tellers bar none, Ford made films that were always rich with complexity, understatements and undercurrents that refused to run in one simple direction.

“Ford’s films are always what they seem to be…until you watch them again and re-reflect, and then they always seem to be about something more.

“But the phoniness and jacked-up sentiment in just about every one of them can be oppressive, and the older Ford got the more he ladled it on.

“The Irish clannishness, the tributes to boozy male camaraderie, the relentless balladeering over the opening credits of 90% of his films, the old-school chauvinism, the racism, the thinly sketched women, the “gallery of supporting players bristling with tedious eccentricity” (as critic David Thomson put it in his Biographical Dictionary of Film) and so on.

The closing shot of John Ford’s The Searchers

“The treacliness is there but tolerable in Ford’s fine pre-1945 work — The Informer, Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln , Drums Along the Mohawk, They Were Expendable , The Grapes of Wrath and My Darling Clementine .

“But it gets really thick starting with 1948’s Fort Apache and by the time you get to The Searchers, Ford’s undisputed masterpiece that came out in March of 1956, it’s enough to make you yank the reins and go ‘whoa, nelly.’

“Watch the breathtaking beautiful new DVD of The Searchers, and see if you can get through it without choking. Every shot is a visual jewel, but except for John Wayne‘s Ethan Edwards, one of the most fascinating racist bastards of all time, every last character and just about every line in the film feels labored and ungenuine.

“The phoniness gets so pernicious after a while that it seems to nudge this admittedly spellbinding film toward self-parody. Younger people who don’t “get” Ford (and every now and then I think I may be turning into one) have been known to laugh at it.

“Jeffrey Hunter‘s Martin Pawley does nothing but bug his eyes, overact and say stupid exasperating lines all through the damn thing. Nearly every male supporting character in the film does the same. No one has it in them to hold back or play it cool — everyone blurts.

“Ken Curtis‘s Charlie McCorry, Harry Carey Jr.’s Brad Jorgensen, Hank Worden‘s Mose Harper…characters I’ve come to despise.

“I’ll always love the way Ford handles that brief bit when Ward Bond‘s Reverend Clayton sees Martha, the wife of Ethan’s brother, stroking Ethan’s overcoat and then barely reacts — perfect — but every time Bond opens his mouth to say something, he bellows like a bull moose.

“You can do little else but sit and grimace through Natalie Wood‘s acting as Debbie (the kidnapped daughter of Ethan’s dead brother), Vera Miles‘ Laurie Jorgenson, and Beulah Archuletta‘s chubby Indian squaw (i.e., “Wild Goose Flying in the Night Sky”)…utterly fake in each and every gesture and utterance.

“I realize there’s a powerful double-track element in the racism that seethes inside Ethan, but until he made Cheyenne Autumn Ford always portrayed Indians — Native Americans — as creepy, vaguely sadistic oddballs. The German-born, blue-eyed Henry Brandon as Scar, the Comanche baddie at the heart of The Searchers…’nuff said.

“That repulsive scene when Ethan and Martin look at four or five babbling Anglo women whose condition was caused, we’re informed, by having been raised by Indians, and some guy says, “Hard to believe they’re white” and Ethan says, “They ain’t white!”

“I don’t know how to enjoy The Searchers any more except by wearing aesthetic blinders — by ignoring all the stuff that drives me up the wall in order to savor the beautiful heartbreaking stuff (the opening and closing shot, Wayne’s look of fear when he senses danger for his brother’s family, his picking up Wood at the finale and saying, ‘Let’s go home, Debbie’).

“All I’m saying is, for a great film it takes an awful lot of work to get through it.”

Jeffrey Hunter, John Wayne

Someone else has finally written a strong gripe piece about John Ford‘s The Searchers. The author is Stephen Metcalf, and his article ran yesterday (Thursday, 7.6) on Slate. I took a stab at expressing my divided feelings about Ford and his post-1948 westerns in a piece that I ran in mid-June. (Apologies for last night’s Slate/Salon mixup.)

I am in friendly but fervent opposition to anyone on ANY campus who picks up a microphone and says they feel “actively victimized” by ANYthing except by real, actual, legitimate threats (i.e., possibly being raped, harmed in some physical way or killed).

Sensible, real-world, non-woke opinions are not threats. They simply represent an aspect of the normal rough and tumble of political dispute, which is par for the course if you (ahem) live off-campus.

The phrase “actively victimized” is a woke cliche used by people who fetishize the threat of victimization in order to display their woke bonafides.

Life IS hard and sometimes even scary. It’s not a walk in the park, certainly in the case of woke wimps and candy-asses. It IS a good idea to toughen your hide and maybe wear a helmet. I despise campus wussies and their litany of complaints about everything that doesn’t look, sound or feel “right” or “safe” to them.

Imagine the settlers in a John Ford western going up to Scar, the hostile Comanche chief in The Searchers, and saying “your war paint is not cool…you guys are making us feel actively victimized, and we really don’t feel safe…waaah.”

If Sonny Bono hadn’t slammed into a tree while skiiing in the Lake Tahoe region on 1.5.98 and if he’d otherwise kept himself in good health, he would have celebrated his 88th birthday five days ago (2.16.23).

Bono was 64 at the time of his death. I’m sorry he suffered through that. But he lived an interesting life with an unusual arc — at first a hippie-ish songwriter, singer and performer in the ’60s and ’70s, and then a “protect the small businessman” Republican in the ’80s and ’90s.

An early ’80s memory: I was driving west along the hilly-curvy section of Sunset Blvd. (near Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion) when I noticed Bono in his car, waiting to slip into the eastbound lane.

Two or three years later I ordered a drink at Bono, his Italian joint on Melrose near La Cienega. My immediate impression was that there were too many tables scrunched together.

I’m mentioning Bono because until this morning I somehow hadn’t read that he and Roddy Jackson co-authored “She Said ‘Yeah!’“, a fast and catchy Rolling Stones song from ‘64 or ‘65. The song is basically a horndog thing — a lust-struck guy wants to have it off with a hot girl, and to his infinite delight she’s down for it… “yeah!”**

I’d also never read that Bono co-authored “Needles and Pins,” a 1962 song that took off when a version by The Searchers charted in ’64. Bono co-penned the song with Jack Nitzsche and Jackie DeShannon, who recorded a version in ’63. The song is more commonly known as “Needles and Pinzah.”