Product Description

Working together for the 12th time John Wayne and director John Ford forged The Searchers into a landmark Western offering an indelible image of the frontier and the men and women who challenged it. Wayne plays an ex-Confederate soldier seeking his niece captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger thirst the elements or loneliness. And in his five-year search he encounters something unexpected: his own humanity. Beautifully shot by Winton C. Hoch thrillingly scored by Max Steiner and memorably acted by a wonderful ensemble including Jeffrey Hunter Vera Miles Natalie Wood and Ward Bond The Searchers endures as "a great film of enormous scope and breathtaking physical beauty" (Danny Peary Guide for the Film Fanatic).Running Time: 119 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. UPC: 085392891825 Manufacturer No: 28918

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13575 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2006-06-06
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 119 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
A favorite film of some of the world's greatest filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, John Ford's The Searchers has earned its place in the legacy of great American films for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it's the definitive role for John Wayne as an icon of the classic Western--the hero (or antihero) who must stand alone according to the unwritten code of the West. The story takes place in Texas in 1868; Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Confederate veteran who visits his brother and sister-in-law at their ranch and is horrified when they are killed by marauding Comanches. Ethan's search for a surviving niece (played by young Natalie Wood) becomes an all-consuming obsession. With the help of a family friend (Jeffrey Hunter) who is himself part Cherokee, Ethan hits the trail on a five-year quest for revenge. At the peak of his masterful talent, director Ford crafts this classic tale as an embittered examination of racism and blind hatred, provoking Wayne to give one of the best performances of his career. As with many of Ford's classic Westerns, The Searchers must contend with revisionism in its stereotypical treatment of "savage" Native Americans, and the film's visual beauty (the final shot is one of the great images in all of Western culture) is compromised by some uneven performances and stilted dialogue. Still, this is undeniably one of the greatest Westerns ever made. --Jeff Shannon

Amazon.com
A favorite film of some of the world's greatest filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, John Ford's The Searchers has earned its place in the legacy of great American films for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it's the definitive role for John Wayne as an icon of the classic Western--the hero (or antihero) who must stand alone according to the unwritten code of the West. The story takes place in Texas in 1868; Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Confederate veteran who visits his brother and sister-in-law at their ranch and is horrified when they are killed by marauding Comanches. Ethan's search for a surviving niece (played by young Natalie Wood) becomes an all-consuming obsession. With the help of a family friend (Jeffrey Hunter) who is himself part Cherokee, Ethan hits the trail on a five-year quest for revenge. At the peak of his masterful talent, director Ford crafts this classic tale as an embittered examination of racism and blind hatred, provoking Wayne to give one of the best performances of his career. As with many of Ford's classic Westerns, The Searchers must contend with revisionism in its stereotypical treatment of "savage" Native Americans, and the film's visual beauty (the final shot is one of the great images in all of Western culture) is compromised by some uneven performances and stilted dialogue. Still, this is undeniably one of the greatest Westerns ever made. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

the searchers
Its is one of the best westerns I have ever seen.
I would tell every one who reads this to get the movie The Searchers, and add it to their western collection of movies. Sign Steve lienhard

Search No More
This is one of the best looking blu-rays of a classic film. The Vistavision image is outstanding. The actors are at the top of their game, particularly John Wayne and Ward Bond. If you care about this film or the work of any of the participants you will be on cloud nine when you spin this one up.

Mediocre
Films, like artists or authors, tend to have their critical reputations wax and wane through a few cycles until a consensus is finally reached. Of course, consensus has little to do with real world excellence or failure, but as good an example of this trend as can be shown certainly is John Ford's famed 1956 John Wayne Western, The Searchers. Upon its initial release, the film made a solid profit, and was considered a good film. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, film school graduates started championing both it and Ford as more than good, but great. By the 1980s, with the rise of PC, the film's political content and its portrayal of Manifest Destiny came under attack as `racist,' and the film was not held in as high regard for some years. With the advent of DVD technology, in the late 1990s, the film was re-released, and its current status as a `masterpiece' has been little challenged since. Indeed, in watching the special features on the two disk Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD of the film, one might believe that the film is Shakespearean. Assorted talking heads and film buffs gush over the film; even people like director Martin Scorsese. Another great director, Akira Kurosawa, is cited as declaring he learned film technique from watching John Ford Westerns.
Of course, I do not doubt all of these people's love for the film, but love (or like/hate) is a wholly different paradigm from artistic excellence. And while there is no doubt that, technically, John Ford was a superb craftsman- in the framing of shots, in the use of silences that he carried over from his silent film days, in the judicious use of close-ups, and the brilliant use of color in this VistaVision film, it is nowhere near a great work of art. Technique and technical excellence do not equate with greatness. Were that true a poet with a merely flawless ear, like Walter de la Mare, would be ranked along with the Whitmans and Baudelaires. No, there needs to be characterization and great acting. This is where screenwriting and casting come in. The film's actual screenplay is simplistic, larded with stereotypes, and the acting- save for a few scenes where Jeffrey Hunter (as mixed breed Martin Pawley) shines, is self-conscious, poseur, and given that the film is as triumphalist as can be, it makes such preening seem hedonistic.
Naturally, the worst sinner, on this accord, is John Wayne, as the film's putative hero/anti-hero, Ethan Edwards. There is no doubt Wayne had a great onscreen presence- both physically and in his idiosyncratic emoting and speaking styles; but while watching the film, and seeing him strut and spit out trite lines while dickwaving through every second he's on camera, I fully understand why someone like my dad- a left of center trade unionist, found both the man and the characters he played (which were really minor variations on his own faux persona, admixed with testosterone) to be symbols of everything that's wrong with America, past and present.
At first, The Searchers was an undervalued film; now it's a grossly overrated one. The truth lies somewhere between the extremes- something men like John Wayne nor Ethan Edwards ever seemed to learn, no matter how many things critics want to read into a shrug, an akimbo stance, nor an oddly breathily paused cliché uttered. If John Ford ever did, it was not evident in this film, neither in wax nor Wayne.