When we went to visit Monument Valley I knew I’d be watching a John Ford western soon after, I just wasn’t sure which one it was going to be. Ford made some half a dozen films there and it was really those movies that made the location famous. There is even a spot in the Valley called John Ford Point.

He shot at least a couple of scenes on that point, but I couldn’t remember which ones so I decided to watch my favorite Ford Western, The Searchers.

In some ways, The Searchers was John Ford and John Wayne’s response to many of the previous Westerns they made together. Like a lot of Westerns at the time their previous films depicted American Indians as deplorable enemies – faceless, nameless, and utterly brutal. In The Searchers the Native Americans aren’t exactly kind and generous, but the white folks are just as brutal.

Wayne plays Ethan Edwards an independent loner. The film begins with one of cinema’s most striking images. Matha Edwards (Dorothy Jordan) stands in her doorway. The camera sits inside her house which is dark and small, it looks outside into the wild, expanse of the West. In the distance rides Ethan, small and alone. This image will be bookended at the end of the film with Ethan standing just outside the door, always on his own.

He fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederates. He still wears the uniform and takes pride in having never surrendered. It’s been three years since the war ended, but he’s just now returning home. He’s got gold in his pocket and it is hinted that he got it by ill-gotten means. The way he looks at Martha, his brother’s wife, indicates he’s in love with her.

When a neighbor’s cattle are stolen by someone – probably Indians – Ethan rides off to help. When he realizes that the cattle were a diversion, that the Indians were really a “murder party” he heads home but too late. His brother, wife and one of their children are dead. The older daughter Lucy and the youngest Debbie (played by Natalie Wood later in the film) have been abducted.

Ethan and Lucy’s fiancee Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) spend the next many years pursuing the tribe. Soon they find Lucy murdered (and by implication, raped) but Debbie remains with the tribe, taken in as one of their own.

We soon realize that Ethan isn’t tracking her as a rescue mission, but aims to kill the girl, as living as an Indian is worse than being dead in his warped mind. Martin stays with him, acting as something of a moral compass, but mostly there to keep Ethan from doing what he’s set out to do.

It’s fascinating to see Wayne in this mode. He’s so often played the hero. Here his actions are often very similar to what he’s done in previous movies – killing Native Americans with a vengeance – but The Searchers allows the audience to view those actions in a different light. We see the black heart of racism deep inside his character and it’s chilling. It’s also one of Wayne’s finest performances.

Ford shoots it beautifully. The western landscapes, especially those of Monument Valley are uncanny and utterly beautiful. This is the West of the movies, and it has never looked better.

I’ve seen The Searchers three times now and I’ve liked it more with each viewing. On the surface level it is a terrifically told Western adventure, but a closer look finds Ford really digging deep into the mythos of the Old West and what it meant for Native Americans and the Europeans who conquered it.

A terrific movie all around.