Two Westerns
Two good Westerns in a week set even a critic purring. For those who lament the Stagecoach days and think the Western has grown too streamlined for vitality, I recommend a visit to The Searchers. Here it is, as traditional as ever but quite as vital, for John Ford has returned with it—and, I would say, at his height—to the heroic days of the Western and a story in which man is pitted not so much against his fellows as against an elemental force of danger, something as enormous and incalculable as hurricane or flood : the dying but still encroaching Indians. In a simple but explosive story (from Alan LeMay's excellent novel, published recently over here), he shows us a countryside, a way of life, and a tradition of behaviour, less by emphasis than by omission; until, well ahead in time, we never even see an Indian, only sniff the danger— waiting with the small family, while across a hundred yards or so of ground we feel rather than see its furtive presence as a chill in the evening air, a flicker of light, the movement of a frightened dog. The great screen narrows to a slit between the shutters, and, after the unbearable wait, nothing comes—only, much later, the undisclosed horrors of discovery : the burning house, the unseen bodies, the eyes of those who discover them. Reticence can seldom have been put to such effect.
A Confederate soldier, Ethan Edwards, a tough, laconic character in the tradition of Western heroes, comes to his brother's Texan ranch after the Southern defeat in the Civil War and is made welcome to stay there: he is in love—or has been, though it isn't stressed —with his sister-in-law. While he is away, the farm is raided by Comanche Indians, the parents and son are murdered, and the two daughters disappear. With a young half-breed Cherokee adopted by the family, Ethan sets out on a search for the two girls. The elder one's body he finds after a few days, but the child Debbie still remains, presumably a captive, and for five years he and the boy follow the uncertain tracks of some Comanches they suspect and particularly those of a chief called Scar, knowing very well that as each year passes Debbie is growing into that (to the nineteenth century) unreclaim- able figure, an Indian squaw tossed to the highest bidder. We see the countryside under sun and snow, dangerous, vast and magni- ficent; the two men pitting their strength and will and cunning against an unseen enemy, for a prize they may not want when they find it. Ethan's motives by the end of the search are, in fact, so mixed that psychology rather runs away with things. Will he shoot the girl? Does he love or loathe her? What does Martin, the boy already committed to love a nice ordinary girl at home, feel for Debbie, that he should pour out his life in fruitless search- ing? In the final scenes both men seem to have reached an obsessional condition—suicidal in the boy, murderous in the man—and if the ending is suitably happy, the feelings there are still (to my way of looking at it, anyway) confused. But the splendour of the country- side, the whole sweep and scope of conception and above all the grandeur of Ford's leisurely, controlled direction, make the film outstand- ingly fine. John Wayne as Ethan, Jeffrey Hunter (looking almost freakishly like the Henry Fonda of years ago) as Martin, and the rest of a uniformly good cast, fit the landscape and its spirit perfectly : which is, in this case, about the best compliment I can give them.
The Proud Ones is notable for its acting, too. Robert Ryan and (again) the sombre Jeffrey Hunter make another pair of inimical collaborators, man and boy, finding friend- ship at last as the boy finds maturity. This time the setting is not the open prairie but one of those overnight boom-towns full of saloons and shooting and blondes and paunchy badmen with melancholy mus- tachios. The Marshal there has a curious reputation hanging over him from earlier days in another town: he is said to be trigger- happy, and to have run away when things got too hot for him before. On a vague but vicious enough search for revenge comes the young son of a man he once shot, and the Marshal sets out to put the boy on a better track than his father trod. Regeneration is the film's theme. A good deal of it—the direction being nothing to remember — is commonplace enough; but the acting gives us a few memorable moments—as when, for instance, the Marshal and the boy go out together to practise shooting, and you can feel, every time the Marshal turns his back, the boy's fear, longing, and reluctance to shoot so broad and olivious a target. There are some pleasant scenes too with the ancient and grimy Walter Brennan, and Virginia Mayo, though given nothing much to do, makes a decorative hotel landlady, risen, we are given to under- stand, from rather shadier forms of catering. Director : Robert D. Webb.
ISABEL QUIGLY
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