The Searchers

  • The Searchers

6/6/26 (Sat)

John Ford’s 1956 classic features John Wayne as a complex character whose obsessive hatred of the Comanche tribe recalls his self-destructive pursuit of revenge on his own disciple in Red River. The roots of his loathing are signaled in a gravestone revealing that his mother was murdered by the tribe – but the equally fanatical Scar, the head of the tribe, recalls that his children were killed by the white settlers. The cycle of vengeance thus continues unbroken.

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My Darling Clementine

  • My Darling Clementine

10/7/23 (Sat)

John Ford’s 1946 version of the OK Corral gunfight shows a civilization in the throes of creation, a community coming together in a spartan desert territory as it sets the laws and values that it wants to live by. Much the same process was explored in the musical Oklahoma! just three years earlier.

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