dual personalities

Last weekend I ended up watching three of my all-time favorite movies: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Searchers and The Wizard of Oz. All three should have won Best Picture Oscars, but, of course, none of them did. For me, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1962) and The Wizard of Oz (1939) are perfect movies. I wouldn’t change a thing about either of them.

The Searchers (1956) is a great, great movie, but it is not perfect. It is arguably the pinnacle of the John Wayne-John Ford collaboration and is considered one of the greatest Westerns ever made. I watched it on TCM as part of their “Essentials” series, introduced by Robert Osborne and Drew Barrymore. I was curious to hear what they had to say. Robert Osborne, who has the best job in the world, can be quite a dolt, and he certainly was this time around.

Permit me now a little rant. Osborne said he preferred John Ford’s black and white films shot in Monument Valley. The technicolor photography of The Searchers was “lurid”. This is comparing apples and oranges. I love the black and white westerns as well, but The Searchers is a whole different scale and category. It is an epic. To give Drew credit, she said she felt like she was watching a work of art, and for once I agreed with her.

Osborne said a lot of other stupid things, but the most egregious comment was stating that John Wayne is at his most “Duke-ish” in this movie. John Wayne is not the Duke in this movie. He is a bitter war veteran who is eaten up with hate. The woman he loves has been savagely murdered by Indians along with her husband and son. He is heart-broken and angry and hell-bent on vengeance. Is this the Duke? Hardly. (As the boy explained, “The Duke is The Fighting Seabees.”)

No, John Wayne is acting in this movie and he is great. He should have won an Oscar for this movie. But, of course, Robert Osborne and Drew Barrymore never mention Wayne’s acting or anyone else’s for that matter. It is as if they do not expect there to be acting in a Western–there is only action, right? He did mention that for once Jeffrey Hunter had a better part than usual, but no credit was given to John Wayne.

As I said before, this is a flawed film. The great John Ford seems uneasy with the serious subject matter and he undermines Wayne’s great performance by frequently cutting from a dramatic scene to a haw-haw “my fi-an-cy” scene in an irritating way. Even at the denouement of the movie when Wayne’s character finally confronts his long-lost niece, Ford cuts immediately to Ward Bond with his pants down. Why does he do this? It is perplexing. It is, indeed, almost like two films: the one with John Wayne out on the trail and the one with the people back at home. When the two intersect, it is problematic.

But still, John Wayne is at his graceful best: throwing his hat, gesticulating and waving, galloping and shooting, and spitting out lines like,

“Well, Reverend, that tears it! From now on, you stay out of this. All of ya. I don’t want you with me. I don’t need ya for what I got to do..”

and

“What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture? Spell it out? Don’t ever ask me! Long as you live, don’t ever ask me more.”

He does it all like no one before or since. He can tell you how he feels by moving one muscle in his face. I have heard that the Duke himself considered this his greatest role and his own favorite movie. Of course he did.