I didn’t much care for Westerns as a kid. Born and bred Texan though I was, I sort of rebelled against that whole country music/cowboy hat/boots expectation. Cowboys and Indians didn’t do it for me. Maybe it was the over-simplicity of the two; why were Cowboys always good, Indians always bad? Even gangster movies showed depth and humanity in the bad guys and corruption in the good. But most in Westerns it was just accepted, before frame one, that any Injun is bad and out to get you and should be killed before he scalps your son and rapes your daughter.
As I’ve become more of a film nerd, there are some films in the genre that I like. John Ford’s Stagecoach (the birth of the modern Western), with its small group of archetypes trying to make their way across the west (though the baddies are still the Apache, with no real explanation why). High Noon, a tale of bravery told in real time. Unforgiven, a fascinating story in which all the major players are typically the bad or immoral characters of other films. But this, John Ford’s sweeping 1956 film, embodies what I continue to dislike most about the genre: lazy writing borne from blatantly racist low expectations, resulting in a story filled with one-dimensional, stereotypical and unreal characters. That’s a pretty heavy condemnation of what AFI called the best Western ever made, I know. But it stands true in many Westerns, all the way back to 1931’s Cimarron, the first Western to win Best Picture.
Briefly, John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, returning from the Civil War (he fought on the losing side of that little skirmish) to the heart of Texas. Almost immediately, he’s recruited by a local Texas Rangers outfit to kill some Comanche (or as he calls them, “Co-manch”) who’ve been killing their cattle. It’s a trap, for as the Rangers are lured out, the homestead is attacked, all but the youngest girl are killed. She’s taken, and the rest of the movie finds Ethan and Martin (the young girl’s “brother”, of a sort) spending five years tracking her down.
Ethan Edwards is a contemptible cuss, who gets in everyone’s face, does what he wants and hates Co-manch with all his being. It’d be fine if he was our sunnuva bitch, maybe, but he’s just a sunnuva bitch, unlikable to the core. It’s clear that he plans to kill the kidnapped young girl upon finding her, because the time spent with the tribe will have corrupted her beyond saving. If that’s what his character thinks, fine, but the script includes a scene in which several other “white women” have been rescued from Comanche tribes, and every one of those women act certifiably crazy. I’ve seen it written that Ethan’s unwavering, hateful racism is simply a tool with which Ford explores racism in the film. I’d be willing to go with that if Ethan’s racism was just his. But everything he seems to hate about the Comanche, including their immediate effects on the mental state of white women, is confirmed by actions in the film’s plot. In this environment, Ethan’s not racist, he’s calling it like he (and we) sees it. It’s the very film that’s overly-simplistic. And not just with the Comanche, but with the good guys, and the girls. The ornery preacher, the hysterical girl in love, the not-quite-there comic relief. All of it is painting with the broadest brush.
Ford’s signature visual style is still stunning to look at. He shoots most of the film on location, in beautiful color wide shots (David Lean apparently studied Ford’s camerawork while preparing Lawrence of Arabia). Unfortunately, it makes the few scenes shot on a stage stick out like a sore thumb: as NYTimes critic Bosley Crowther said at the time, “some of those campfire scenes could have been shot in a sporting-goods store window.” But the main problem with the film is the simplistic take on everything: we must cheer the hero, no matter how rough or contemptible (just listen to the first line of the trailer: “a man you must fear and respect”); we must loathe the Injuns, no matter what they may or may not be really like. If that’s your starting point, there’s not much for the writer to do. Sides already established, wrongs already committed, the rest is just going through the motions of violence, vengeance and hate.
