Contemporaneous reviews
Although the film was set in the flat Llano Estacado of Texas, it was filmed in Monument Valley.Upon the film's release, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it a "ripsnorting Western" (in spite of the "excessive language in its ads"); he credits Ford's "familiar corps of actors, writers, etc., [who help] to give the gusto to this film. From Frank S. Nugent, whose screenplay from the novel of Alan LeMay is a pungent thing, right on through the cast and technicians, it is the honest achievement of a well-knit team."[12] Crowther noted "two faults of minor moment":[12]
- "Episode is piled upon episode, climax upon climax, and corpse upon corpse... The justification for it is that it certainly conveys the lengthiness of the hunt, but it leaves one a mite exhausted, especially with the speed at which it goes.
- "The director has permitted too many outdoor scenes to be set in the obviously synthetic surroundings of the studio stage... some of those campfire scenes could have been shot in a sporting-goods store window."
Variety called it "handsomely mounted and in the tradition of Shane", yet "somewhat disappointing" due to its length and repetitiveness; "The John Ford directorial stamp is unmistakable. It concentrates on the characters and establishes a definite mood. It's not sufficient, however, to overcome many of the weaknesses of the story."[23]
The New York Herald Tribune termed the movie "distinguished"; Newsweek deemed it "remarkable". Look described The Searchers as a "Homeric odyssey". The New York Times praised Wayne's performance as "uncommonly commanding".[24] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "Though it does not consistently achieve the highest Ford standards, The Searchers is surely the best Western since Shane."[25]
The film earned rentals of $4.8 million in the US and Canada during its first year of release.[26]
Later assessments
Critic Roger Ebert found Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards, "one of the most compelling characters Ford and Wayne ever created". Ebert writes: "The Searchers indeed seems to be two films. The Ethan Edwards story is stark and lonely, a portrait of obsession, and in it we can see Schrader's inspiration for Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver. [...] The film within this film involves the silly romantic subplot and characters hauled in for comic relief, including the Swedish neighbor Lars Jorgensen (John Qualen), who uses a vaudeville accent, and Mose Harper (Hank Worden), a half-wit treated like a mascot. [...] This second strand is without interest, and those who value The Searchers filter it out, patiently waiting for a return to the main story line."[27]
The Searchers has been cited as one of the greatest films of all time, such as in the BFI's decennial Sight & Sound polls. In 1972, The Searchers was ranked 18th; in 1992, 5th; in 2002, 11th; in 2012, 7th. In a 1959 Cahiers du Cinéma essay, Jean-Luc Godard compared the movie's ending to the reuniting of Odysseus with Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey.[24] In 1963, he ranked The Searchers as the fourth-greatest American movie of the sound era, after Scarface (1932), The Great Dictator (1940), and Vertigo (1958).[28] The 2007 American Film Institute 100 greatest American films list ranked The Searchers in 12th place. In 1998, TV Guide ranked it 18th.[29] In 2008, the American Film Institute named The Searchers as the greatest Western of all time.[30] In 2010, Richard Corliss noted the film was "now widely regarded as the greatest Western of the 1950s, the genre's greatest decade" and characterized it as a "darkly profound study of obsession, racism, and heroic solitude".[31]
The film currently maintains an 87% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes based on 98 reviews, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "The Searchers is an epic John Wayne Western that introduces dark ambivalence to the genre that remains fashionable today."[32] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 94 out of 100 based on reviews from 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[33]
The film has been recognized multiple times by the American Film Institute:
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies – #96
- AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #12
- AFI's 10 Top 10 – #1 Western Film
On "They Shoot Pictures Don't They", a site which numerically calculates critical reception for any given film, The Searchers has been recognized as the ninth-most acclaimed movie ever made.[34] Members of the Western Writers of America chose its title song as one of the top 100 Western songs of all time.[35]
Scott McGee stated, "... more than just making a social statement like other Westerns of the period were apt to do, Ford instills in The Searchers a visual poetry and a sense of melancholy that is rare in American films and rarer still to Westerns."[36]
Glenn Frankel's 2013 study of the film calls it "the greatest Hollywood film that few people have seen".[24]
