The Searchers, 1956

The Searchers is a realistic movie.  John Ford captures American culture, a culture splintered by cultural upheavals due to the War Between the States.  Family decisions force the disruption of blood lines, legacies fall on unexpected and unworthy members, while rage burns men's hearts and their labors into a bleak condition.

Ethan Edwards, the main character played by John Wayne, returns in a Confederate uniform to his brother's farm in Texas at the end of the civil war.  That uniform is symbolic for the original principles of the fathers who founded this Christian country.  Ethan Edwards is disgusted by what his country has become after four years of fighting for liberty.  But the liberty that Ethan faces is not national liberty, but more about personal liberties and the clashes therein that lie within families.  Families of the country have taken it on the chin, and in this movie is more relevant to the 1950's in which it was filmed than the post-War-Between-The-States. 

The Big Country, 1958

Shane, 1953

I watched Shane last night for the first time since I was a kid.  I hadn't seen it in its entirety ever, and the Youtube version had editorial cuts.  Because it was and it is a classic movie and held up like Twain says as something that never gets looked at, I didn't exercise patience enough to watch it.  But it is truly an American classic.  There are so many scenes that capture the American Christian ethic.  There is a scene shortly after Shane arrives on Joe Starett's property.  Shane is about a mysterious gun-slinger who leaves a trail of dead guys behind him.  How do you enter into legitimate society after having killed a dozen or so men mostly in self-defense.  But peaceful, unthinking folks can't trust the reasons for killing from a gunslinger, so self-defense cannot convince and assuage fears and influence of a gunman.  It doesn't; it can't.  No good deed goes unpunished.  But comes to town as a stranger and is welcomed by a peaceful Christian but defenseless family man.  The pity of it is that the Christian can't shoot.  He fends off Ryker's men in the opening scene with an unloaded gun.  But Shane, the gunman and killer, stands by the Christian, by the American homesteader where any interceding law is absent.  And that is the crux of the story: how does one protect and assert the validity of a contract against a gang of contract-busting thieves, like the Obama administration or any socialist collective?  With a gun?  With the law?  There is one line in the movie that I loved: "The law is three-day's ride from here."  The marshal, who is three-day's ride from here, is usually owned in the pocket of big business guys like Ryker anyway.  Cattleman Ryker owns the town, and what others own he lets them.  Then there are those he doesn't let: foreigners or sodbusters.  Ryker doesn't want new-comers.  Doesn't want competition.  Wants to control all commerce and be a mercantilist.  Can't control everything.  When you lose control and you lose power, you call in Jack Palance.  Shane can be most useful in important conflicts with his gun.  So use it.  But Shane's gentle sincerity and his light buckskiin shirt cannot hide the killing and the violence that his past is tattoed with.  Try as he might, he cannot completely shield his past from critics.  In peaceful societies, he can never be accepted in spite of the fact that he delivers them from the clutches of demons like Ryker and Jack Wilson.  Joey and his mom talk about Shane and whether he is a good man or not.  He is.  But that doesn't finish the discussion on him.  The talk about Shane rides on ahead of him and behind him, reverberating for miles over the Grand Tetons.