At Futterman's trading post, Ethan and Martin learn that Debbie has been taken by Scar, the chief of the Nawyecka band of Comanches. Ethan, who would rather travel alone, leaves without Martin the next morning, but Laurie reluctantly provides Martin with a horse to catch up. Martin is enthusiastically welcomed by the Jorgensens' daughter Laurie, and Ethan finds a letter waiting for him from a trader named Futterman, who claims to have information about Debbie. When winter arrives, Ethan and Martin lose the trail and return to the Jorgensen ranch. 'I figure on gettin' myself un-surrounded,' insists Captain Clayton ( Ward Bond) to Ethan ( John Wayne) as they realize they are caught in a trap and must run for their lives. In a blind rage, Brad rides directly into the Native American camp and is killed. Ethan finds Lucy brutally murdered and presumably raped in a canyon near the Comanche camp. They return home, leaving Ethan to continue his search for the girls with only Lucy's fiancé, Brad Jorgensen, and Debbie's adopted brother, Martin Pawley. Although they fend off the attack, the Rangers are left with too few men to fight the Native Americans effectively.

The camp is deserted, and further along the trail, the men ride into an ambush. When they find the Comanche camp, Ethan recommends a frontal attack, but Clayton insists on a stealth approach to avoid killing the hostages. Ethan shoots out the eyes of one of the bodies, as a cosmic insult, mocking Comanche religion. They come upon a burial ground of Comanches who were killed during the raid. Aaron, his wife Martha, and their son Ben are dead, and Debbie and her older sister Lucy have been abducted.Īfter a brief funeral, the men set out in pursuit. When they return, they find the Edwards homestead in flames. Shortly after Ethan's arrival, cattle belonging to his neighbor Lars Jorgensen are stolen, and when Captain Clayton leads Ethan and a group of Rangers to recover them, they discover that the theft was a Comanche ploy to draw the men away from their families. Captain Samuel Clayton remarks, Ethan 'fits a lot of descriptions' (in reference to whether he may be wanted for any crime). As a former Confederate soldier, he is asked to take an oath of allegiance to the Texas Rangers he refuses. He has a large quantity of gold coins of uncertain origin in his possession, and a medal from the Mexican campaign that he gives to his eight-year-old niece, Debbie. Ethan fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, and in the three years since that war ended, he apparently fought in the Mexican revolutionary war, as well. In 1868, Ethan Edwards returns after an eight-year absence to the home of his brother Aaron in the wilderness of West Texas. It deals with most aspects of making the film, including preparation of the site, construction of props, and filming techniques. The Searchers was the first major film to have a purpose-filmed making-of, requested by John Ford. In 1989, The Searchers was deemed 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant' by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry it was one of the first 25 films selected for the registry. The British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine ranked it as the seventh-best film of all time based on a 2012 international survey of film critics and in 2008, the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma ranked The Searchers number 10 in their list of the 100 best films ever made. Entertainment Weekly also named it the best Western. It was named the greatest American Western by the American Film Institute in 2008, and it placed 12th on the same organization's 2007 list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time. Since its release, it has come to be considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. The film was a critical and commercial success. It is set during the Texas-Native American wars, and stars John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War veteran who spends years looking for his abducted niece ( Natalie Wood), accompanied by his adopted nephew Martin ( Jeffrey Hunter). Nugent, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May. The Searchers is a 1956 American Technicolor VistaVision epic Western film directed by John Ford and written by Frank S.

Irc movie searcher