I recently saw The Searchers for the first time, and was interested in Ebert's take on the film's subplots:
Roger Ebert wrote:The Searchers indeed seems to be two films. The Ethan Edwards story is stark and lonely, a portrait of obsession...[t]he 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. There are even musical interludes. 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.
This was opposite to my initial response, as I found the Charlie/Laurie marriage scene, the gentleman's brawl between Martin and Charlie, and the idiot characters (including Look), to be very pertinent to the "main story line," creating a depth to the communal world that Ethan was forever isolated from. This wouldn't be Ebert's first critical mistake, but I found Scott Eyman's attitude in his book "John Ford: The Complete Films" very similar.
Scott Eyman wrote:The Searchers is a great film, but it is not without flaws; there is the strange, off-putting sequence of Look, Martin's Indian bride, an object of ridicule from the beginning, mostly because she's fat and sexually unattractive. Ford's treatment of Look feels brutal and unfunny, especially if, as is almost certainly the case, he thought of the sequence as comic relief. It's entirely possible that Ford felt he was working too close to the bone with The Searchers, that he felt there might be too much about racism, too much about miscegenation. The tension may have needed an outlet, but the comic interludes Ford devised – Look, Ken Curtis' Charlie McCorry – are too coarse by half.
What's surprising here is that Eyman himself isn't 100% sure that Look was intended as comic relief - certainly her later death causes at least confusion, if not some remorse in Martin.
I find it odd that both writers dismiss the Charlie McCorry subplot, which was one of my favorite parts of the film. Martin's decision to continue searching for Debbie with Ethan is given weight by the fact that he has a family to return to, just as Ethan did (even though he dallied for three years after the Civil War). Ethan's family is tainted by the fact that he's in love with his sister-in-law, and Martin's has the extra tinge of Laurie's matter-of-fact racism and her desire for him to stay, even though Ethan will surely kill Debbie. Furthermore, the scenes of marriage, the brawl, Martin's letter to Laurie, etc all provide the counterpoint between the isolation of their nihilistic quest and the warmth/comedy of the home they've been ignoring. When they come home and find Laurie about to wed, they immediately interfere with the proceedings; the communal world is thrown off-balance by those who have chosen to abandon it, even temporarily.
Further, the farcical comedy during the brawl is completely in character for Ford; Jonathan Rosenbaum's DVDBeaver article mentions how Joseph McBride "observ[es] that Ford likes to follow tragedy with farce in the same pictures..." in reference to Pilgrimage. Perhaps this was a conscious political decision by Ford, like Eyman suggests, to lighten the mood in an otherwise dark film. The end result, however, is that tragedy and farce never exist in the same scene (Laurie's aforementioned easy racism comes close as it is a transition between Martin's jokey fight and his continuing quest). Look is a joke and a bother in one scene, but dead in the next. Ethan reaffirms his intent to kill Debbie and makes Martin his heir in one scene, and the marriage scene immediately follows. The brawl itself is a contrast between Charlie McCorry's buttoned up tuxedo (with perfect white shirt and gloves) and Martin's dusty and unkempt attire, even though both follow a ridiculous code of manners. Even the climactic scene where Ethan lifts Debbie into the air rather than killing her is followed by Ward Bond bending over with his ass hanging out - was there ever a greater contrast between two scenes?
I think Ebert expects a film to be entirely and wholly about one thing, and the social conscience struggling to shine through in The Searchers matches up with many of his yearly top 10 picks in recent years; Eyman ends his discussion of The Searchers by reinforcing that Ethan Edwards, The Searchers, and John Ford himself are all studies in contradictions. Why are they unable to accept that this contradiction exists in the weird mix of comedy and tragedy that is very much a part of Ford's ouevre? I'm thinking of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which stops in its tracks to tell the story of Wayne's retirement both sentimentally and comically, before returning to the looming war that was the whole point of the flick anyways; or The Long Voyage Home, which alternates between a tragic story of loss and loneliness and the ridiculous bumbling of Thomas Mitchell and his crew. Fort Apache also has a, if you want, "hokey" romance that hinges on the outcome of the main story. I even think My Darling Clementine plays a bit part in this, as Fonda is forced to interact with the town community when he didn't originally intend to. I'm sure there are other better examples outside of my viewing experience as well.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
