JP "The Searchers"

“The typical Western movie opens with a landscape shot…” (Tompkins 69) reads the very first sentence of Jane Tompkins’s West of Everything. Surprise surprise, John Ford’s epic Western film, The Searchers, staring John Wayne starts with a vast landscape shot. Landscape is a big concept that depicts the realistic atmosphere in Western films. The land is usually a vast area and more times than none, the specific land shot is wide. I feel as though the only time where the landscape may not be included is when there is an intimate conversation or connection between characters. Landscapes seem to hold the main character role in many Western films. From the beginning you feel as if the characters that will appear come second to the landscape. The Western land in itself can tell a story. The characters and their personalities are just extras.

Throughout The Searchers, Ford explicitly provides various connections between the cowboy and the land. One example rests with the spiritual messaging sent through the landscape of Western films. As Tompkins says, “The landscape challenges the body to endure hardship…This is a hard place to be; you will have to do without here. Its spiritual message is the same; come and suffer” (Tompkins 71). This is strongly portrayed throughout Ford’s film, specifically with John Wayne’s character, Ethan, who is continuously facing hardships when going out into the desert and being surrounded with an infiniteness number of places or directions he could be going to find his family. Another prime connection between Tompkins and Ford’s work is the relationship between landscape and death. “The desert is the landscape of death,” (Tompkins 70) in support to this quote, not even fifteen minutes in to the film, is there a religious ceremony in memory of the family members that have been killed. Throughout the film, there are many other desert scenes where shooting, fighting, and or any kind of cruelty that can lead to death take place; making it easy to categorize the land and death together.

Another important example is within the value women have in Western films compared to men; “There is no need to say that men are superior to women…the scene has already said it,” (Tompkins 73). During The Searchers, there are not many women actresses as is, however even when they are present in a scene they do not hold an importance. For example, there is one point towards the end when Martin is fighting the man Laurie is suppose to be marrying, and Ethan pushes the women back into the house, simply exemplifying women’s roles in general; basically holding no importance.

The landscape “sends a multitude of other messages”(Tompkins 71) by revealing the division of people. This is simply shown through the landscape, specifically when the Indians are in a single file line on top of mountain and the cowboys are in more of a cluster below them, towards the bottom of the mountain. Eventually, the cowboys get surrounded on both sides with Indians, the cowboys ultimately take off in hope to get away. The Indians come stampeding after them, however luckily the cowboys get by with a minimum loss.

Overall, West of Everything and The Searchers, both depict the relationship between land and cowboy effectively. I feel it is easy to connect the two mediums and find examples in support of each other. Landscape is a huge part of Western films and in the end can be one of the most influential aspects of the film to understand.