The Searchers (1956)

 "Fella could mistake you for a half-breed."

When accusing a film of racism one needs to be wary of nuance, historical context and all sorts of factors. Past ages were far less sensitive to racist tropes and assumptions, and while that may not prevent racism being racism it must be taken into account. Past filmmakers can be forgiven, up to a point, for growing up in times where being non-racist took a far greater perceptiveness and strength of character than it does today.

Nevertheless, there are times a film is just racist by any standards, and it’s a shame that it has to be this one. The film is gorgeously shot by John Ford, with achingly epic vistas of Arizona standing in for Texas. The script is extraordinarily acute its psychology. And John Wayne gives a superlative performance.

And yet the protagonist, Ethan, is both a colossal racist and a total dick, a bully possessing not an ounce of charm or decent principle. Not long after we first meet him he utters the extraordinary line quoted above to Marty, who is fated to spend much of the film as his sidekick. He remains, three years after the end of the American Civil War, loyal to the Confrderacy, an ideal based entirely on race-based slavery, whatever Southern apologists may have spend much of the twentieth century trying to gaslight us with. He is therefore stubborn in his beliefs but with absolutely zero ethical foundation.

Lots of Westerns are not overtly racist as they don’t centre on the opposition between “whites” and the Native Americans whom said “whites” are in the process of slowly exterminating. It’s I arguable that the story of the American West is a story of genocide, but it would be pointless to dismiss much of a whole genre because of this. The American West was full of people born there just trying to live their often very hard lives and survive and, although they were all complicit in this genocide, well, I’m sure you and I have both worn clothes made by slave labour, and are complicit in the climate catastrophe. We are all born into the societies we are, and few of us are so virtuous as to not share some of that society’s guilt.

All of which is to say that I do not condemn the Western genre on the grounds of this genocide, not even necessarily where Native Americans are portrayed as an antagonist. But The Searchers absolutely leans into this. The central plot is when a bunch of Comanche destroy a home and murder its inhabitants, taking little Debbie to raise as their own. Yet everyone in the film, barring Marty, seems to be of the opinion that she is now tainted, made “not white any more” by her adoption of another culture, and should therefore be killed. This is not a film about Ethan the racist; it is a racist film.

And yes, the film ends with Ethan relenting, and generously allowing that a white girl who sleeps with a non-white man and adopts elements of non-white culture may not, perhaps, deserve to be slaughtered. So miscegenation is bad and so is non-white culture, but perhaps it shouldn’t quite be a capital offence. That seems to be the message here.

The Searchers is a very good film, perhaps even an excellent one. Unfortunately, it’s also incredibly racist.

Psycho (1960)

"We all go a little mad sometimes..."

Wow. This film is a bit good, innit?

I suppose what strikes me, aside from the sheer power of the shower scene and the suddenly artier camerawork with  Marion’s corpse, something which is profoundly effective- and brave, doing something so arty in a film pitched at such a mainstream audience.

But the genius of the film isn’t limited to individual scenes or shots, or indeed to the gloriously radical decision of killing off what we’re implicitly told is the main protagonist halfway through. No; it’s the masterful code-switching between parts of the film which feel like ordinary drama and parts which ramp up the tension and unease- and the sheer mastery of switching between them.

This is a Hitchcock film, of course; you expect tension. Janet Leigh is superb, and carries the film, in thosezearly scenes where she’s on the run and evading the ever-present police. But once we reach the Bates Motel, the mood changes- or rather, it doesn’t, at least not immediately. The excellent Anthony Perkins comes across as lonely, weak, a little dorky perhaps, but he feels normal at first, and we (and Marion) feel at ease.

And then we don’t.

The sudden switch where Marion says the wrong thing to Norman- about putting his mother away- is deeply effective, and that’s certainly down to the performance but also down to the direction; suddenly the entire visual grammar of the film changes and the way the camera is used- the very thing that controls our sense of reality- suddenly becomes uncomfortable, unnerving. And stats that way whenever Hitchcock wants it to.

What lingers, though, is that extraordinary final shot of Bates looking as scary, through sheer acting, as anything in all of cinema. Superb.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

"I'm staying. And I'm not buying a gun either."

I don't know too much about Westerns; unless you count the ones by Akira Kurosawa I've only seen The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars and Back to the Future Part III, and the first two of those were many years ago. But The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has made a huge impression on me. It's the most profound experience I've had watching a film in recent months. I'm only vaguely aware of the tropes and themes of serious Westerns, but this film has so much subtext I hardly know where to begin. Plus it taught me the etymology of the word "dude", which apparently predates Bill and Ted by a century and a half. Who'd have thunk it?

Much of the film takes place in flashback and structurally would doubtlessly reward repeat viewings. Rance (a likeable and charismatic James Stewart), now a senator, returns with his wife Hallie to a town much changed by the advent of rail travel and the amenities it brings. They are there for the funeral of Tom Doniphon, a fascinating character; cue extended flashback.

A young Rance, travelling by the inevitable stagecoach, is moving west straight from law school. Immediately we have a character representing law and order moving towards an area synonymous with lawlessness, and this thematic tension informs the whole film; justice versus revenge. It's not the kind of cultural reference one usually associates with Westerns, I assume, but I'm reminded of Aeschylus' Oresteia, albeit with a much more ambiguous conclusion. But for now we simply observe Rance trying and failing to apply the rules he knows to his new environment. Liberty Valance will not, as we will see, be tried, convicted and imprisoned.

Rance's antithesis- and love rival- is Tom Doniphon, a hugely watchable and charismatic John Wayne- oh, and did his catchphrase "pilgrim", must beloved of Preacher, come just from this film? Tom is none too intellectual, very old-fashioned with the ladies to put it mildly, and at ease with the rough justice of the west. He's also obviously the alpha male, something which it seems at this point that Rance will never be.

Nevertheless, stubbornly law-abiding Rance begins to have an effect on the town, teaching literacy and generally acting as a mild civilising influence, even rousing the whole (male) town to exercise their franchise and vote in favour of statehood, which is clearly not so much a metaphor of a state of law and civilisation than, well, quite literally that. Men like Rance (and they are men at this time) have power in a state that they do not in a mere territory, and those like Valance, who thrive from lawlessness, are naturally prepared to use violence to prevent the end of their natural habitat.

Rance is slowly gaining in stature and confidence, though. It's precisely his civilising tendencies that lead Hallie to abandon alpha male Tom for him, a sure sign of the way the wind is blowing. But he inevitably ends up in a shootout with Valance... and inexplicably winning, seemingly abandoning all his principles. And yet, as we eventually discover in the film's big reveal, the shooter was in fact a hidden Tom. The character personifying rough justice eventually, despite misgivings, paves the coming of law and order. But he's yesterday's man, and all he can do is provide a future for others, not himself. He's a tragic yet compelling figure.

The flashback ends, we return to the present, and eberyone decides to ignore the inconvenient fact that Rance, who owes his popularity to having killed Valance and now feels quite firmly as though he belongs in a town which has now firmly adapted to his values, did no such thing. Everyone decides to ignore the truth and print the legend. But then, don't we all when it comes to the Old West?