Sep 16, 2013. The Abysmal Brute Author: Jack London Film: Basis for the film Conflict [Original Novel / Story] Publisher: Bison Books Publishing Date: June 1, 2000 (Bison Books edition) ISBN-10:. ISBN-13: 9940. Notes: Paperback: 170 pages. Language: English The Free eBook edition may be. Exploring a range of Western films, or extracts, can help Film and. Media students investigate. Train Robbery in 1903 to Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil (1999). The Searchers. What contrasts can you find here, e.g. Landscape and domestic setting? □ What are the paradoxes of the central characters, particularly the loner.

On Friday, the in New York City kicked off a week-long festival of road movies selected by Walter Salles, director of the upcoming adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD. I saw three of the iconic films presented this weekend: John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS (1956); Michelangelo Antonioni’s THE PASSENGER (1975); and Edgar G. Ulmer’s DETOUR (1945). First up was THE SEARCHERS (1956) on Saturday afternoon. Based on a novel by Alan Le May (adapted by Frank S. Nugent), this 1956 epic tells the story of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), an ornery Civil War veteran, who embarks on an obsessive quest when his niece (Natalie Wood) is captured by Comanche Indians. Ethan is accompanied by his adopted nephew Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), himself part native American, and the troubled soldier’s prejudices eventually lead Martin – and the audience – to question Ethan’s motives. THE SEARCHERS is considered by many to be the greatest Western of all time.

It’s certainly one of the most beautiful, with stunning cinematography by Winston C. Hoch, a multiple Academy Award-winner – for JOAN OF ARC (1948), SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949), and THE QUIET MAN (1952) – and frequent Ford collaborator. Hoch was a physicist who joined the Technicolor Corporation in 1934 and was instrumentental in the refinement of three-strip dye-transfer process that helped to create some of the most memorably visual works of art in film history. While THE SEARCHERS was not a three-strip Technicolor production – it was shot on a single-strip negative VistaVision camera – the post-production lab work was done by Technicolor, and the film is renown for its use of color. IFC screened THE SEARCHERS in a DCP digital print on a 4k projector and, I’m happy to report, it looked flawless. There’s been some on-line recently about the recent HD transfer looking too yellow, and the ground of Monument Valley not red enough, but to my eyes, the color timing was perfect. The print maintained a nice amount of grain, and never appeared to have that over-scrubbed look that can sometimes make film look like video in DCP projection. I’ve found that widescreen epics with brightly lit scenic vistas are typically good tests for DCP technology.

SPARTACUS (1960) at the TCM Classic Film Festival in April, 2011 had a distracting amount of video “noise” that resembled the herringbone interference I used to get when I needed to adjust my rabbit ears. And a DCP screening of BEN-HUR at the New York Film Festival six months later gradually lost audio sync and had to be re-booted before the audience stormed the projection booth. For me, the jury was still out on DCP until a recent Fathom Events presentation of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) on a 4k projector at the AMC Loews Village 7 in New York. It was my best-ever experience with DCP – until THE SEARCHERS on Saturday at IFC.

Sunday afternoon’s screening of DETOUR (1945) presented the opposite end of the cinematic spectrum: a no-budget noir shot in black and white on small sets under-lit to mask their sparseness. Tom Neal stars as luckless loser Al Roberts, thumbing his way to Hollywood to reunite with a showgirl. After the gambler driving him dies mysteriously, Roberts assumes his identity (and wallet) until a devious dame (Ann Savage) he picks up on the highway to Hollywood threatens to blow his cover. DETOUR is a study in claustrophobia. Much of the action takes place in a Lincoln Continental (owned by director Ulmer) filmed in front of a rear projection screen at Producer’s Releasing Corporation, a “Poverty Row” studio that would close its doors just two years later.

Master materials are believed to have been lost as DETOUR passed first to Eagle Lion Films and then to United Artists, which assumed ownership in 1955. The film later fell into the public domain and has been widely available in poor quality versions on VHS, DVD and television. The transfer TCM aired recently was so murky I had to turn off all the lights in my apartment in order to discern what was happening on screen. IFC screened a 35 mm print from a private collector and, while the print was typically battered and choppy, it was the brightest and clearest I’ve seen. Saturday night’s screening of THE PASSENGER (1975) was the perfect middle ground between the two: a ponderous treatise on the nature of identity from Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. In a surprisingly spare performance, Jack Nicholson plays an American reporter in North Africa who steals the identity of a deceased British war correspondent who also happens to be a gunrunner.

In Barcelona he meets a sexy French girl (Maria Schneider) who becomes his accomplice, lover, and perhaps, betrayer. The film concludes with an unforgettable, seven-minute tracking shot that begins inside a hotel room, travels outside, and comes back in – all without a cut. That sequence alone makes this movie a must-see. THE PASSENGER was screened in a pristine 35 mm print from the MGM vault, complete with a version of the MGM logo I’ve never seen before. The animation opens with type in the circle (where the lion would usually be) that reads, “Beginning Our Next 50 Years,” then the lion appears, flanked by “Golden” to the left and “Anniversary” to the right. According to the, this animation was used on prints released between May 23, 1974 and July 4, 1975. THE PASSENGER debuted in the United States on April 9, 1975.

How cool was my weekend? Going from a state-of-the-art digital rendering of a timeless Western, to an archival 35 mm print of an obscure art film clearly rooted in a moment in movie history, to an orphaned Poverty Row programmer rescued by film fans, I was struck by the ever-evolving nature of cinema. Regardless of how they’re produced, preserved, and presented, the movies will always be with us.

Will screen again on Tuesday, December 18 at 9:00 PM, returns on Wednesday, December 19 at 7:00 PM, and closes out the series on Thursday, December 20 at 7:00 PM. For more info, click. Sex sells, the old saying goes. It also employs, or at least it did in movies made before enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code began in 1934. In the, a five-film DVD set from Turner Classic Movies and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, just about every leading female character makes ends meet by leveraging what the Good Lord gave her. And those who aren’t prostitutes, madams, dance hall “hostesses,” kept women, or mistresses spend most of their time fending off predatory creeps in dead-end jobs.

In TEN CENTS A DANCE (1931), based upon the popular ballad by Rodgers and Hart, Barbara Stanwyck is a taxi dancer who marries an abusive embezzler. In ARIZONA (1931), Laura La Plante is a good time girl of a certain age (27!) who falls for womanizing West Point cadet John Wayne (yes, that John Wayne), only to marry his 40-something adopted father when the young soldier kicks her to the curb. Doomed starlet Jean Harlow headlines THREE WISE GIRLS (1932) as a small town soda jerk who tries to make her fortune as a New York City lingerie model, and instead falls for a married lush. Stanwyck strikes back in SHOPWORN (1932) as a waitress sent to the pokey by rich boyfriend Regis Toomey’s snobbish mother (Clara Blandick – Aunt Em from THE WIZARD OF OZ) for violation of the Public Morals Act, only to take a “post-graduate course” in bad behavior once she busts out. And comely comedienne Carole Lombard plays it straight as a reformed streetwalker who falls for dimwitted cabbie Pat O’Brien in VIRTUE (1932).

Every few months between the spring of 1931 and fall of 1932, Columbia Pictures shocked moviegoers with these increasingly bleak portraits of Depression Era womanhood. Ironically, four of the five often-lurid films in this set were written by, who penned heart-warming screenplays for Frank Capra classics like IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), MR.

DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936), and YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938). The only film not written by Riskin, TEN CENTS A DANCE, features a screenplay by his frequent partner, another Capra crony who contributed to the script for IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946). And to make matters even more creatively incestuous, DANCE was directed by Lionel Barrymore – Mr. Potter himself. Capra, who classed up Columbia with 20 films directed between 1928 and 1939, didn’t helm any of these potboilers (TCM highlights his Pre-Code work in ), though a number of his tropes are on display: the young, working class hero(ine) seeking her fortune; inter-class romance; abuse of authority; consideration of suicide; the redemptive power of love; and, of course, the uplifting conclusion. Because these are Columbia Pictures, not Warner Bros. Or First National, each of our heroines SPOILER ALERT!

Enjoys an unequivocal happy ending, though her collective journeys are arguably more harrowing than anything male Capra heroes like George Bailey, Jefferson Smith or Longfellow Deeds would endure. These early, sometimes roughly produced Columbia talkies are far more a product of go-for-broke Pre-Code filmmaking than the Capra Style Guide, however.

Movies made during this all-too-brief era (1930-34) are often heralded () for presenting strong female characters with liberated ideals unheard of in real life. But these films are more regressive, with a perverse pile-on pervading the narratives that feels more admonitional than aspirational. The primary identity for these heroines as subjects of desire seems tragically exploitive, which was a common argument made by detractors of the highly sexualized Pre-Code Zeitgeist.

It’s one I myself have never considered, perhaps until now. The alternate argument is that Pre-Code movies offered a frank assessment of the steep climb young American women faced in the early 1930s – challenges that were rarely pretty, or neatly resolved after 68 minutes. Was the female moviegoer made stronger by the knowledge that every Tom, Dick and Harry wanted to get into her pants (or skirt, considering the era)? Or was she better served by the absurdly courtly fantasies propagated by the Code? I still believe it’s the former, though perhaps now with an asterisk. If you crave the prurience of Pre-Code, these selections won’t disappoint.

In fact, The Columbia Pictures Pre-Code Collection is arguably more on-point for fans of the era than the recent releases from the Warner Archive Collection, both of which felt padded with at least one head-scratcher (I’m looking at you, MISS PINKERTON). The Columbia box contains five prototypical samples that would pass any Sex & Scandal litmus test, with powerful performances from some of the most interesting actresses of the 1930s (and a few, like Harlowe and Marie Prevost, who didn’t survive the ’30s). The difference is that the Pre-Code films I’ve seen from Warner Bros. And its First National subsidiary are a lot more fun to watch than these snappy but bleak soap operas.

Still, I enjoyed these films, particularly the two with Stanwyck. But my recommendation comes with a warning: don’t binge-watch like I did. By the end of 348 minutes I was ready to join Mae Clarke’s character in THREE WISE GIRLS when she offed herself with a swig of poison. And I’m not a girl, and it’s not 1932.

Regarding running times, it’s important to note that at least two transfers in this set appear to be edited versions censored by the Production Code Administration for post-1934 re-release. VIRTUE has been partially restored, with the reinstatement of the audio (but not the picture) for the opening scene in which Lombard’s identity as a prostitute is confirmed. (A text screen on the DVD explains this, blaming the edit on the Code). SHOPWORN seems to be the most altered, and even a cursory viewing suggests that large stretches of narrative are missing. To compensate, TCM includes a still photo from an edited sequence in the special features with the accompanying text, “This scene does not appear in the final film,” but with no explanation of why. Did the scene actually appear in the initial release? If so, when was it removed, and why, and by whom?

All of this information must exist in Columbia’s files. The SHOPWORN disc does include a pdf file of New York Censor Board documents outlining the specific cuts required in order for the film to play in the Empire State in 1932, but that’s only part of the film’s bowdlerization history.

I want to know the rest. And while the arbitrary absurdity of a 1930s censorship document is interesting, the battle over SHOPWORN would have been better explicated in an on-camera segment than a pdf attachment. TCM host Robert Osborne does appear in an extremely brief introductory video, but makes no mention of the fact that at least two of the films in The Columbia Pictures Pre-Code Collection are not, in fact, presented in their original Pre-Code versions. Instead, he offers a perfunctory history of chief censor Will Hays and the office that bore his name, along with one- or two-sentence intros for each film. For a box set that’s all about film censorship, I wish TCM had done a deeper dive into the topic. An informative text article by Frank Miller, author of, is included on the first disc, but it requires clicking through 15 screens to read it, which I think most people are disinclined to do on their TV sets. Other than the Miller article, pdf and Osborne intro, special features are limited to scans of publicity stills, lobby cards and movie posters.

If original trailers weren’t available, how about including a racy short or two – Columbia certainly made plenty of them – or a background piece on the studio’s Poverty Row history? DVD sales may be decreasing, but one way to keep them strong with classic film fans is to give us content we can’t get anywhere else, and special features that are actually special. Close captioning and animated menus with music would also be nice.

Still, silent menus feel very retro, and not in a good way. One final note: the packaging for this set, while stylish, contains the least intuitive DVD storage mechanism I have ever encountered. I eventually figured it out, but simple directions that state “push down on the disc to release the catch” should be included in future pressings. Columbia Pictures Pre-Code Collection Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment/TCM Format: Pressed DVDs Quantity: 5 discs/1 film per disc Aspect Ratio: 1.33.1 Full Frame Special Features: On-camera introduction by Robert Osborne; digital image gallery featuring behind-the-scenes photos, publicity stills, lobby cards, movie posters, scene stills. Text: Censor Board document; TCMDb article by Frank Miller.

TEN CENTS A DANCE (1931) Release Date: March 6, 1931 Duration: 75 minutes (originally 80, per AFI) Director: Lionel Barrymore Producer: Harry Cohn Writers: Jo Swerling (story and screenplay), Dorothy Howell (Continuity) Studio: Columbia Pictures Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Barbara O’Neill), Ricardo Cortez (Bradley Carlton), Monroe Owsley (Eddie Miller), Sally Blane (Molly), Blanche Friderici (Mrs. Blanchard, dance hall matron), Phyllis Crane (Eunice, dancer who propositions Eddie), Pat Harmon (Casey, the bouncer), David Newall (Ralph), Martha Sleeper (Nancy), Sidney Bracey (Wilson, Carlton’s butler) 2.

ARIZONA (1931) Release Date: June 27, 1931 Duration: 67 minutes (originally 71) Director: George B. Seitz Producer: Harry Cohn Writers: Augustus E. Thomas (play), Dorothy Howell (Continuity), Robert Riskin (adaptation and dialogue) Studio: Columbia Pictures Cast: Laura La Plante (Evelyn Palmer Bonham), John Wayne (Lt. Bob Denton), June Clyde (Bonnie Palmer, Evelyn’s sister), Forrest Stanley (Col. Frank Bonham), Nina Quartero (Conchita), Susan Fleming (Dot, Evelyn’s friend), Loretta Sayers (Peggy, Evelyn’s friend) 3. 1924 was a busy year for Peggy-Jean Montgomery: she starred in four feature films; headlined seven comedy short subjects; served as on-stage mascot for the Democratic National Convention at Madison Square Garden; and became one of the first merchandized celebrities, with her likeness immortalized on a popular doll. And all this happened before she turned six.

Not only was the adorable child actress who performed under the stage name “Baby Peggy” one of the biggest stars in the world, she was also one of the highest paid. And then, it all came to an abrupt end. “I was blacklisted,” 94-year-old Diana Serra Cary – the artist formerly known as Baby Peggy – told me after a recent Museum of Modern Art of BABY PEGGY: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, a documentary premiering tonight (Monday, December 3) on Turner Classic Movies. “A child who has difficult parents is blacklisted.

My father didn’t understand that. He ran into a brick wall.” That wall was influential producer Sol Lesser, with whom Cary’s father had a contract dispute following the release of, a 1924 Baby Peggy starring vehicle which also airs on TCM tonight. Jack Montgomery, a failed cowboy actor and one-time Tom Mix stand-in, clashed with Lesser when the producer refused to pay his star, claiming the picture made no money. Once word got out that Montgomery had broken his daughter’s contract, one of the biggest stars in the world became virtually unemployable in Hollywood.

“In those days, the studios were in very close contact,” Cary told me, during the post-screening Q&A at MoMA in September. “If there was an outside threat they literally came together.

It isn’t that way anymore. The studio system had a lot of good things about it, but that was one bad thing.” Another bad thing was the manner in which Cary’s family handled her finances. After her step-grandfather made off with every penny she had earned – more than $2 million – and the movie business shunned her, Baby Peggy was forced to hit the road to support the family. “I liked the films; I enjoyed that part of it,” she said. “What really crushed me was Vaudeville. It was so difficult.” Cary spent the next five years touring the country, performing as many as eight shows a day. There was no time off to earn an education, or to recuperate when she was ill.

Her parents needed every penny of the $1,500 per week she made on the circuit, so, the Baby Peggy show always had to go on. “Once you get into the child star trap, you can’t get out of it: the parents get addicted to the money; the child gets trapped; there’s an agent to pay; servants to keep; there’s everybody to pay off,” she told the audience at MoMA. “There’s nobody to ransom you. You’re a hostage.” With the dedication of a veteran trouper, Baby Peggy earned a second fortune in Vaudeville – more than $650,000 – which her parents used to buy a ranch in Wyoming. When the ranch was repossessed in 1932, the now-teenaged Peggy was forced to return to Hollywood, this time fighting for extra work that often paid as little as $3 per day. Cary’s nightmarish childhood finally came to an end in 1938, when she retired from performing at age 20 and married actor Gordon Ayers.

It was a humiliating end to what had once been an extraordinarily promising career. For many years, she tried her best to forget Baby Peggy. “I had been her enemy for years; I was very hard on her,” Cary said. “I just felt like she had hounded me and stayed with me all these years and she was a just a bother.

I couldn’t become myself. “ Part of the healing process for Cary came in making BABY PEGGY: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, a touching and heartfelt documentary directed by Vera Iwerebor. The Dutch filmmaker, who first met Cary in 1992, explained to the audience at MoMA how her subject had achieved peace with her past over the last decade and a half. “It was an interesting process to see you change from our first interview,” Iwerebor said to Cary onstage at MoMA. “You were still a little bit distant from Baby Peggy referring to her more as ‘she.’ When I met you again in 2008 you were more ready to tell this story from a personal standpoint.” And that’s what she did. Using a combination of intensely personal reminiscences and restored footage from a handful of recently rediscovered films (most of her shorts were lost in a 1926 fire at Century Studios), Cary tells a harrowing tale that ultimately had a happy ending: for the last four decades she’s been a successful writer, publishing four books, including (1996).

She also written a book about child stars, and a on the life of actor, a contemporary of Baby Peggy’s whose court battles with his parents led to the a 1939 California law designed to protect the earnings of minors from irresponsible parents. “Jackie Coogan had a much more unfortunate time of it than I did. He earned $4 million and they spent it all. He didn’t have a dime,” Cary said. Att Q Enterprise Messenger. “When Louis B. Mayer found out that Jackie Coogan sued his own parents, because they had taken him, Mayer said, ‘You little bastard.

You’ll never work here again. Microsoft Sql Server 2000 64 Bit Free Download. ’ And for 19 years, Jackie couldn’t get a job for any major studio.” Cary talks openly about the challenges of being a child star, and the personal healing process she endured as an adult – one that many former child stars never master. She credits her second husband Bob Cary with helping her overcome many of her demons. “He helped me to learn to like Baby Peggy. He understood that I had this long-running battle with her, she said. “Many child stars do not make friends with that child. There’s conflict.

They’re very unhappy and sometimes it triggers that behavior that people don’t understand. They’re trying to destroy the child, not themselves. It leads them into this trap where they can’t get out.” Happily, Cary appears to be free of the demons that may have plagued her in her younger years.

At age 94, she is active and healthy, and a frequent guest at screenings, museums, conventions and film festivals. There’s even a movement to get her – more than 70 years after she made her last movie. “I had no idea how many films I had made. I didn’t expect to see even one or two of my films, but the last count was about 12 (that survive),” she said. “Seeing the films has helped a lot. I realize how hard she worked.

I had been very unappreciative of her.” Monday, December 3 – Baby Peggy: 1 documentary, 4 movies 8:00 PM BABY PEGGY: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM (2012) Director: Vera Iwerebor Duration: 60 minutes Release Date: September 5, 2012 Production Company: Milestone Films 9:00 PM (1924) Director: Edward F. Cline Duration: 58 minutes – 6 reels Release Date: July 6, 1924 Production Company: Sol Lesser Productions (Distributed by Principal Pictures Corp) Music for restoration composed and performed by Donald Sosin Note: Remade by 20th Century Fox in 1936 as a Shirley Temple musical directed by David Butler.

Baby Peggy’s father sold the rights to the story to Fox for $500. 10:15 PM CARMEN JR. (1923) Directed by: Alfred J.

Goulding Duration: 11 minutes – 2 reels 600 meters Release Date: August 29, 1923 Production Company: Century Film (Distributed by Universal) Music for restoration composed and performed by Guenter A. Buchwald 10:30 PM SUCH IS LIFE (1924) Directed by: Alfred J. Goulding Duration: 17 minutes – 2 reels 600 meters Release Date: January 30, 1924 Production Company: Century Film (Distributed by Universal) 11:00 PM PEG O’ THE MOUNTED (1924) Directed by: Alfred J. Goulding Duration: 11 minutes – 2 reels 600 meters Release Date: February 27, 1924 Production Company: Century Film (Distributed by Universal) SOURCES: • Vera Iwerebor’s BABY PEGGY THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM (2010) • 9/5/12 Q&A with Diana Serra-Cary at MoMA, moderated by Ron Magliozzi • Examiner.com: An Interview with Baby Peggy, the Once and Future Darling of New York • TCM.com. This is my biggest frustration as a classic film fan: no matter how many old movies I watch, there will always be hundreds (thousands?) more I haven’t seen. Unless I buy every pre-1960 DVD ever released and lock myself in my apartment for the next five years (which actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea), I’ll never be able to see everything. So what’s a movie buff to do?

One solution lies in the pages of Beyond CASABLANCA: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching, a new book by, an independent scholar and writer based in Huntsville, Alabama. Garlen has selected 100 classic films you should seek out, from D.W. Griffith’s (1919) through Billy Wilder’s (1959), and she supplies insightful commentary for each that goes far beyond plot summary. The author refers to her selection process as “separating the wheat from the chaff” – a framing device with which I don’t totally agree, since much of the “chaff” that didn’t make the cut are among my favorite films of all time. But why quibble? Garlen doesn’t suggest that the films she has picked are the best of all time, but rather offerings that will provide a balanced cinematic education, with a good mix of the “familiar and the unexpected.” In this regard, and many others, she succeeds.

Balance is key to Beyond CASABLANCA. Using the common dividing line of 1959 as the end of the “Classic Era,” Garlen’s selections offer a deft cross-section of mainstream American filmmaking, encompassing all genres, significant directors and iconic stars, while avoiding the “over-hyped duds” we all know and nap through (I’m looking at you, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS). There are also a few foreign classics like Jean Cocteau’s (1946), Robert Wiene’s (1920), and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s (1945) stirred into the sauce for international flavor. And before you exclaim, “Why not or,” Garlen adds related suggestions to the closing paragraphs of each (approximately) two-page review, allowing the reader to delve further into the work of an actor or director who has captured his or her fancy. In that sense, each of the 110 titles – 10 “Essentials” are added to the list – can send the reader down an infinite variety of paths, based upon personal taste, educational goals, or Saturday night whim. If you visit classic film websites (and obviously you do, because you’re here), you could likely find blog posts on most of the films included in Beyond CASABLANCA, but Garlen’s thoughtful, scholarly analysis goes well beyond the traditional “Here’s what happened and here’s why I like it” chattiness of much online film writing (mine included). For instance, this passage about John Huston’s (1951) particularly struck me: “Many of the best scenes have very little dialogue; instead, they depend on the ways in which the two characters look at each other.

Watch the end of the unforgettable leech scene, for example, when Charlie and Rose both know that Charlie must return to the water, even though the sight of his body covered with the black bloodsuckers has filled both of them with horror and disgust. Pity, love, and a fierce kind of pride play across Rose’s face in the background, while Charlie’s grim visage and burning eyes belong to a man confronted with a second trip to hell. “ I’ve seen THE AFRICAN QUEEN countless times, as I have many of the movies Garlen writes about, but I’ve never thought of it in quite that way. The author has an amazing ability to point out inherent truths I didn’t know I knew about these great old movies. Of course Rose and Charlie have a sort of silent communion that dominates their scenes on the boat.

But the film is so good, and Bogart and Hepburn are so natural, I just never even thought about it. Good film writing points out insights like these, not just plot points and opinions about performances. And what’s great about Garlen is she employs the same level of scholarship in her analysis of Fellini’s (1954) as she does in her exegesis of (1947).

Beyond CASABLANCA also contains lots of fascinating trivia, in case you ever end up on Jeopardy. I’ve loved (1937) since I was ten, yet I had no idea that Dorothy Dandridge is in one of the musical numbers. Nor did I realize that there have been four versions of, or that Conrad Veidt in (1928) was the inspiration for Batman’s nemesis The Joker. Trivia is prevalent on the internet, particularly in the 140 character riot that is Twitter, but here Garlen integrates smaller facts into a larger, historical narrative. I'm a New York City-based writer, video producer, print journalist, radio/podcast host, and social media influencer. I've been a guest on Turner Classic Movies (interviewed by Robert Osborne), NPR, Sirius Satellite Radio, and the official TCM podcast.

My byline has appeared in Slate.com and more than 100 times in the pages of NYC alt weeklies like The Villager and Gay City News. I'm also a social media copywriter for Sony's getTV and a contributor to four film-and-TV-related books: 'Monster Serial,' 'Bride of Monster Serial,' 'Taste the Blood of Monster Serial,' and 'Remembering Jonathan Frid.' • Follow me on Twitter • Follow me on Instagram.

There are a few Hollywood movies so thematically rich and so historically resonant they may be considered part of American literature. “The Searchers” is one. In his vivid, revelatory account of John Ford’s 1956 masterpiece, Glenn Frankel, whose reporting from the Middle East for The Washington Post won him a Pulitzer Prize, writes that “The Searchers” may be “the greatest Hollywood film that few people have seen.” Perhaps that should be “have really seen.” Constantly televised, frequently revived, readily available on DVD, “The Searchers” has never been hard to find; still, the subject this most troubling of movies addresses is an inducement to denial. Like a modernist drama, “The Searchers” opens on a void, in this case an empty stretch of Texas: an angry loner returns to his family after a long absence. A day or two later, they are massacred by Comanche raiders. He spends the next seven years in dogged pursuit, seeking revenge and the young niece taken captive, but when he realizes the child has come of age as an Indian woman, his objective shifts.

He seeks not to rescue her but to murder her. This, briefly, is the plot of what, in its return to the genre’s root issues, is the most radical western ever made. “The Searchers” was adapted from a novel by Alan LeMay that was inspired by the case of Cynthia Ann Parker; in 1836, she was abducted at age 9 by Comanches who slaughtered her family before her eyes. The underlying story is even older: dating back to the 17th century, memoirs of white women held captive by Indians are the original indigenous American narrative. Frankel notes that the year Cynthia Ann was taken, three of America’s four best-selling novels were by James Fenimore Cooper, with captivity figuring in all; the fourth was the true story of a settler woman who, captured by the Seneca Indians, married into the tribe, had seven children and refused to rejoin white civilization. Advertisement Just as relevant, although Frankel doesn’t mention it, was one of the most popular American melodramas of the first half of the 19th century, Robert Bird’s “Nick of the Woods” — published a year after Cynthia Ann disappeared into the wastes of Comancheria. After the hero’s family is massacred, he declares war on all Indians, determined to murder as many as he can.

This tenacity is comparable to that of Cynthia Ann’s Indian-­hating uncle James Parker, an original Texas Ranger who spent eight years searching for her. Meanwhile, Cynthia Ann became a Comanche bride and gave birth to three children. Twenty-four years after her abduction, she was recaptured along with her infant daughter. The man credited with rescuing her went on to serve two terms as governor of Texas; the captive, however, was unwilling and unable to readjust to white society. Her daughter died of smallpox (though there are differing versions of the story), and longing for her lost sons, Cynthia Ann followed. Frankel calls the Comanches “the most relentless and feared war machine in the Southwest.” In his graphic account, the atrocity-filled death match between Texan settlers and Indians escalated from disputes over horses and hunting rights into “the most protracted conflict ever waged on American soil, a 40-year blood feud between two alien civilizations” — a struggle that was personified by the twice-­abducted and permanently traumatized Cynthia Ann Parker. Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, her story became the stuff of operas and melodramas.

In 1936, her white relatives and Comanche descendants gathered to re-enact her kidnapping and subsequent recapture. Psychological epic: The director John Ford during the filming of 'The Searchers.' Credit Warner Brothers/Photofest As detailed by Frankel, Cynthia Ann’s son Quanah was a remarkable figure in his own right. Quanah was a Comanche war chief who, after reaching an accord with the whites, would be “the most important and influential Native American of his generation,” a man whose dinner guests ranged from Geronimo to Theodore Roosevelt. Nevertheless, when LeMay began researching his book, he was less interested in Cynthia Ann (or Quanah) than in the obsessed, long-forgotten uncle who had devoted years to chasing her memory. “The Searchers” (1954), LeMay’s 13th novel, was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post and sold more than 14,000 copies in hardcover. President Eisenhower read it; so did John Ford.

Ford, by Frankel’s unsentimental account, was a drunk and a bully, a political opportunist and a genius who, according to his assistant director, “shoots a picture in his mind before he ever turns on a camera.” Before filming began in June 1955, Ford announced that his new western would be a “psychological epic.” Indeed, “The Searchers” is steeped in pathology — not just the director’s, but ours. No American movie has ever so directly addressed the psychosexual underpinnings of racism or advanced a protagonist so consumed by race hatred. Raising the stakes, Ford’s savagely driven Ethan Edwards was played by Hollywood’s reigning male star and most outspoken anti-Communist, John Wayne. As I’ve written elsewhere, “Ethan takes America’s sins — racism, cruelty, violence, intolerance — onto himself.” He is at once hero and villain, perhaps even a saint in his mad, essentially selfless quest. At least that’s how it looks in retrospect. Ford’s biographer Joseph McBride tells Frankel that when “The Searchers” opened in the spring of 1956, “racism was so endemic in our culture that people didn’t even notice it.

They treated Wayne as a conventional western hero.”.