
The Searchers
Directed by John Ford
1956
Other directors have been stealing from this western for seventy years: Ford put John Wayne's racism on screen without excusing it, and framed his story in a much-copied doorway.
★ 9.0

Other directors have been stealing from this western for seventy years: Ford put John Wayne's racism on screen without excusing it, and framed his story in a much-copied doorway.

Kubrick was twenty-seven and this is where he became Kubrick: a racetrack robbery told out of order, doubling back to catch each man's hour, thirty years before that felt like a style.

James Dean died before it was finished and his last scenes had to be dubbed: three hours of Texas oil money, filmed as a family argument that runs thirty years.

American television has run it every Easter for over fifty years: DeMille parted the Red Sea with gelatin, dumped water and a reversed film, and nobody has topped the sheer nerve of it.