5) The Searchers
The Searchers features of the most iconic scenes in the history of film, in one of the most famous, celebrated, berated, despised, adored and discussed movies ever made.
John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a man determined to bring his niece back home after she is abducted by a tribe of Native Americans. Hewill stop at nothing to find her, but his inner demons and in built hatred for those who have taken her will push him into countless acts of barbarity, even as it pushes those close to him further away.
Ethan Edwards was perhaps the most complex role John Wayne ever played, even if he didn’t know it. Part loving Uncle, part rage-filled killer, what emerges is a portrait of a man forever doomed to live outside the conventions of kindness and love.
The politics of the film are horrendously old fashioned, and one is inclined to think flat out racist. But looking at it purely as a historical document of filmmaking, it is a masterclass. John Ford never failed to make Monument Valley appear breathtaking, but here, in full Technicolour, it leaps from the screen and washes you in dust and sun.
That so much of the film’s imagery has become part of our cultural heritage is a testament to the quality of filmmaking on display here, and as a way of understanding how pictures can be so much more powerful than words, it should be seen by anyone with an interest in film.