THE SEARCHERS (70 mm)

In the organizer's words:

Thu 17.10., 20h

THE SEARCHERS The Black Hawk John Ford USA 1956 70 mm English OV 119'

Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), an embittered veteran of the Confederate Army, returns to his brother's ranch in Texas three years after the end of the Civil War in 1868, which is burned down by Comanches shortly afterwards. His brother, his secretly beloved sister-in-law and her son are killed in the raid and their two daughters are abducted. Ethan and two other family members pick up the trail of the Comanche and embark on a search with different motives that will last several years. THE SEARCHERS marks a new departure in Ford's work by showing the old frontier myth in a sober, disillusioning light. The film was named the "greatest Western of all time" by the American Film Institute in 2007 and was extensively restored in 2024 by Warner Bros. in cooperation with the Film Foundation. In the course of this restoration, 70 mm prints of the film, which was shot in VistaVision format, were produced for the first time.