When Steven Spielberg grew up in the post -war era, stories about gun -loving cowboys were struggling with Indians extremely popular because they represented how America wanted to be seen at that time, as a strong and heroic judiciary. He was carving in to see John Ford’s “The Searchers” when he was nine years old (via Hollywood Reporter). It became not only one of his favorite films, but also one of his greatest artistic inspiration.
Often considered Best western through the ages“The Searchers” defined the genre’s tropes that we all know and love. John Wayne delivers his best performance like Ethan Edwards, A civil war veteran that goes on a five -year search for his siblings who was kidnapped by Comanche after the tribal members burned down his house and killed his brother, sister -in -law and their son. “The Searchers” has all the spectacle and adventurous excitement that we would later see in Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones” series, but its deeper themes about home and family most reasoned with him and are embedded in almost all his films. Ethan sees home as somewhere he can feel safe and in control. Without his family there Ethan is even more laughed at the violence after the last war.
Although he works in completely different genres, this longing for stability and the feeling of staying in Spielberg films such as “ET”, where Elliot desperately desires that it may be part of his family instead of going back to space, or “artificial intelligence”, is shown, where the robot David experiences the memory of his happiest day: simply to be with his mother. These homes are broken, but the main characters want to put them back together.
Spielberg was not only emotionally linked to the “seekers”, but also taught him a very important lesson about filmmaking.
Director John Ford taught Steven Spielberg how to paint with a movie camera
Steven Spielberg told us AFI That he looks at John Ford’s filmography, especially “The Searchers”, for inspiration before making his own films:
“I am very sensitive to how he uses his camera to paint his pictures and how he frames things. And how he arranges and blocks his people, often keeps the camera static while people give you the illusion that there is much more kinetic movement that occurs when there is not. In that sense he is he as a classic painter.
Spielberg met John Ford when he was a teenager, who he tells in his semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans.” Ford is played by another visionary filmmaker, The late David Lynch, in a gripping and perfect final performance on the screen. The Cantankerous and the Chain Restor Ford describe the importance of not only putting the horizon line in the middle of the frame, but rather pushing it closer to the top or bottom to generate a more convincing image. We see these painting techniques through “The Searchers”, especially in the haunting final shot where Ethan is covered in shade and framed by a door, and looks out at the huge plains where he no longer belongs.
John Ford’s most famous Western showed Steven Spielberg how to deliberately create shots with emotional and visual greatness that uses every corner in the frame. Spielberg learned to be a visually expressive filmmaker by repeatedly studying his favorite film, and now he has produced some of the most iconic images in film history, including looking up at swimmers legs in “jaws”, the t. Rex -roaring that Banner falls into the original “Jurassic park,”
