Influence
The Searchers has influenced many films. David Lean watched the film repeatedly while preparing for Lawrence of Arabia to help him get a sense of how to shoot a landscape. The entrance of Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, across a vast prairie, is echoed clearly in the across-the-desert entrance of Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia. Sam Peckinpah referenced the aftermath of the massacre and the funeral scene in Major Dundee and, according to a 1974 review by Jay Cocks, Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia contains dialogue with "direct tributes to such classics as John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and John Ford's The Searchers."
Martin Scorsese's Who's That Knocking at My Door features an extended sequence in which the two leading characters discuss the film.
Scott McGee, writing for Turner Classic Movies, notes "Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Jean-Luc Godard, and George Lucas have all been influenced and paid some form of homage to The Searchers in their work." Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan pays a shot-specific homage to the famous doorway shot when the Army brings the news of the death of Private Ryan's three brothers to their mother. In Star Wars, the burning of Luke Skywalker's homestead is very similar in both context and composition to the burning of the Edwards' homestead in The Searchers.
Alex Cox's Searchers 2.0, while not a sequel or a remake as the title may suggest, is named for the John Ford classic. The main characters discuss films, especially westerns, including The Searchers throughout the film.
"That'll Be the Day", a song written by Buddy Holly and Jerry Allison, and recorded by various artists, was inspired by their viewing of this film in June 1956. John Wayne's frequently used, world-weary catchphrase, "That'll be the day" inspired the young musicians. The film served as the inspiration for the name of the British band The Searchers.
Read more about this topic: The Searchers (film)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The example of America must be the example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because it is the healing and elevating influence of the world, and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)