MovieChat Forums > The Searchers (1956) Discussion > Monument Valley

Monument Valley

posted 8 years ago by TwoThousandOneMark
4 replies | jump to latest

While I completely get that Monument Valley adds depth & character to the landscape, & them travelling miles abroad only to never see them leave the real time physical area, it's a bit of a reach having settlers & ranches set with their cattle grazing its lunarscape.

Once Upon a Time in the West gets a credibility pass on this from me because the central ranch there was a water source, & valued for its future railroad territory.

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[–] cfwente 8 years ago

The Searchers is an elegy. No attempt is made to offer a realistic depiction of the setting of the story. "The pass" you suggest for the other picture should be offered The Searchers as well, but for reasons of genre and style rather than realism or logic.

[–] kbarada 8 years ago

At the very start of the movie, Ethan's brother Aaron had his ranch somewhere in west Texas. That set the place geographically, but as we soon observe, the ranch is really in a larger than life, mystical, mythical place somewhere in the west.

No one ever said that the ranch was located in the deserts of Monument Valley, but most movie viewers soon took that backdrop to be a metaphor for the wild west of wide open spaces and wonders. A set against which the story of the Searchers will be told. John Ford captured the grandeur of that natural set on film while telling the story of the Searchers. It is this marriage of setting and narrative that makes the Searchers one of the greatest films of all time.

If one is hung up on how the cattle will survive with no grass to eat, then they are missing the whole point of the movie.

[–] EvilSpaceApple 8 years ago

As far as filming a story ostensibly taking place in Texas, even western Texas, in Monument Valley, I have my doubts. How far from physical reality should any Western, even a "mythic" Western, should stray, is an issue I have, um, issues with.

The film opens with the legend "Texas, 1868" and the first vista we see is of...Utah. Imagine opening a film with the legend "Buffalo, NY, [year]" and the first thing we see is the Manhattan skyline.

Manhattan, like Monument Valley, is replete with mythic resonances. But if you're setting a film in Buffalo (as drab and unromantic a place it is relative to NYC), there must be a good reason. I think if your story takes place there, you're stuck with it, and you do your damnedest to make Buffalo visually interesting.

I wish I could accept the "metaphoric" defense. I don't think as a rule I'm excessively anchored to literal reality in fiction and art. I just rather wish Ford had resisted filming The Searchers in Monument Valley, and given us Texas. I'd be the first to admit that Ford's and his cinematographer's use of Monument Valley is breathtaking (one of the most impressive aspects of the picture), and certainly it would have been agreater challenge to make Texas a tenth so grand and gorgeous, but I'd like to have seen Ford attempt it.

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[–] kbarada 8 years ago

Good comments ESA. I appreciate your point of view and can totally understand what you are saying. Years ago, my Texas born parents pointed out that exact same thing. If it was supposed to be in Texas, then film the movie in Texas.

Yes, there are plenty of landscapes that could have been used in Texas, but Ford chose Monument Valley. Would the movie have been better using Texas landscapes as his outdoor set? Maybe if one is from Texas and could really identify with that. I know that for those that know the difference, it is a distraction. I don't think using Monument Valley really takes away from the story telling and gives the movie an epic, larger than life quality. Ford had a choice and he chose Monument Valley to tell the story. He may have liked that venue because he liked being in a remote location, far away from the public, press, and bosses that funded the movie.

I believe in the day it was easy for the movie ticket buying public to suspend what they may know to be true, accept that they weren't in Texas anymore, and immerse themselves into the fiction, fantasy and legends of the old west. I don't think very many wanted their money back.