E-Mail This Article to a Friend Searching question ‘Classic Westerns’ at the Brattle BY GERALD PEARY

It’s meant as a friendly question, an attempt at bonding with a movie critic. "What’s your favorite film?", I’m frequently asked by non-experts, and I suspect they’re hoping for a "normal" answer, one they can relate to. Star Wars, or Casablanca, or Lawrence of Arabia, or Chinatown, or if we’re going international, The Seven Samurai or 8-1/2. These are reasonable choices, and so are The Godfather, Singin’ in the Rain, and Citizen Kane. They’re just not my choice. "The Searchers," I say.

Silence. Huh? "It’s a fabulous 1950s Western," I add, trying to help. "Directed by John Ford. Starring John Wayne." Perplexity, embarrassment. The nice person with whom I’m conversing has, in all probability, never heard of The Searchers, doesn’t know beans about the man who to me is America’s greatest filmmaker, and doesn’t have any feeling about Westerns. As for John Wayne, isn’t he that right-wing actor who made The Green Berets? "Yep," I say, "he’s that cretinous fascist. I too loathe his politics, but I adore many of his movies. Working with a first-rate director, Wayne is a powerful screen presence, and his performance as the obsessed Indian killer in The Searchers (1956) is among the finest in the history of the cinema. Positively Shakespearean! King Lear on the open range."

Am I putting this person — and you readers — on? Not at all. The Searchers, a mesmerizing Indian captivity tale, really is my favorite movie in the world. I’ve watched it more than 30 times, ever since I saw it four days in a row as an 11-year-old. This Friday and Saturday, May 13 and 14, you can see it too, in all its 35mm majesty, on the big screen at the Brattle Theatre. It’s opening the Brattle’s tremendous "Classic Westerns" series. The other part of the double bill is Howard Hawks’s comfy, delightful Rio Bravo (1959), with "Duke" Wayne again, plus Dean Martin, Rick Nelson, gummy Walter Brennan, and leggy Angie Dickinson, all hanging out at an old jail. This one’s as informal and amiably plotless as The Searchers is Ahab-driven, a torrential narrative. The Odyssey-like screenplay for The Searchers is by Frank S. Nugent, who’d been a New York Times film critic; the shaggy-dog scenario of Rio Bravo is co-written by a "macho"-thinking dame, sci-fi novelist Leigh Brackett. Rio Bravo trivia: callow Rick Nelson wears, peeking out of his shirt, a chest toupee!

This Sunday, May 15, Alan Ladd is the title hero in Shane (1953), a tight-lipped ex-gunfighter gone straight and helping a frontier family as their in-residence handyman. I saw this as a tyke, watching through the eyes of the little boy (Brandon De Wilde) who worships this enigmatic man who’s come to live in his home. As an adult, I realized that Shane is adored equally by the boy’s lonely housewife mom (Jean Arthur), who’s already married. Shane’s scariest scene is when eternal fall guy Elisha Cook Jr. challenges the gun-for-hire in black, a sniveling Jack Palance. Cook is blown backward into the mud by Palance’s gunshot blast, for which terrifying sound director George Stevens actually fired off a cannon.

May 16 brings us two cult films, Delmer Daves’s 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and Budd Boetticher’s The Tall T (1957), both from Elmore Leonard stories. 3:10 to Yuma is a post–High Noon tale in which the lawmen leave it to wimpy rancher (Van Heflin) to take tough outlaw Glenn Ford to trial in Yuma. The rancher wishes he had the outlaw’s money and freedom; the outlaw envies the rancher’s domestic and marital life. It’s less schematic than it sounds. The Tall T is a raw, elegant "B" cowpoke tale, one of a dandy Boetticher series all starring steady, reliable Randolph Scott.

The May 17 bill starts with Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter (1973), in which Eastwood reprised his spaghetti-Western Man With No Name, here arriving on horseback to clean up a grotesque town with dirty secrets. It’s a tongue-in-cheek cinematic treat, with echoes of Mark Twain, Dashiell Hammett, and Akira Kurosawa. The other half is Anthony Mann’s superb Winchester 73 (1950), in which Jimmy Stewart races about the West after a murderer as a coveted Winchester rifle is passed hand to hand.

May 18 brings Sergio Leone’s epic (165 minutes) Once upon a Time in the West (1968), with eternal good guy Henry Fonda sublime as a smirking, cold-blooded killer. "Classic Westerns" finishes up on May 19 with The Quick and the Dead (1995), Sam Raimi’s Leone-like post-Western Western spoof starring Sharon Stone and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Contact Gerald Peary at gpeary@geraldpeary.com