In 1997, the American Film Institute released a list of the 100 greatest American films. The Searchers ranked 96th. This was a scandal.

It is the greatest John Wayne movie, and the greatest Western ever, which means, necessarily, that it is the greatest movie of all time. Vindication came ten years later, when the AFI released a revised Top 100, and The Searchers was moved up to #12. That is still 11 places too low — but at least it no longer ranks below Rocky.

When the film was released in 1956, most of the excitement was over the appearance of Jeffrey Hunter, a studmuffin of the day, who played Wayne’s adoptive nephew. But for the next generation of filmmakers — Scorsese and Lucas and Spielberg — it was a masterpiece to be studied and imitated. Director John Ford’s shotmaking is phenomenal. The movie was filmed on location in Utah’s monument valley, in Technicolor, and the American West has never looked more starkly beautiful. And there’s that other American landmark: John Wayne, who is a force of nature as the bitter loner, Ethan Edwards — graceful and brutal at the same time.

The story follows the five-year quest of Ethan and his nephew to track down the Comanche chief, Scar, who kidnapped Edwards’ niece and massacred the rest of her family. Edwards is a racist who reveals his hatred of Indians even before his family is murdered. As the search goes on, it becomes clear that he means to kill his niece (played by Natalie Wood in braids) if she has reached sexual maturity while living with the Comanche. There has been controversy over whether Ford intended The Searchers to be an indictment of racism, or simply accepted Ethan’s attitudes as those of the old West. There’s no room for doubt in the fine novel on which the movie was based, written by Alan LeMay. In the book, Ethan is destroyed by his hatred. The film’s ending is less grim, but only slightly so. In the famous final shot, Wayne stands alone, framed in the doorway of his family’s house — outside, cut off from warmth and love.