Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
I think there are a couple issues here that are being conflated. First, I think we both agree that it's generally a good thing for filmmakers to counter-point big moments (comic or otherwise) with moments of understatement, and this is something that studio-era directors knew and that contemporary Hollywood filmmakers have either forgotten or never learned in the first place. The second issue is why this contrast is necessary. I would argue that variation is a good thing in itself, irrespective of a film's subject matter, as it keeps films from lapsing into monotony. With regard to The Searchers in particular, I think the film is fairly clear on what happened to Lucy and her sister (and Martha), even if it's not explicitly stated (remember Wayne's line, "What do you want me to do? Draw you a picture? Spell it out? Don't ever ask me. As long as you live, don't ever ask me"). Rape is a major theme in the film as it provides the motivation for Wayne's wanting to kill Natalie Wood, and I don't think the presence of comic relief in the film in any way obscures this or diminishes its gravity. The third issue, and where I think we disagree mostly strongly, is the question of how broad is too broad. In this particular case, the problem I have with the film's comic relief is that I don't find it funny, and the scenes with Look especially strike me as cruel in their humiliation and dehumanization of indigenous women, making them painful to watch.
I'm saying Ford's ability to shift from small and large moments goes hand in hand with his ability to juggle tone. He's uses humor as a narrative shortcut, a way to downshift from high tension to low in a near instant.

This is absolutely necessary because the runtime is so constrained. "The Searchers" covers 10 years in a shade under 2 hours, with an action climax that starts with less than 10 minutes of screen time left. (But who notices? The movie is so narratively dense that it feels longer than it is.) With so little time, Ford can't bullshit around with extraneous material or ponderous, obvious transitions between sequences. This is what you and Roger (heh) don't seem to want to acknowledge. You remove the humor or quiet it, and the picture doesn't work as well.

You could say that Ford lets his audience off the hook, by giving them an out, a way to avoid dwelling on story's harsher aspects, but then I think he walks a very fine line between honoring a a certain legacy while condemning aspects of it. He does something similar in "Fort Apache," with Wayne and Fonda, a movie that has an almost thematically ambiguous ending. His films might have had a clear message on the surface, but they also contain a subversive layer underneath, making it possible to view the character's choices in different ways. I like this a bit better than the alternative. It's more skillful, for one.

By contrast, look at some of Anthony Man's westerns from the same period. "Man from Laramie" and "Man of the West" are both more tonally singular, never letting the audience off, and both are seriously grim, bordering on nihilistic. Well made, sure, but ugh, just nasty experiences. You don't walk out of those movies feeling good about the world. I mean, I think that was Mann's intent, and good for him for making his audience feel terrible, but Ford was trying to deliver a mainstream crowd pleaser that also had an entirely fucked up level of violence in it.

Or look at George Steven's "Shane," with its prairie home cruelty. His world is blunter and dumber than Ford's, and the film's early violence is mostly a justification for the hero's actions later on. The ending is unsophisticated and almost juvenile, because we're meant to view the story through the eyes of the little boy at its center, and that story can only have one possible outcome. I mean, it works, because when the inevitable happens, the audience is both thrilled and relieved. But it's a tent show compared to Ford's opera.

PS: I hear you about Look, but I also think she exists at the thematic center of the movie, and the fact you feel like shit watching what happens to her happen to her is entirely part of the point Ford was trying to make. I think both he and the movie are on her side, because of the way Martin finds her, and the regret he expresses over her fate, and the ebb and flow of tension and resolution around the scenes including her.