Script To Screen: “The Searchers”

From the 1956 movie The Searchers, screenplay by Frank S. Nugent, novel by Allan Le May.

Summary: As a Civil War veteran spends years searching for a young niece captured by Indians, his motivation becomes increasingly questionable.

Here is the scene that sets the plot into motion:

EXT. RISING GROUND - MED. CLOSE SHOT - MARTIN -
MOONLIGHT He stands beside his spent and fallen horse. Its
breathing is a rasping whistle. Martin tries to haul
its head up. Useless. Breathing hard himself, his face ashen in
the moonlight, Martin looks desperately off in the
direction of the ranch. Then he jerks the rifle from
its saddle scabbard -- struggling with it because it
is under the horse. He freezes then -- listening...
And we hear the steady beat of two horsemen
approaching. Martin knows who they are and his face
is alive with hope. He gets the rifle free at last
and goes running toward the oncoming riders. MARTIN
(shouting)
Ethan!... Ethan! The CAMERA SWINGS with him and we see Ethan and Mose
approaching at the same steady gait. MARTIN
(waving)
Uncle Ethan... it's me... Martin! Ethan doesn't slacken, nearly rides him down. ETHAN
Out of my way! Martin goes sprawling to his hands and knees. Mose
continues without slowing. EXT. RISING GROUND - ANOTHER ANGLE - PAST THE RIDERS
- MOONLIGHT MARTIN
(desperately)
Mose! Wait!... He goes running, stumbling after the riders --
desperately calling to them... MARTIN
Ethan!... Mose!... And then at the crest of the rising ground, he stops
-- We see in the distance the glow of a fire leading
from the barns and the hayricks and the house of
Aaron Edwards. Martin runs down the slope. EXT. YARD AND APPROACH TO EDWARDS HOUSE - WIDE ANGLE
- NIGHT (NOTE TO W. HOCH: Here again that use of red is
suggested.) The ANGLE is past the porch uprights toward Mose and
Ethan as they ride in. Little tongues of fire are
licking the edges of the uprights. A few arrows,
imbedded in the wood, are burning along their shafts.
Beyond are the glowing ashes of the hayricks and the
charred, smouldering rails of the corral. There are no bodies in evidence... The red glow of
the burning is on the faces of the men as they
dismount. Ethan strides to the porch, knocking away one of the
blazing arrows as he heads to the door. He stops
there -- and what he sees makes the big shoulders
droop, the huge frame slump. Slowly then -- and removing his hat -- he goes in.
Mose shuffles to the edge of the porch and squats
there and rocks back and forth, his face working and
crying soundlessly with senile grief. We hear a
splintered door crash from its hinges within the room
and Ethan's muffled voice calling through the house: ETHAN (O.S.)
Lucy?... Deborah? Lucy? He strides back through the main room and out onto
the porch just as Martin comes at a shambling run
across the yard. Ethan takes a few steps out toward him. Martin would
pass him, but Ethan grabs his arm. ETHAN
(harshly)
You stay out! Martin tries to fight his arm free. ETHAN
Nothing for you to see. MARTIN
Leggo... Ethan turns him and drives a brutal right to his jaw.
Martin goes down -- out cold. And only now do we
understand how merciful the blow was as Ethan looks
compassionately at the fallen figure. ETHAN
Don't let him go in there, Mose... And he takes off at a stumbling run for the hilltop. EXT. THE HILLOCK WITH THE TWO HEADBOARDS - FULL SHOT
- ETHAN as he nears the graves. ETHAN
(calling)
Lucy -- Lucy! He runs in, looking around him. He sees the little
dog, dead on the ground. And then he sees a shadowed
something: The shawl Debbie had worn. It is spread out, almost
as though concealing a body. Fearfully he stoops and
pulls it away... There is nothing there, but the shawl. He drops to
his knees, his head bowed, his face tortured. The
moonlight is clear on the face of the nearer
headboard. It is of weathered wood and the chiselled
letters on it read: HERE LIES MARY JANE EDWARDS KILLED BY COMANCHES MAY 12, 1852 a good WIFE & MOTHER In her 41st year SLOW DISSOLVE TO:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

From time to time, I like to post excerpts from old scripts to drive home a point: Screenplay style and format is a malleable thing, a constant state of evolution.

Six decades ago when this script was written, it was standard practice to include specific camera shots and write scene description in continuous blocks of action in a single long paragraph. Nowadays we do neither.

And yet, this script is full of great visual writing: “Breathing hard himself, his face ashen in the moonlight… his face is alive with hope… Little tongues of fire are licking the edges of the uprights… The red glow of the burning is on the faces of the men as they dismount… what he sees makes the big shoulders droop, the huge frame slump.”

Format and style may change. The need to write visually never does.

Compare the script to the movie version to see how they compare. Mostly the same, a few subtle, but key changes.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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