The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend - Brossura

Frankel, Glenn

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1620400650 ISBN 13: 9781620400654

Casa editrice: Bloomsbury USA, 2014

Riassunto

New York Times Bestseller

Named one of the best books of the year by:
Parade
The Guardian
Kirkus
Library Journal

The true story behind the classic Western The Searchers by Pulitzer Prize-wining writer Glenn Frankel that the New York Times calls "A vivid, revelatory account of John Ford's 1956 masterpiece."

In 1836 in East Texas, nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanches. She was raised by the tribe and eventually became the wife of a warrior. Twenty-four years after her capture, she was reclaimed by the U.S. cavalry and Texas Rangers and restored to her white family, to die in misery and obscurity. Cynthia Ann's story has been told and re-told over generations to become a foundational American tale. The myth gave rise to operas and one-act plays, and in the 1950s to a novel by Alan LeMay, which would be adapted into one of Hollywood's most legendary films, The Searchers, "The Biggest, Roughest, Toughest... and Most Beautiful Picture Ever Made!" directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne.

Glenn Frankel, beginning in Hollywood and then returning to the origins of the story, creates a rich and nuanced anatomy of a timeless film and a quintessentially American myth. The dominant story that has emerged departs dramatically from documented history: it is of the inevitable triumph of white civilization, underpinned by anxiety about the sullying of white women by "savages." What makes John Ford's film so powerful, and so important, Frankel argues, is that it both upholds that myth and undermines it, baring the ambiguities surrounding race, sexuality, and violence in the settling of the West and the making of America.

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Recensione:

Impeccably researched.[Frankel's] book is a fascinating journey from fiction to fact, from glorified legend to brutal event.. By connecting The Searchers to the facts of its distant origins, Frankel demonstrates how history and storytelling can become a unified force in national mythmaking (Washington Post)

This two-pronged history by the Pulitzer-winning journalist dives into the infamously difficult production of the iconic John Wayne Western and-perhaps more intriguing-the 1836 kidnapping of a Texas girl, which inspired the film (Entertainment Weekly, "The Must List")

Before The Searchers was a blockbuster movie, it was a book. And before it was a book it was part of Texas lore. And before that, it was a true story. Glenn Frankel has traced the evolution of this story from the rugged plains of the American Southwest to Hollywood . [The Searchers] is a book about the stories that we tell about ourselves. (NPR, "Weekend Edition")

Descrizione del libro:

"[A] vivid, revelatory account of John Ford's 1956 masterpiece."-The New York Times Book Review

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Bloomsbury USA
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1620400650
• ISBN 13: 9781620400654
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 432