On Friday, November 8, our Make it a Double series returns with a 4K restoration of John Ford’s western masterpiece The Searchers (1956) at 7pm paired with its most direct remake, Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979) at 9:30pm. 

This unique double feature invites audiences to compare and reflect on two cinematic explorations of obsession, set against vastly different landscapes of time and morality. 

The Searchers is a classic Ford western, noted for both embracing the genre’s conventions and breaking them in ways that remain uncomfortably resonant today. Its Technicolor brilliance and sweeping narrative have influenced a generation of filmmakers, including Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, Wenders, and Schrader himself. The film showcases stunning Monument Valley vistas and one of John Wayne’s most intense performances as the embittered and racist anti-hero Ethan Edwards. Alongside Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter plays his determined young companion, with Natalie Wood in a brief but crucial role that anchors the story’s central quest. 

Schrader’s Hardcore takes Ford’s epic journey and transposes it into the grimy underworld of 1970s America, filled with pornography, exploitation, and moral decay. George C. Scott delivers a devastating performance as a father searching for his missing daughter in this raw reinterpretation of The Searchers. By paralleling the two films, this double feature offers a fresh lens through which to explore themes of obsession, violence, and redemption across generations. 

This screening was programmed by FACETS projectionist Fred Swanson.